Ex Maxus Australia CEO joins research firm Edentify

Gaines will join Edentify as managing partner on 8 October. He served as CEO of Maxus Australia starting in 2009 and has worked for Mindshare, Optimedia and Lintas in his career.

He will be joining Edentify to evolve a new client-service model as the research firm moves from research and data solutions to a more data-led planning approach, the company said.

“We want to create a product that can gather and make sense of the data for campaign development,” Gaines told Campaign-Asia Pacific in a phone interview. Gaines said agencies had become much more adept at collecting data over the last few years, but there was some uncertainty about the best way to utilise these insights.

The move comes at a time when marketers have been grappling with vasts amount of data. A recent white paper by the CMO Council, titled "Improve Every Marketing Move", concluded that marketers report being "overwhelmed by growing volumes of customer data emanating from research, retail, Internet, social media, financial, company help desks/call centers, and internal line of business sources," according to the study authors.

“We’re ready to hit the ground running,” Gaines said when asked when work on the new offering will commence.

Dan Banyard, Edentify founding partner, emphasised that the move does not constitute an attempt to become a full-service media agency.

“I’m proud of what we have achieved with Edentify, and we have one of the best data and insight capabilities in the market,” Banyard said. "Teaming up with a top industry planner has been part of our strategy for some time now, and we could not have done better than partnering with David."

Edentify has about five employees and does business in Australia and New Zealand.  

Jon Chadwick, the former managing partner at Mindshare, will be taking over from Gaines at Maxus.