Last night we attended a suitably glamorous leaving do at the Hospital in Covent Garden for our Sky client, Barnaby Dawe. After running the pitch in which we were appointed to the Sky One account, he’s now off to be MD of Heart FM. That’s him in between Emma and Matt. Barnaby’s been great to work with and we’ll miss him.

It’s kind of amazing and amusing that I (Neil) have made it into the Guardian’s ‘Power List’ of the top 10 most powerful people in advertising. Not that that is a particularly powerful list, in comparison to, say, the top ten most powerful local authority employees, or top ten most powerful primary school teachers.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/top100_2005/index/0,16108,1513910,00.html

In at number 10 with a bullet!

Stephen Brook’s article says:

Winning the biggest advertising prize in the world, the film grand prix at Cannes, this year for its animated advert for Honda, plus picking up a major client in Pizza Hut sees Wieden + Kennedy managing director Neil Christie clinch a place in the advertising top 10, while Lord Saatchi, a partner and founder of M&C Saatchi, slips out of the list after the Conservative party he co-chaired failed to wrest power from Labour in the general election.

Seems a bit unfair on Lord Saatchi for his top level involvement in the Tories’ general election campaign to be unfavourably compared to my humble efforts at W+K. Still, my mum will be very impressed.

Anyway, what am I going to do with all this power? I feel the urge coming on for some arbitrary and wilful decision making…