Media Headliner: MEC sets sights on big league after Orange win.(Mediaedge:cia)

Chief executive Tom George wants to make Mediaedge:cia not just a challenger brand but a big-hitter too, Ian Darby writes.

The celebrations finally wrapped up at 3.30am. Not bad going for a Monday night/Tuesday morning. The staff of Mediaedge:cia, led by its chief executive, Tom George, had been celebrating the capture of the pounds 76 million Orange media account with their new client.

Not the typical start to a week at the agency, perhaps. Yet, as George explains, there was a real sense of achievement surrounding Orange 'It's the culmination of four years' work,' he says. The thought of MEC landing such a prestigious and sizeable chunk of business those four years ago, when George arrived as the managing director from ZenithOptimedia, was unimaginable.

MEC's billings had dwindled to around pounds 200 million, it had lived through a succession of underachieving management teams and, in the UK at least, seemed to have no future other than as the mediocre runt of the WPP media litter. Since then, though, three successive years of new-business growth, plus investment in the agency's diversified services such as sponsorship and digital, has improved its fortunes and catapulted billings to more than pounds 500 million (if the Orange and other wins from this year are factored in).

George, 46, initially took some convincing to take on the managing director role (he was subsequently promoted to chief executive in November 2006). Rob Norman, the then chairman of the agency, initially approached him in October 2003. A succession of names, including David Wheldon, Fiona McAnena and Matt James, had failed to transform MEC's fortunes, and it took George until the following February to finally accept the job.

'My initial response was, 'why would anyone want to do a job at an agency that appears to be such a basket case'. But I thought, 'you know what, if I don't leave (Zenith) now, I never will',' George recalls. 'If I got to MEC and didn't make a difference, why would I have been any different to the past five management teams that hadn't made a difference?'

The MEC move followed 15 years at Zenith, where George was latterly the deputy managing director. He came to media via management consultancy and then IT, having transferred from the IT department at Bates Dorland to media buying.