Move and win roundup: Week of June 22, 2020

George Patten, regional operating officer for Dentsu Aegis Network APAC has announced he will be leaving Dentsu after nearly a year on the job.  In a LinkedIn post, Patten says he is returning to his "true passion" in the media consulting space.  Prior to DAN, Patten held leadership positions at Accenture for the past 15 years which included leading its global media management practice. 

TBWA Hakuhodo named Keita Kawakatsu as head of Disruption Consulting. He has over 20 years of experience in brand marketing, communication and strategy building, in a variety of categories such as food, beverages, finance and telecommunications. He was named Japan/Korea Planner of the Year at the Campaign Asia-Pacific Agency of the Year Awards in 2018. The Disruption Consulting business unit, established in 2018, uses a proprietary methodology to pioneer and foster new areas of business growth for brands while invigorating brand strategies, according to the company. The unit recently  launched a new offering to help brands create further value in a post-COVID 19 world.

Newly launched Venetian Media Group (VMG) appointed Andrew Butler as executive director and Samantha Summers as group head of marketing. Butler owns and operates his own accounting business, Wheelhouse Advisory, and his background includes five years with Deloitte and a military career. Summers has more than 15 years of media and marketing experience in the UK and Australia including roles with Clear Channel Outdoor, Adshel and Skyfii. Most recently, she was group business director at Posterscope.

The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) has revamped its APAC leadership, naming senior marketers from Coca-Cola and GSK to key roles at two of its peer-to-peer forums. Pratik Thakar, director of integrated marketing communication for Southeast Asia at The Coca-Cola Company, will become APAC chair for the CMO Forum previously headed by Sam Ahmed, with Silas Lewis-Meilus, senior director and APAC head of media at GSK taking over the role of APAC chair for the Media Forum from Unilever’s David Porter, who has taken on the role of WFA vice-president for APAC. The APAC CMO Forum continues to champion WFA’s flagship Better Marketing initiative for marketing leadership, ensuring it resonates with senior Asian and Asia-based marketers, while the APAC Media Forum meets three times a year to translate the WFA’s Global Media Charter into reality across Asia’s varied media markets. Thakar has assumed a wide range of leadership roles for The Coca-Cola Company over the last seven years having previously worked in senior strategy roles with McCann Worldgroup and Saatchi & Saatchi in Southeast Asia, China and India. Lewis-Meilus leads GSK’s region efforts to deliver media excellence, having previously worked for McDonald’s in a similar role. He has also worked in senior agency roles in Singapore, London and New York.

Industry veterans David Mayo and Gary Tranter have joined data agency Audience DNA (ADNA) as COO and CCO, respectively, as part of a plan to reinvent the traditional data research agency. Mayo was previously group sales and marketing director at Verita Healthcare, which followed a stint at Jakarta-based GetCraft. Before that he spent 21 years with Ogilvy and WPP in a series of roles including group CMO from 2016 to 2018. Tranter in 2010 co-founded Arcade, now owned by Publicis, and became CCO in 2018, overseeing both Arcade and Digitas. Mayo and Tranter first met at Ogilvy running Motorola and Coca-Cola globally. ADNA’s audience panel spans over 100 countries, and the agency's clients include Singapore Tourism, Citibank, Disney, SK-II, Wyeth, DBS, MacDonald’s and Microsoft. The company offers a combination of creativity and quantitative research that allows it to test hypotheses as well as generate behavioural patterns, which is a huge untapped opportunity for brands, according to ADNA CEO Henry Gomez. 

Carat made a series of appointments to its strategic and planning capabilities in ANZ. Linda Fagerlund joins as chief strategy officer, Danni Wright has been promoted to national head of strategy and comms planning, and Cameron Law joins as strategy director, at Carat Queensland. Fagerlund was previously national head of strategy at Spark Foundry in Australia and has worked for 14 years in senior strategic roles across media agencies, creative agencies and publishers, including Leo Burnett, News Corp Australia, Match Media and Ikon. Wright will continue to lead Carat’s national strategy team with an extended remit. Law joins following seven years with Ikon as communications director. Both Fagerlund and Wright will join Carat’s executive national leadership team. In addition, the strategy department is adding new planning specialists: Katy Kamaee and Jay Patel in Sydney, and Jimmy Diamond and Chris Carey in Melbourne.

Wunderman Thompson has appointed Mateusz Mroszczak to chief creative officer in Singapore, effective immediately. He is replacing Farrokh Madon, who left Wunderman Thompson in March. Prior to joining Wunderman Thompson, Mroszczak was ECD at BBDO Singapore and before this worked in agencies such as Y&R, BBDO and Happiness around the world including Brussels, New York and Ho Chi Minh City with brands like Land Rover, Campbell’s Unilever, VISA, Colgate, AIA and Pepsi. Wunderman Thompson cited Mroszczak's excellence in creative delivery, global award recognition and modern approach to innovative work, making him the best person to lead the agency's creative output for clients. 

McCorkell appointed Timothy Whitfield as head of integrated technology as it sees a surge in demand for digital service integration across its B2B client roster. Whitfield has held senior strategic roles directing operations and technology for GroupM, Xaxis and Sizmek. He will lead a team of data, digital, automation and technical specialists.

Wavemaker Taiwan has won the Asus media business in its market following a competitive pitch. The agency will handle all media duties for the Taiwanese electronics brand including brand communication strategy, media planning and activation across major product lines. The local team will begin its service from 2020 Q3.

Dentsu Inc. has entered a strategic partnership with the Global Esports Federation (GEF) to promote the global development of the growing esports business. It will focus on joint efforts to develop new marketing programs and esports events. In collaboration with Japan esports Union (JeSU), Dentsu will lend its expertise and experience to collaborate with various game publishers, commercial partners and global organisations to further elevate the credibility, legitimacy and prestige for esports.