Move and win roundup: Week of April 25, 2022

Landor & Fitch has made several senior appontments in APAC. In Australia, the company has hired Julius Cruickshank to lead the Sydney and Melbourne design teams. Cruickshank has 20 years of experience across the Australian Government, Crown Resorts, Dolby and KPMG. Monica Zhu joins as a director on the I&A team in Hong Kong. Stephen Pill returns to head up strategy within the experience design team as a strategy director. Finally, Nav Kumari leads the Procter and Gamble work across APAC as senior director for client services.

Pippip Media, a content house, has hired Pranav Harihar Sharma as partner and showrunner of the company. Sharma, who has over two hundred ad films under his belt as director, will now lead Pippip’s foray into long-format storytelling and branded campaigns.

Media agency Initiative has promoted Daniela Rocchi to head of partnerships in Sydney and Justin Arlt to head of partnerships in Melbourne. Both were previously partnership directors and will report directly to national head of partnerships, Simon Reid. The promotions come as Initiative restructures its partnerships department to boost the leadership team in Australia. 

InMobi has expanded its regional leadership team with the appointment of APAC managing director Vasuta Agarwal as senior vice president and general manager of consumer platform advertising. Meanwhile, VP and GM of Southeast Asia, Japan, and Korea Rishi Bedi has been promoted to managing director of APAC. The VP and GM of ANZ, Richard O’Sullivan, will also take on a new role as VP of agency partnerships across APAC. In addition, Rajesh Pantina will manage the expanded B2B marketing for InMobi’s advertising platform and solutions across consumer and third-party properties in the region.

Gaming marketing and gametech company Livewire has announced an expansion into APAC with two senior hires and the opening of new offices in Singapore as a regional hub focused on Southeast Asia, as well as Mumbai as its HQ for India. The company has appointed Joseph Lee as its commercial director, Southeast Asia and Prasanna Iyer as head of India. Lee was previously with Spotify as sales lead. Iyer joins Livewire from Rezilient Digital, a programmatic and media sales consulting firm.

Virtue, the agency owned by Vice, has appointed Chris Gurney as group creative director. Gurney joins from ADK Connect Singapore where he was chief creative officer. He is tasked with defining the agency’s creative vision, lead regional pitches and grow its creative teams.

The Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) has re-elected Byron Perry, the founder and CEO of Coconuts Media, as its chairman at the 39th Annual General Meeting. The SOPA Board has added three new members based in Southeast Asia: Sunita Rajan from Bloomberg and Lyn-Yi Chung of CNA, both in Singapore, and Juliet Labog-Javellana of the Philippine Daily Inquirer in Manila. Other new appointments include Danielle McGuigan of The Financial Times in Hong Kong.

Bangalore, India-based Yashram Lifestyle Brands has awarded its PR mandate to Nucleus PR. The agency will strengthen the reputation of the brand that includes labels such as Morph Maternity and Adira.

Forsman & Bodenfors has launched a full-service production arm in Singapore called F&B Studios. The new arm, led by Jason Feng, will aim to meet the production and content-creation demand from clients. Feng, who is an editor and designer, will lead post-production and content creation across video editing, motion graphics/design, 3D graphics and photography. He is a founding member of Forsman & Bodenfors Singapore and brings over 10 years of experience in editing, motion graphics design, videography, and photography to his portfolio. In the new role, Feng will work closely with Jim Elfving, CEO of F&B Studios, and his 30+ strong team in Sweden to build out the Singapore offering. 

Ogilvy China appoints Rachel Yan as head of media for its Beijing outpost. In her new role, Yan will lead a team of media, engagement and social strategists to deliver integrated performance marketing solutions for clients. She joins Ogilvy from Mindshare’s Beijing office where she served as general manager since 2018, leading a 70-person team. Prior to that, she was business director for Mars where she contributed to securing a joint business partnership with Tencent and exploring new pathways for business growth beyond TVCs.

Amit Kekre has been appointed as chief strategy officer for TBWA India to replace Satish Krishnamurthy. Kekre joins from DDB Mudra Group where he led marketing, brand and business strategies for the group’s clients including Diageo, Pepsi, Unilever, Future Group, and Godrej. He also championed the group’s diversity agenda and is the chairperson for the India chapter of Open Pride, Omnicom’s employee resource group for LGBTIQ+ community in the workplace. He will continue to lead these chapters from TBWA. Prior to DDB, Kekre worked with agencies across the world namely Lowe, JWT, Ogilvy, Grey, and McCann in India, Malaysia, and Australia. 

Shutterstock has announced Jason McClelland as its new CMO and Christopher 'Skip' Wilson as its VP of brand marketing. McClelland held leadership roles at Adobe and Salesforce, and served as CMO at startups Algolia, Domino Data Lab, and Heroku. Meanwhile, Wilson joins Shutterstock from Peloton where he led the brand’s global brand and communications for its commercial business. Wilson’s role will include overseeing Shutterstock’s strategic positioning and growth for the brand as well as lead communication of the company’s value proposition through campaigns and thought leadership. 

Brand experience agency Uniplan has named Michael Bertin in a newly created role of head of digital in Greater China. Prior to this, Bertin worked at Imagination Asia, TBWA Hong Kong, and Publicis Dialog Paris. His experience spans digital strategy and production including B2B and B2C, luxury, innovation centres, showrooms, automotive, retail, and museums. In his new role, he will report to Andrew Au, chief strategy officer. 

Publicis Groupe has made three senior appointments in China. Ng Tian It was appointed as chief creative officer; Sure Liu as chief integration officer, Publicis Communications Beijing and head of Nestlé Business; and James Yang as managing director of Digitas Beijing. Ng served as the executive creative director of Publicis Groupe Singapore from 2019 till the end of 2021 while Yang was head of the Nestlé business for the network. All three executives are based in in Beijing and report to Oliver Xu, president of Publicis Groupe North China.

Independent ad platform Adform has appointed Amy Jansen-Flynn as country manager for Australia and New Zealand. Prior to this, Jansen-Flynn spent over a decade at REA Group where she led the company’s programmatic supply business and audience extension product portfolio. In her new role as country manager, she will be responsible for leading Adform’s ANZ business as it navigates a period of growth, developing Adform’s commercial strategy and driving new business opportunities, and continue to be actively involved with IAB Australia.

Food and lifestyle department store Fortnum & Mason has appointed MSL as its PR partner in Hong Kong. The brand aims to inject new inspiration and creativity in light of its 315th anniversary.