Opinion: Perspective - Why David Pattison departure is end of an era.(PHD USA)(Column)

When David Pattison and Jonathan Durden quit WCRS in 1989 to launch PHD with Nick Horswell, they promised to be the Bartle Bogle Hegarty of media independents.

It was a bold promise. Impertinent, even. Remember, these were the days when media was the grubby end of the advertising business. In full-service agencies, this was the department where the carpets gave way to lino, and the public school brogue that dominated elsewhere was replaced by the brawl of the market-trader. And the new breed of media independents starting up were even worse: gorillas with calculators hunkered down in cheap warehouse-like offices trading media as a commodity.

OK - these are gross cliches, but streaked through with the realities of life in the media market. So PHD's ambitions were pretty audacious at the time. But over the past 17 years, the company has operated with a creative principle, an integrity and a commitment to quality that few agencies, media or creative, achieve.

So this week's news that Pattison is finally quitting the agency has more than a ring of the end-of-an-era about it. The wise Mr Horswell left in 2002 to launch his Uncle advisory service; the simply brilliant Mr Durden still works for PHD but part-time, as his creative impulse has taken him off into writing and TV production. And, of course, Tess Alps - not a founder, but she might as well have been, such was her contribution to the agency over the past 13 years - left earlier this year to head Thinkbox.

Pattison, the lynchpin of the PHD brand both here and, now, globally, has been the one constant that has kept the PHD values alive over nearly two decades. He has steered the agency though a sale to Omnicom (for a, retrospectively, meagre pounds 12 million) in 1996, got the crucial American office on course and set the brand on a successful international path. And for the past year or so he has been an industry voice of reason and integrity as the president of the IPA.

So Pattison's departure is a real body blow to Omnicom. Talent and experience of his calibre is so ...