Our Founders

JOHN TRUSCOTT | PRESIDENT

John began his career at the global head­quar­ters of Saatchi & Saatchi in Lon­don. After spend­ing sev­eral years hon­ing his craft under the agency’s founders, Mau­rice and Charles, John headed west—very west—until he arrived at the Los Ange­les office of TBWA/Chiat/Day. There, he led large, national accounts like Ener­gizer and Taco Bell before ascend­ing to the rank of co-managing direc­tor. In 1999, he left Chiat/Day to pur­sue his child­hood dream of own­ing an ice cream par­lor, hence becom­ing the sole pro­pri­etor of the pop­u­lar Man­hat­tan Beach Cream­ery. Prov­ing you can take the man out of Eng­land but you can’t take Eng­land out of the man, many of John’s cus­tom con­cocted ice cream fla­vors included sig­nif­i­cant quan­ti­ties of lager, stout and/or ale—which may explain why small chil­dren always left his shop feel­ing drowsy. After sell­ing the Cream­ery, John joined El Segundo-based mar­ket­ing agency Ignited where he served as Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of Strat­egy and Account Ser­vices from 2004 to 2009. When he’s not help­ing HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME’s clients achieve their busi­ness goals, John’s in his garage devel­op­ing a hops-based line of kids’ cere­als.

MAGNUS MORGAN | DIRECTOR OF CLIENT SERVICES

‘Tis true, there’s a bit of the olde Cap­tain Jack Spar­row in Magnus—even beyond the bonny British accent and dis­arm­ing swag­ger the two blokes share. Like the iras­ci­ble pirate of recent leg­end, Mag­nus has spent many a fort­night at sea with only the moon and a stiff wind to guide him. His most note­wor­thy voy­age took him across “The Pond” in a 30-foot sail­boat. (Full dis­clo­sure: accord­ing to the captain’s log, no pil­lag­ing or plun­der­ing took place dur­ing said cross­ing.) When he wasn’t answer­ing the siren song of the sea, Mag­nus stayed land­locked in Liv­er­pool long enough to com­plete a B.A. in Busi­ness and Mar­ket­ing. He quickly climbed the agency ranks, ulti­mately assum­ing the post of SVP/Account Direc­tor at Ignited where he helmed the Sony, Activision-Blizzard and Turner Broad­cast­ing accounts. All thanks to his uncanny knack for adapt­ing to each new assignment’s pre­vail­ing winds with a nim­ble good nature and remark­able integrity—skills his swash­buck­ling dop­pel­ganger could never rival.

MIKE WOLFSOHN | CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER

Upon grad­u­at­ing from Ward Melville High School on the north shore of Long Island, Mike was recruited to play bas­ket­ball at Gene­seo State Col­lege near Rochester, New York. After one sea­son of junior var­sity action, the Gene­seo coach­ing staff decided Mike was “too slow and weak to com­pete on the col­le­giate level.” Yet Mike was deter­mined to expe­ri­ence the life of a col­lege ath­lete. So he did what all great col­lege ath­letes do: he majored in com­mu­ni­ca­tions. As a junior, he took an adver­tis­ing course that was taught by the mar­ket­ing man­ager respon­si­ble for the launch of the Kodak Disc Camera—an ini­tia­tive that almost sin­gle hand­edly brought the multi-billion dol­lar com­pany to its knees. It’s no won­der, then, that Mike went on to cre­ate effec­tive cam­paigns for brands like Coca-Cola, Dupont, M&M/Mars, Sony VAIO and Jose Cuervo at agen­cies like Saatchi & Saatchi, Grey, D’Arcy and Ignited (where he served as EVP/Executive Cre­ative Direc­tor). Unfor­tu­nately, Mike’s lack of foot-speed and upper-body strength con­tinue to be a lia­bil­ity for HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME’s soft­ball team.