Jim Heekin
Jim Heekin has been chairman and CEO of Grey Global Group since early 2007.
Heekin has advertising in his blood: His father, James Heekin Jr., served as president of Ogilvy & Mather in the 1960s. The younger Heekin, however, wasn't initially interested in business: He majored in psychology and literature at Williams and planned to be a teacher. After quickly concluding that a teacher's salary wasn't enough to live on, he switched gears, taking a job at J. Walter Thompson in 1975. Heekin eventually left JWT and bounced between jobs at General Foods and Bozell until 1985, when he rejoined the agency and picked up Burger King as a client. In 1993, he arrived at McCann-Erickson WorldGroup where he first served as a regional director before moving up the ranks to become CEO in 2001. Two years later he was ousted amid allegations of questionable accounting and replaced by John Dooner, whom he'd originally replaced at McCann. He soon found a home as CEO at Euro RSCG Worldwide. But he spent just a year at the company before leaving for Grey in 2005.
At Grey, Heekin is responsible for major ad campaigns for the likes of BellSouth, ConAgra, Hasbro, and Volkswagen-Audi Group. But while he's landed several new clients (like Terlato Wines, which produces one out of every eight wines sold in the U.S.), Heekin has a good deal of work ahead of him if he's going to change Grey's reputation as a dinosaur in the industry. To turn things around, Heekin has devoted his energies to luring execs from more creative and youthful agencies like Strawberry Frog to help modernize the aging ad giant.
Heekin lives in Rye with his wife, Ann.
