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John Bartle, one of the founding partners of Bartle Bogle Hegarty,

is to leave the agency in December.

Bartle, who will be 55 in August, intends to focus on other business

options, which are as yet undecided.

He said: ’I have nothing up my sleeve. I feel that this is the right

time to move away and to make more room for others. I suppose all good

things come to an end and this good thing could hardly have been

better.’

Bartle, who will be ’100 per cent committed to the agency until the very

last minute’ said that his departure had been discussed ’throughout the

90s’ and agreed two or three years ago with his co-founders, Nigel Bogle

and John Hegarty. He added that it was known at the time of the sale of

49 cent of BBH to the Leo Burnett Company at the end of 1997.

In a joint comment, Bogle and Hegarty said: ’There’s no doubt that it’s

a significant moment when a name over the door decides to leave,

particularly when we’ve been together as long as we have. If these

things have to happen, though, it’s best if they do so when you are in

as good a shape as we are and with the depth of management talent we

have.’

Bartle has had three jobs in his 34-year career. He worked for eight

years at Cadbury Foods, where he developed his passion for advertising

working on Smash with BMP DDB’s planning guru and founder, Stanley

Pollitt.

He then spent nine years at TBWA and the past 17 running his own

agency.

Had TBWA been more generous, BBH may never have been formed. It was

there that the influential Bartle Bogle Hegarty line-up was established,

and the eventual split to set up BBH in 1982 was prompted by the trio’s

desire for more equity in the business.

One of the most popular and respected figures in the UK advertising

industry, Bartle was the president of the Institute of Practitioners in

Advertising from 1995 to 1997.

The blunt-speaking Yorkshireman’s IPA presidency was characterised by a

philosophy of ’continuity rather than change’.

Perspective, p16.