DUBAI – WPP has brought Blue Hive, a full-service agency to serve Ford, in the Middle East. Headquartered in Dubai, it will be led by ad veteran Robert McBrain, the former CEO of Bates CHI & Partners Indonesia and Y&R Malaysia.
According to his LinkedIn page, he has taken the role of Managing Director for Blue Hive Middle East Africa sometime this November. His most recent role was in the Philippines as consultant for SilverMachine Digital Communications, a new independent digital agency founded by Matt Seddon, the former CEO of Ace Saatchi & Saatchi and JWT Manila.
WPP first opened a dedicated agency for Ford in 2007 called Team Detroit to serve the car brand mainly in the US. Based in Michigan, it is a merger of five successful WPP agencies, namely JWT, Y&R, Wunderman, Ogilvy and Mindshare to form a single agency dedicated to Ford.
The network then brought the agency model to Europe in 2010, this time called Blue Hive. Handling this giant $2 billion pan-European business are teams from Ogilvy, Wunderman and Mindshare. Blue Hive expanded since, now with regional hubs in Bangkok, Shanghai, India and Australia.
