In keeping with tips we’ve received over the past month-plus, North American CEO Josh Feldmeth resigned from Interbrand last week.
The internal memo that global CEO Jez Frampton sent out on Friday states that Feldmeth has accepted a position with “a competitor” after leading the Omnicom consultancy’s operations across the continent for approximately 2 1/2 years.
According to the source who initially alerted us to Feldmeth’s pending resignation, that competitor is Prophet, the San Francisco-based firm perhaps best known for its work rebranding UBS. Prophet partner Jonathan Chajet and associate partner Jonathan Redman both worked at Interbrand during Feldmeth’s tenure.
This news marks another major executive-level shift for Interbrand after the company hired former DDB North America CEO Mark O’Brien as group chief financial and operations officer and promoted group COO/CFO Kelly Gall to the newly created position of chief of commercial operations for all of North America.
In that note, Frampton stated that O’Brien would work closely with both Feldmeth and COO/CFO Nancy Casey Kapplow as the network rebounds from a “challenging” 2016.
Feldmeth joined Interbrand’s Swiss division in 2007 after working for Omnicom’s Design Forum; he later moved up within the organization and led its Amsterdam expansion before coming to New York as chief executive of its Manhattan, San Francisco and Toronto offices and getting the promotion to North American CEO in 2014.
Neither Interbrand nor Prophet had responded to our queries regarding the executive changes when this post went live. We will update the story when more information comes in.
Here is Frampton’s memo from last week.
Dear Interbrand North America,
I would like to let you all know that Josh Feldmeth has resigned from Interbrand.
As Josh has shared with us that he will be joining a competitor, and based on our client confidentiality requirements and standard business protocols, we have agreed that he should not be involved in the business going forward.
We thank Josh for the contribution he’s made to our business, and wish him well. Of course we will miss him, however his departure shouldn’t at all distract us from the most important thing we do every day – great work for great clients.
Kind regards,
Jez