- Brian Morrissey, Adweek

Razorfish has named Bob Lord its new CEO, with Clark Kokich moving to chairman.
 
The Microsoft-owned digital shop elevated Lord (pictured) to global chief executive from president of Razorfish's East region. He served in that role for four years and has held other posts at the agency, including leading its Latin America business.
 
Under Kokich, Razorfish consolidated its media and creative arms into a single agency. It has also added a global footprint with offices in eight countries. During his tenure, Microsoft bought the agency's parent company aQuantive for $6 billion in May 2007. Last October, the shop switched its name from Avenue A/Razorfish to simply Razorfish. It now has over 2,000 employees.
 
The chairman role is new for Razorfish. The agency said Lord would focus on day-to-day operations while Kokich works with client teams to develop strategies for differentiating Razorfish from other shops.

Lord said he would concentrate on sharing knowledge across Razorfish's global network of offices and building on its capacity to deliver digital work worldwide.

"There's a place in the agency of the future between the legacy traditional agencies and the business-consulting model," Lord said. "I see us in the middle there. I see us solving business problems through the digital channel."

Said Kokich: "I'm going spend 100 percent of time promulgating innovation and ideas and pushing our teams and clients to take things to the next level. We need a lot of focus on that as everyone in the industry does now."

In his new role, Kokich will report to Lord, who reports to Microsoft chief financial officer Chris Liddell.

"Our vision is Razorfish is a company that builds experiences that build businesses," Kokich said. "That requires people who understand digital marketing and technology and advertising, and it requires people that understand business."

Lord's promotion should further solidify the firm's status outside the Microsoft realm. He is a veteran of the Razorfish side of the agency, not Avenue A like Kokich. Avenue A parent company aQuantive purchased Razorfish in July 2004.

Lord will remain based in New York, Razorfish's largest office. Kokich is based in Seattle.
 
Lord arrived at Razorfish in 2000, following a stint as chief operating officer at Prism Rehab Systems. Prior to that, he was a consultant at Symmetrix.


Source: Adweek.com