Lee-Ann Morris joins MBM in newly created CEO role.
MBM has announced the appointment of Lee-Ann Morris to the newly created position of chief executive. Morris will join the agency in February 2022 from PHD Media where she has been managing director for the past five years.
Morris will assume leadership of MBM across both the Auckland and Wellington offices. The three managing partners – Sean McCready, Matt Bale, and Alysha Delany – will be taking on new governance, strategic, and product-focused roles respectively within the business and remain committed to MBM long term. Morris will also be working closely with the broader management team, which is unchanged.
MBM co-founder and managing partner Sean McCready said: “After 11 successful years, MBM has experienced significant growth and while our joint leadership model supported by a nationwide agency management team has served us well, we can see that a single CEO is best placed to take MBM forward. This is a different type of role to that we’ve had at MBM to date, and requires experience leading a large and complex agency, across two distinct markets and across multiple successful lines of business. Lee-Ann is an incredibly talented and experienced leader and the right candidate to take MBM into the next chapter.”
Morris said on her appointment: “Over the past decade, Matt, Sean and Alysha built MBM into a world-class agency – then secured this to the formidable capabilities of the Publicis Groupe. I’m genuinely delighted and honoured to able to share in this enduring success story. It’s been my privilege to be a part of the PHD team for almost 10 years. In that time the agency has gone from strength to strength, and I leave them with the deepest respect and mutual goodwill, having loved my time with this amazing team.”
With more than 20 years in the industry, Morris has developed a focused understanding of how insights, innovation and communications touch-points can be leveraged to deliver growth for her clients. Originally from South Africa, her first decade in media was forged in the furnace of FMCG in the UK, with Unilever, Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble. After moving her family to Auckland and taking up New Zealand citizenship, Morris spent the next decade working with many of New Zealand’s leading agencies and brands including Fonterra, Vodafone, Spark and ANZ. She also sits on the Comms Council Media Board and is passionate about making a contribution to the broader industry, in particular to promoting diversity and inclusion in the media sector.
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