Neil Livingstone Hands Over the Reins as CEO of .99

.99 CEO Neil Livingstone has announced he will be stepping down from the job in June this year. Under Neil's leadership, the retail advertising agency he established in 2003 within Colenso BBDO has grown to become one of the largest advertising agencies, based on billings, in New Zealand.

Current Managing Director and Executive Creative Director (ECD) of .99 Craig Whitehead will take over the reins as CEO while retaining his role as ECD.

Neil and Craig, together with Jarad O’Hara (Whitehead’s right-hand man and Client Service Director), are the original three who established .99 eight years ago.

Jim Moser, CEO of Clemenger Group New Zealand - New Zealand's largest marketing communications Group - says Neil resigned in November last year, saying he wanted to step aside from his CEO role.

"Neil has devoted eight years to growing .99 into the success story it is today and felt he'd got the agency to a point where he was ready to hand over the reins," says Jim Moser.
"After discussions I asked him to stay on in a non-executive role as Chairman, which he accepted. In his new role he will assist the management team, maintain contact with key senior clients and help with new business activity."

Neil says his number one priority was to ensure a robust succession plan was in place to ensure a seamless transition for staff and clients.

".99 is in the best shape it has ever been in, but it is time to continue looking to the future to ensure the agency remains best-in-class in the retail space. I've been working closely with Craig over the past few months to implement a new structure which will be well and truly bedded in by the time I step down from the CEO role in June."

This includes further boosting .99s significant in-house production capability with the appointment of a new Operations Director which will be announced shortly. 99's creative offering has also been strengthened with the recent appointments of Paul Hankinson to Creative Director and Nic Hall to Deputy Creative Director.
Neil's 33 year career in the advertising industry began in 1978 with Colenso Wellington, when Neil (then Marketing Manager for one of Colenso's biggest clients) was offered a job with the agency as an Account Director. While Neil initially approached the move with some trepidation, it was to mark the beginning of a long career with Colenso, which included three years as general manager of Colenso Wellington and 20 years as Managing Director of Colenso in Auckland.

In 2003 .99 opened for business, and immediately carved a niche for itself by being single-minded in its focus on providing a retail offering for clients. This unwavering focus has helped build an agency that is quite different to any other and it has become a blueprint for retail agency success that is being mimicked by advertising agencies in other markets.

“This was an agency geared for the changing consumer and media environment. We had the vision, the forward-thinking and rolled the dice – that was an adrenalin rush!” says Neil.

"I am immensely proud of what the team at .99 has achieved over the years. We've built a very successful, unique business with a great organisational culture and a client list any agency would be envious of. The time is right for me to take a step back from the day to day running of the agency and I do so knowing the agency, its people and its clients remain in the very best hands under Craig and Jarad," concludes Neil.