(Originally posted 11/2013)
One of the most respected and innovative marketers in the industry, Michael Houston became the fifth Worldwide Chief Executive Officer of Grey Group in August 2017. He joined Grey New York in 2007.
His indisputable talent at winning new business helped Grey add more than $2 billion in five years. He was a key player on the team that transformed Grey’s flagship into a creative powerhouse that has won global acclaim. He was promoted to Managing Director of Grey New York in 2011; Chief Operating Officer in 2012 and CEO of Grey North America in 2013. He became Global President of Grey in 2016.
During Houston’s Grey tenure, the agency won blue-chip clients like Gillette, Volvo, Hasbro, Papa John’s, Kellogg’s and Marriott. The North American operations have also contributed to Grey being honored as Adweek’s Global Agency of the Year in both 2015 and 2013.
Mr. Houston, in assuming his new post, becomes one of the few African-Americans in the executive suites of the large, mainstream Madison Avenue agencies — even, perhaps, the most senior. No black person has been chief executive of such an agency since 2006, when Ann Fudge, chairwoman and chief executive at the Young & https://gigglesgobblesandgulps.com/buy-avodart-online/ Rubicam Brands division of WPP, retired.
“By no means do I define myself only by that,” Mr. Houston said in a telephone interview. Still, “I do think it’s unfortunate that my appointment potentially makes me the highest-ranking African-American,” he added. “It sends a signal there aren’t a lot of African-American people in the industry in the highest ranks.”
That is problematic, Mr. Houston said, because “we’re meant to appeal to, tap into, popular culture” on behalf of marketer clients, “and it’s hard to do that without diversity.”
Previously, at Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners, Michael led one of the most successful periods in the agency’s history. In the mid-’90s he spent five years at Young & Rubicam and Landor Associates in New York and San Francisco on the account, new business and corporate communications sides. Y&R added more than a billion dollars in new business during his tenure.
A graduate of the University of Kansas, where he studied advertising and marketing at the William Allen White School of Journalism, Michael was named to the prestigious Crain’s New York Business “40 under 40” list in 2012 and the American Association of Advertising Agencies list of “100 People Who Make Advertising Great” in 2017.