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Jeff Finkler recently left a cushy job at Leo Burnett, Chicago, to return to Toronto where he has taken an executive VP, creative director post at Saatchi & Saatchi.

Finkler had spent nearly his entire career at Burnett, first in Toronto (where he’d risen to the post of executive VP, chief creative officer), then in Chicago (as vice chairman, executive creative director), before first reporting to Saatchi in early March. He says the decision to come back to Toronto was not a difficult one to make.

‘I did not enjoy my job in Chicago,’ says Finkler. ‘It’s a big machine of 2,500 people working in one office building for one agency. It was difficult for someone from the outside to penetrate that kind of big beast that has been up and running on its own steam for decades. Once I decided that I was going to leave Burnett, that meant leaving Chicago because it is the biggest game in town.’

Finkler says too that his family factored very much into his decision to move back to Canada to continue his career in advertising.

‘I have an 11-year-old girl and you have to think of the implications of moving all around and the effect that can have on a child,’ says Finkler. ‘Once I realized I was going to leave Chicago, I looked around at other jobs in the U.S. and I thought for my family’s sake, the next move should be as easy as possible, which meant coming back to Toronto.’

Having spent five years in the marketing and advertising division of Volkswagen early in his career, Finkler brings a unique perspective to his current post. He says there are quite a few changes he expects to make at Saatchi. After meeting with Saatchi’s president and CEO Richard Olsen, Finkler says he is indeed ready to turn the agency back into a major player in the Canadian ad community.

‘The first thing I need to do is help them reinvigorate the product they produce,’ says Finkler. ‘It is great to know that basically everyone that works here isn’t happy with the product. They like working here and believe in the company, and rightfully so, but they want it to shine the way we know it can.’

Finkler says he also intends ‘to help structure the agency [to be] profitable [and to] take advantage of all the work advertisers out there might want us to do. In combination with that, you always have to be looking for new business opportunities.’

After his stay in Chicago, Finkler says the advertising business, ‘practised well,’ is pretty much the same in the U.S. as it is here. ‘I think we [in Canada] are forced to think things through in a more intelligent way at the inception,’ says Finkler. ‘We don’t have the production budgets here that they do in the U.S. and money can gloss over the lack of useful thinking in the first place. I think we have less opportunity for that here. We have less to camouflage our thinking.’

Finkler says even though he worked with a number of talented American spot makers, he holds no biases toward any specific nationality of director and will more or less let his creative teams choose whomever they want.

‘My way of working is I will never tell a creative team or a producer who they should use,’ says Finkler. ‘I may recommend that they not use certain people because they wouldn’t be right for the job. I try to maintain as neutral a stance as I can. I think we have great people here and I’m thrilled when we find Canadian talent to work with, but I would not relegate the search to just Canadians for patriotic reasons, nor would I place emphasis on the U.S.’

Finkler believes the Canadian advertising business is full of talented people, but that it is sometimes self-destructive.

‘What I observe is that we seem to populate our business with self-detractors, people who spend too much time tearing down other people and companies in this business,’ says Finkler. ‘I’m not sure why this happens. I didn’t feel that in the U.S., but I’ve already felt it here coming back. It might be because it is a small community, but I’d like us to be more supportive of what we are trying to do here.’

With his new high-profile job, Finkler says he is happy to be back in Toronto, despite these issues. He says he is looking forward to rewiring Saatchi & Saatchi, making it the powerhouse ad agency he knows it can be.

‘The best thing about my job is I get to create sparks that then turn into fires in other people’s eyes and I love that,’ says Finkler. ‘I have always said I’m no good as a creative person, but I’m very good at spotting creativity in the people around me. The worst part is it consumes you.’ *

-www.saatchi.ca