Move and win roundup: Week of April 13, 2020

Ogilvy Taiwan announced Amy Shih’s return as chief strategy officer, and Giant Kung’s promotion to chief creative officer. Shih spent 18 years of her career at Ogilvy Taiwan before moving to Cathay Financial Holdings as senior VP. Kung, meanwhile, joined the agency in 2001 and was awarded Taiwan’s first Golden Pencil in 2016. His clients include Motorola, Uni President, Seven-Eleven, Watson, Sony, eBay, GSK, Nike and Tencent. Both Kung and Shih will report to chief executive Daniel Lee. 

Entropia has hired Kelferd Hor as ecommerce director to lead end-to-end ecommerce offerings amid this current shift in the retail industry. Hor has had stints at Lazada, Dealmates, MyDeal, LivingSocial, OfficeFab and gaming company, Migme Limited. Prior to joining Entropia, he helped define and develop digitalisation and growth strategy in the online retail, loyalty reward, finance, and insurance industries, at big data company Fusionex. In his new role, he will report to partner Sourabh Agrawal. 

Singapore-based fintech company STACS has picked Mileage Communications on a retainer basis. The brief calls for business-to-business awareness, media relations, and development of STACS’ social media strategy. 

UM has been appointed as agency of record for Foodpanda in Thailand following a competitive pitch that concluded in March.The appointment is effective May 2020, and comes after UM won the Foodpanda business across the Philippines earlier this year.

Australian furniture brand Koala have brought on Peter Sloterdyk, formerly head of original series marketing at Netflix, to serve as the company’s first global CMO. Reporting directly into cofounder Mitch Taylor, Sloterdyk will be responsible for the Koala brand, global launches and expansion, customer acquisition and retention, product marketing, creative, editorial content development, and communications. He officially began his role on March 16, and will continue to work from his home in Los Angeles during the global COVID-19 crisis. When Sydney’s shelter-in-place orders have been lifted, he will complete his relocation to Sydney.

Singapore-based agency Touch PR has won a series of beauty and jewellery accounts including Bvlgari, skincare brands Caudalie and Dr. Dennis Gross, Milani Cosmetics, and Guardian Health & Beauty whose work includes managing the Healthy Beauty Awards 2020. Other brands in the agency's portfolio are Fenty Beauty by Rihanna, Forea, Kenzo Parfums, Supergoop, and FMCG brands under Unilever such as Lux Luminique, Lifebuoy and Dove.

Milk & Honey PR has been appointed by independent macroeconomic research firm Macro Intelligence 2 Partners (MI2). MI2 was co-founded by financial expert Julian Brigden, whose team monitors markets and charts. Analysis of the resulting data guides investors, helping them anticipate resulting movements and execute timely trades.

Shootsta has appointed Lauren Stephenson as its global VP of marketing. She will lead Shootsta’s global marketing efforts in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, the UK and US. Stephenson was most recently the marketing director of Nugit, in Singapore and earlier worked with Network Ten based in Australia, before moving abroad to work with startups in France, the UK and Singapore.

Singaporean fintech company Stacs has appointed Mileage Communications on a retainer basis to help build its brand awareness. The company uses blockchain technology to transform the securities life cycle of financial institutions such as banks, asset managers and stock exchanges. Stacs MD Jay Ng said the business assessed many PR agencies and found that Mileage Communications "understands our business best". 

Arthur Tsang has returned to BBDO as chief creative officer of China and global creative lead on team Mars. Tsang was a key player in the evolution of BBDO Greater China from March 2010 to August 2017. He began his BBDO career as ECD in both BBDO South China and BBDO Hong Kong and was then appointed to CCO of BBDO Beijing. He left the Omnicom network in 2017 to become CCO at rival Publicis agency BBH. He has worked in the industry for 18 years on brands such as Mars-Wrigley, Mercedes Benz, Coca-Cola, Mengniu and Unilever.

TBWA\China has been named creative partner for 2020 League of Legends World Championship by Riot Games in China. The esport tournament is expected to take place in Shanghai later this year. TBWA\China’s scope includes strategic services, offline and online creative services and content support.

Archetype has promoted Radiance Leong and Owen Waters to deputy managing consultants for its Malaysia and Singapore offices respectively. Leong began her career at Archetype Malaysia as a junior consultant in 2009 and has since been part of the agency's work for clients including Taman Tugu by Khazanah Nasional, Boston Scientific and Madame Tussauds Hong Kong. Waters joined Archetype Singapore in 2016 from London-based Nelson Bostock Unlimited and has helped win business from brands such as Stripe, Amazon, Rolls Royce and PropertyGuru. 

Genesis BCW has been appointed the communications partner for Sleepwell, a mattress and home comfort products brand in India. The agency will work with Sleepwell to enhance its brand image and create a positive impact for the brand through integrated communications.

Nissan has appointed Jordi Vila as senior vice president, marketing and sales for Asia and Oceania. He will report to Yutaka Sanada, MC chairman and head of Nissan in Asia and Oceania. Vila has been with Nissan since 1989 and has held several leadership positions mostly across Europe. In his new role, he will be responsible for sales operations, marketing, product planning, aftersales customer quality and network development, and he will report to Yutaka Sanada, MC chairman and head of Nissan in Asia and Oceania. 

Fuji Television Network has selected MightyHive to help it develop a data strategy for Fuji Television On Demand (FOD) in Tokyo. The FOD app was released in 2015 and has exceeded 13 million downloads. MightyHive will help develop a data strategy to improve the efficiency of UX and marketing efforts focused on data integration and insights across multiple service channels.

Mirum has been selected to provide marketing automation services to Silver Arrows Automobiles, a Mercendes-Benz dealer in Delhi, and Bimamitra, an insurance solutions company. Mirum will be responsible for implementing Salesforce Marketing Cloud solutions for both companies. It will also be setting up Salesforce Mobile Studio and AD Studio for Silver Arrows.

Publicis Groupe has announced that Sapna Nemani, currently chief intelligence officer of Publicis Media Greater China and former CEO of Starcom Media China, will take on the newly created role of chief product & solution officer for Publicis Groupe APAC. In her new role, she will lead product, solution and data-lead intelligence initiatives. She will continue to be based in Shanghai. 

Ching Ian Wee, currently CEO of Starcom China and former COO of Publicis Media Exchange (PMX) China will take on the role of CEO of PMX APAC. She will relocate to Singapore in May and will be tasked with expanding regional media partnerships and investment practices. 

Meanwhile, Ed Booty, currently chief strategy officer of Publicis Communications APAC, will take on the newly created role of chief strategy officer of Publicis Groupe APAC. In his role, he will lead strategic engagement with clients and bring together the talents of the group's strategists. He will continue to be based in Singapore. 

W Communications has won the PR and social media retainer for Envysion Wealth Management. The brief will see W work with Envysion team to deliver a creative approach to corporate communications, with a focus on programming and thought leadership. Spanning both social media and media relations, the campaign will be centred around Envysion’s holistic approach to wealth management catering to high net-worth individuals. 

Tech start-up Cosmose has appointed Karol Kurach as its new chief technology officer. Kurach was an AI engineer at Google Brain and has eight years of experience in technology transformation, data science, machine learning and deep learning.