MAA appoints first chair from PR sector

Exposure founder and joint chief executive Tim Bourne has been named chairman of The Marketing Agencies Association, the first MAA chairman from a PR and comms background.

The Marketing Agencies Association is a non-profit trade body, which aims to support marketing comms agencies, with services designed to improve their performance. Members include Exposure, iris, Saatchi & Saatchi X, Livity, Geometry Global, ais London, DigitasLBi, and Leo Burnett London.

Following his nomination by the MAA board, Bourne was confirmed as the body’s next chairman by members at last night’s (29 February) MAA AGM. He will hold the post for the next two years, working alongside the MAA’s MD, Scott Knox.

He was previously MAA’s chair for entrepreneurship, which saw him launch the body’s Super Entrepreneurs project to engage agencies with the entrepreneurial cultures within blue chip companies.

Bourne will push to build a larger and more diverse membership to enhance investment in core MAA projects and its training programmes. He has set an ambitious goal of 100% growth within five years.

He said: “The MAA will encourage members to embrace change as the only viable future, assuming leadership as the body that helps the industry evolve. Membership should be a badge of being progressive, of being a ‘change-maker’. To support agencies in this, we will represent this progressive outlook for the industry and embrace diversity of agencies and their disciplines.”

Bourne replaces Cheil Worldwide’s Simon Hathaway after Hathaway completed his statutory two-year period at the helm.

Hathaway said: “Tim will continue to broaden the scope of the MAA, recognising adiversity that extends beyond its heartland agencies and bringing a rigour to its activities.”