Close-Up: Newsmaker - Ramsey cuts the BBH apron strings to join JWT.(Russell Ramsey appointed as creative chief)

Russell Ramsey is the new creative chief at JWT. Will he fare better than his predecessor, Nick Bell, James Hamilton asks.

Russell Ramsey has been quite the tug-of-love creative over the past few years. Closely linked with the senior role at WCRS and, latterly, Euro RSCG London, there were some who said the Bartle Bogle Hegarty chief creative officer would never leave; like so many of his colleagues, the agency was in his blood.

It might have taken a couple of attempts, but Ramsey has finally cut the apron strings and left his home of the past 17 years. In doing so, he assumes the role of executive creative director that he's been seeking for the past four years.

It's a move, he says, he's more than ready for. Last year, he was promoted to third in charge under John Hegarty and John O'Keeffe, and took day-to-day control of the creative department at BBH in January 'There are challenges at a new agency, but I'm ready,' he says.

A former colleague agrees he's a great fit for the role: 'The role BBH has had him in for the past two years has helped him grow from the creative's creative into the client-facing, man-managing creative. He's got real client-handling skills and doesn't have a lot to prove.'

But what of the company he's joining? The vacant executive creative director's chair at JWT has been like an open wound at the agency since Nick Bell's acrimonious ousting in January after a brutal two years of account losses and swingeing cuts. At the time, the JWT global creative director, Craig Davis, blamed Bell's departure on an agency restructure around groups, based on pools of clients. Privately, sources at the agency say Bell and Davis didn't see eye-to-eye; the JWT chief executive, Alison Burns, is thought to have wanted to keep Bell, but was overruled.

Friends say Ramsey has never been an office politician - at BBH that role always belonged to his former partner, O'Keeffe. Why should the quiet man from South Shields fare better than Bell in a Byzantine agency structure such as JWT's, where, in addition to these account 'pools', a daunting phalanx of creative directors jealously guard their global businesses?