by Larissa Faw
Good creative talent is hard to find which is why global executive search firm Grace Blue is launching Liberty Blue, a new business venture that will focus on top talent in creative fields. The new venture will provide talent search services across all areas of the advertising industry, other communications businesses and for marketers.
Ad veterans Charlotte Smith and Christine Stack will helm this new firm as Partners, with offices in London and New York.
“Grace Blue and now Liberty Blue work well with agencies and creative communications brands because we understand them at their core,” says Smith, whose agency experience includes stints with TBWA, JWT and McCann. “We come from agency backgrounds ourselves, and because of Grace Blue’s relationships with C-Suite leaders around the world, we have a unique outlook on the evolving nature of the communications world and the skills needed to become a leader in that space.”
The new agency will focus on finding candidates that can step into the C-Suite 5-10 years from now.
“The leaders we’ve placed at Grace Blue have repeatedly asked us to bring our approach to finding the best leadership to a broader range of talent,” says Stack, who previously held posts at MEC, MediaVest and UM. “Liberty Blue enables us to help those leaders build crucial bench strength needed to deliver their visions and allows us to partner with the brightest future leaders in the industry as they grow.” And she cites recent comments from WPP CEO Martin Sorrell “about how the war for talent is just really beginning.”
This agency hopes to bring a new approach to the hiring process. “Many companies are used to seeing lots of resumes based solely on a paper brief, and then running through multiple candidate interviews,” says Smith. “And much of the talent we speak with are used to the standard interview questions that involve their experiences and what they can bring to that respective company’s table. We dig deep, target precisely, and ask for a level of input and partnership from both our clients and talent prospects that is unusual in the recruitment field. Ultimately we want to build teams, build businesses and build careers.”