Eight Partnership's Beijing operations in "transition"

BEIJING - Brand specialist Eight Partnership is restructuring its Beijing office after a recent management shakeup, and the loss of its key Apple account.

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An undisclosed source told Campaign that the changes were due to "management restructuring" after losing Apple, a major client for Eight.

The loss of the Apple account was confirmed last week by an ex-staffer of Eight Beijing. Eight was appointed as Apple's marketing communication agency in July 2008.

Campaign attempted without success to contact Sheilen Rathod, Eight's managing director in Beijing. Repeated calls to the Beijing office were also unanswered.

Chris Fjelddahl, the remaining managing partner at Eight in Hong Kong, clarified that the company is still on an open contract with Apple in China, but revealed that Eight is "currently restructuring the team in Beijing to raise its quality and level of delivery, and is indeed replacing a number of people."

Fjelddahl said Eight is retraining its team in Hong Kong before announcing "a new set-up in Beijing later this year".

Among senior management who have left the company recently are Charles Brian-Boys, former managing partner and Chris Kyme, former creative partner.

Brian-Boys opened a new consultancy, Alchemy Asia in July this year. Several of his new team members were ex-Eight employees, including Andrew Kane.

In the same month, Kyme opened his own start-up agency Kymechow, taking former Eight senior executive Lorraine Liu with him.

Eight Partnership was founded in 1993.

Source:

Campaign China