Robin Wight

Robin Wight CVO is president of The Engine Group (‘Engine’) and co-founder of advertising agency WCRS in the United Kingdom.^[1] He also established the Ideas Foundation, a charity which aims to nurture creatively gifted young people.^[2]

Early life

Educated at Wellington College followed by St Catherine’s College, Cambridge, Wight founded his first advertising agency whilst still an undergraduate at university. He left Cambridge before graduating in order to pursue a career in the advertising industry.^[3] He was described as "The Undergradman" by an article in The Guardian newspaper which led to his first job as a copywriter.^[3]

Career

Wight was soon employed at seminal agency Collett Dickenson Pearce (where he worked alongside Charles Saatchi and Alan Parker). After spending a decade there he co-founded advertising firm Wight Collins Rutherford Scott (‘WCRS’) in 1979.^[2] Wight was the creative force behind a number of groundbreaking campaigns for 118 118, Orange, Carling Black Label and BMW.^[4]

In 2004 he was part of the WCRS management team that led the buyout from parent company Havas Advertising.^[5] He was subsequently made joint chairman of WCRS under the new structure and then President of Engine in 2008. In 2010 Wight stood down from the board of Engine in order to focus on his charitable interests, though he remains President of the UK company.^[6]

Charitable work

Wight has pursued a number of notable interests in addition to his work at WCRS and Engine. Between 1997 and 2002 he was Chairman of the Duke of Edinburgh Award’s Charter for Business, a role for which he was appointed a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO) in the 2000 Birthday Honours.^[7] As Chairman Wight helped to raise over £50million for the Duke of Edinburgh Award.^[5] From 1997 to 2006 he was chairman of Arts & Business, a charity that encourages Business to support the arts.^[8]

In 2003 Wight founded the Ideas Foundation,^[9] a charity that helps identify and nurture creatively gifted young people, primarily from ethnic minority backgrounds. The organisation has collaborated with 100 schools to date and in 2016 announced a partnership with The Evening Standard.^[2] In September 2016 the foundation will establish a free school in West Greenwich which will focus on creative skills.^[10]

Wight is also on the Board of Directors at Plotr,^[11] a site aimed at providing a wide variety of careers advice and guidance, including through the use of an online game.^[12]

Media

Wight has written two books "The Day The Pigs Refused To Be Driven To Market" (1972), a study of advertising and consumerism and "The Peacocks Tail and the Reputation Reflex; the neuroscience of arts sponsorship"(2007),^[13] a study of the biological purpose of art.^[14] His advertising career was profiled on BBC Radio 4 in a programme titled 'The Most Fun You Can Have With Your Clothes On'.^[15]

Personal life

Wight married Countess Paola Kovacz von Csaky,^[16] a barrister specialising in intellectual property law, in 2013.^[17] He has five children from previous marriages.^[3] His father, Ian, was a Brigadier in the British Army.^[18] His mother, Pamela (née) Groves was the daughter of Air Commadore R.M. Groves, the first Deputy Chief of the Air Staff of the RAF. Two of Wight’s great grandparents were members of Parliament for Salford East and Salford West where the family brewery, Groves and Withnal was located.^[19] The Groves family established the Salford Lad's Club,^[20] still operating today, which featured on the cover of the Smiths album in 1986.

During the 1987 general election, Wight stood as the Conservative candidate for the safe Labour seat of Bishop Auckland. His 18,613 votes has been unmatched by any Conservative candidate since; of three candidates, he came second. He retains an active interest in politics and ran an anti-Gordon Brown campaign at the 2010 general election.^[21]

References