Move and win roundup: Week of June 15, 2020

CNBC named John Casey as president and managing director of CNBC International, effective immediately. He will oversee CNBC International’s business operations across Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He will continue to be based in London and will report to Satpal Brainch, president of CNBC Business News Worldwide. He also joins CNBC’s executive leadership team. Casey replaces KC Sullivan, who is moving to NBCUniversal to lead a new advertising and partnerships division as president and managing director of global advertising and partnerships. Casey has been with CNBC for more than 25 years, joining as a news assistant. Most recently, he served as senior vice president of international news and programming. Before that he was head of news and programming in Singapore and deputy head of news for CNBC Europe, based in London. 

iPrice Group appointed Paul Brown-Kenyon as its new CEO. He was previously iPrice Group’s president and chief operating officer, which followed a long tenure at satellite firm MEASAT Global and six years with the management consultancy McKinsey & Company. David Chmelař, iPrice Group's former CEO, now assumes the title of executive vice-chairman and co-founder. In addition, Heinrich M. Wendel, iPrice Group’s co-founder and current chief technology officer, will take an additional title of chief product officer and will spend more time developing iPrice’s product offerings and setting the direction for the company’s technology. Earlier this year, iPrice Group successfully closed a $10 million Series B led by ACA Investments, which brought its total funding to $20 million.

Vivian Lines, former APAC chairman at Hill & Knowlton, launched Lines Consulting, a communications C-Suite advisory which is headquartered in Hong Kong and has representation
in Singapore and a network of other international markets. Lines is joined at a senior level in the new consultancy by Raj Seth, a Hong Kong native who was most recently a Partner at Newgate Communications. The company will focus on corporate communications; financial communications; crisis and training; and specialist advisory (ESG advisory, litigation support, and specialist Unicorn Advisory).

PHD Indonesia has appointed Surya Soni as the agency’s new managing director. He replaces Shailesh Waingankar, PHD's previous general manager in Indonesia who joined Nielsen last month. Soni brings over 22 years of media and marketing experience at agencies including Mediacom, UM, Zenith Optimedia and Mindshare to his new role, including over eight years in Indonesia where he led Mediacom's P&G business. Soni joins PHD most recently from NAVA+,a Jakarta based integrated marketing communications and activations group, where he led the vertical in digital monetisation, insights and media.

BCW (Burson Cohn & Wolfe) appointed Qu Hong as China CEO. He  will take on the role as an additional remit to his current position as market leader for BCW Beijing. (More details on PRWeek Asia)

Talent consultancy Prospect appointed Amanda Lee as director and head of Singapore. She was previously with James Kenneth Koh Executive Search as practice lead for PR and communications. That follows a decade-long career in corporate affairs in agencies and within corporations. She has advised executives and clients in public service, global corporations and communications consultancies. Lee will work with co-founder and Asia MD Emma Dale, based in the UK, the Hong Kong team of Elissa Campbell and Karen Zeng, and the London-based team led by co-founder Colette Brown.

Havas Group Indonesia has appointed Satyajit Sen as Havas Media CEO based out of Jakarta, effective immediately. With 29 years of experience across leading and challenger brands across verticals, Sen joins Havas from Samsung India where he led media management since 2014. Prior to Samsung, Sen was the CEO of ZenithOptimedia Group India where he build a performance marketing team from scratch. In his new role, Sen aims to accelerate Havas Media Indonesia’s transformation and growth with a focus on collaboration, new business momentum, and building future-ready teams. He will report to Vishnu Mohan, Chairman & CEO Havas Group, SEA, India and North Asia.

Truescope, a new media intelligence provider, has launched in Australia and in Singapore, with former iSentia CEO John Croll as founder and CEO. The Singapore launch is via a partnership with Dataxet Pte Ltd, a data intelligence company led by David Liu and Jason Lee. Liu is founder of Dataxet and Lee is its managing parter; Lee will serve as CEO of Truescope Singapore. Truescope, developed by Croll and business partner Michael Bade, touts itself as a media intelligence platform that helps inform communicators about breaking news across all media types by identifying issues and trends in real-time. A release claims that with cloud-based technology and machine learning capabilities the platform can analyse millions of social and mainstream media stories, transforming big data across media types and languages into a single, coherent, easily searchable database.

Appier appointed Michelle Wong as SVP of enterprise sales and Alban Villani as SVP of global sales for EMEA and SEA. Wong was previously GM of technical support services across Asean for IBM, where she spent 24 years. At Appier, she will lead the global enterprise commercial team, using Singapore and Taiwan as her base. Villani, who will be based in Paris, was previously APAC regional managing director at Criteo. At Appier, he will work with brands and agencies.

Venetian Media Group (VMG) launched as an independent, Australian-owned agency group, headed by father and son operators Mark Fishwick and Michael Fishwick. VMG will operate as the parent company for immersive brand experiences provider Yakkazoo, bespoke and OOH media provider Revolution360, local-area marketing specialist Captive Vision Outdoor (CVO), installation and print solutions agency VIM, and newly acquired full-service media planning and buying agency Frontier Advertising. The Fishwicks built both CVO and Revolution360, and acquired Yakkazoo in 2019.

Ogury, which claims to offer "the first advertising engine driven by user choice", announced the opening of an office in Sydney and appointed Chris Manson to lead operations as MD. Manson has more than 15 years of experience including at media agencis UM and Bohemia. He most recently led digital sales for New South Wales and Queensland at the REA Group. Ogury opened in Singapore in September last year. The company offers an integrated stack of technology including consent management and user engagement, which is designed for branding campaigns on mobile. Delivering ads in a brand safe and fraud-free environment, Ogury aims to help brands and publishers "rid themselves of toxic data, collected or used without the explicit permission of the consumer, and shady advertising". The company said it is in 10 countries, serving 1500 brands and 3500 publishers, and its technology is integrated in 10,000 apps.

Cheq, which provides cybersecurity solutions for online advertisers, announced its launch in ANZ, where it appointed Mick O’Brien as regional MD. O’Brien's CV includes ANZ MD of Datorama (acquired by Salesforce) and VP of sales for APAC and North America at MediaMind (now Sizmek). Cheq's products include ad-fraud and click-fraud prevention, focusing on mid-market advertisers and agencies.

ASICS appointed independent agency W Communicationa as its PR and social media agency in Southeast Asia, following a pitch. W will lead the PR and social strategy for ASICS in the SEA region from its Asian headquarters in Singapore, helping to defend and grow ASICS’ position in the performance running, core sports and sportstyle categories; and more widely as a purpose-led, sustainable brand. ASICS also announced the appointment of GO Communications as its official public relations and communications agency in Malaysia. The engagement took effect on June 1 and will see the agency supporting marketing and communications initiatives including the brand’s Autumn/Winter ‘20 lineup.