MediaCom hires Gilles Detanger as chief commercial officer APAC

Detanger replaces John Rees, who is now global commercial director at Carat in the UK.

Detanger was CFO for Publicis Worldwide Asia-Pacific from 2009 to 2013. In his most recent role as vice president of revenue performance at Singapore Sports Hub, he oversaw the financial and commercial side of the project.

Detanger will be based in Singapore and will report to Asia-Pacific CEO Mark Heap, global CFO Simon Tray and Raja Kanniappan, CFO of GroupM Asia-Pacific.

His first order of business, he told Campaign Asia-Pacific, will be to “engage teams”, “diagnose how things work”, and “get across his opinion” to teams across the region.

“I’m joining a very well-oiled machine,” said Detanger. “It’s not like there are any major issues, but there are opportunities to improve on the commercial side in line with Mark’s vision and the implementation of ‘leadership circles’.”

Detanger’s task will involve “bringing clarity to market and steering performance” as well as “bringing vigour and discipline to client relationships.” Detanger hopes to achieve this through fostering collaboration between teams in the market, developing stronger processes for discovering and sharing best commercial practises.  

“We’ll need to reflect on KPIs and performance in a way that makes it better for both the client and agency,” said Detanger. “In the end, you can’t have any long-term growth without a strong financial structure and strategy that goes into every part of operations.”

Detanger cited MediaCom's entrepreneurial spirit and fresh vision under Heap as enticements. "I like the energy.”

Originally from Paris, Detanger moved to the region in 1999. Over the last 15 years he has been based in Auckland, Sydney, Hong Kong and Singapore, and has worked across APAC in all of his roles.

“I’m excited to be part of GroupM family,” said Detanger. “There are not many Frenchmen in the office here, so I look forward to bringing a bit of French flair to the team.”