• October 5, 2005

Willard Hadlock, the former head of media operations at Chicago-based ad agency Leo Burnett, died Sunday. Hadlock, who built Burnett's media department into a force to be reckoned with, helped give Chicago a reputation as a media buying center at a time when the ad industry was dominated by New York and West Coast markets. An early champion of the cable TV medium, syndication and the new media of his time, Hadlock was known as a hands-on manager who could single-handedly jump-start the network TV upfront marketplace, which he did one year when former NBC sales chief Robert Blackmore stopped through Chicago for quick lunch with Hadlock. Hadlock, who retired from Burnett in 1993, and his successor Dick Hobbs, were known for their Midwestern charm and sensibility and for grooming one of the brightest and most entrepreneurial generations of media planners and buyers in the ad industry. Their successors Jack Klues (current CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group) and Bob Brennan (media chief at SAB/Miller), in fact, led the team that spun Starcom off from Burnett and ultimately transformed it into one of Madison Avenue's best-in-class media networks. -- Joe Mandese