Walker signs up Horrocks as broadcast boss

Walker Media has raided John Ayling & Associates to appoint its

first broadcast director, poaching Jon Horrocks to fill the new

post.

Although Walker Media, which launched at the beginning of this year, has

no TV billings of note yet, the agency has been keen to recruit a

heavyweight broadcast chief as a signal of intent.

Phil Georgiadis, Walker Media’s director, said: ’We were looking for a

broadcast director with credibility and authority in the TV marketplace,

someone able to negotiate at all levels who is still close to the

business on a day-to-day basis.’

He added that Horrocks would complement Walker Media’s philosophy of

offering simplicity from complexity because he was an all-rounder ’able

to put the business of broadcast in the context of broader issues’.

Horrocks has been with Aylings for the past ten years, but before that

had worked with Georgiadis and Walker Media’s other founder, Christine

Walker, at Benton & Bowles and Ray Morgan & Partners. At Aylings,

Horrocks also works on the Kimberly-Clark account, currently under

review.

Horrocks, who is expected to serve out three months’ notice at Aylings,

said the Walker Media job offered ’a fantastic opportunity to join a

start-up as a founding director, working with two operators who I

respect enormously’. He added: ’I’m very serious in my belief that we

can move the business on quickly.’

Until this week Walker Media, which opened for business on 1 January,

had pulled in two accounts, the pounds 500,000 Ultratone business and

pounds 2 million from Max Car.

However, its coup in prising the pounds 100 million-plus Dixons Stores

Group account out of MediaVest this week means the agency has already

hit Christine Walker’s target of winning pounds 100 million of new

business in the agency’s first year of operation.

This article was first published on Campaign