Move and win roundup: Week of October 18, 2021

Ogilvy has appointed Adrian Miller as chief creative officer of Malaysia, taking over the reins from Kurt Novack who is returning to Paris after three years in the role. Miller will relocate to Kuala Lumpur in December and begins in the new role from January 1, 2022. He moves to Malaysia after three years of running the creative operation for Ogilvy Indonesia. His replacement at Indonesia will be announced in due course, the agency said. In the interim, ECD Peter Hibberd and other senior creative directors will lead the charge as a newly formed creative council mentored by Reed Collins.

Eddi Yang has returned to Ketchum as chief client and operating officer of China. Yang joins Ketchum from MSL China’s Beijing office, where she was responsible for driving business growth, providing strategic counsel to global clients, and leading employee engagement and talent retention. Yang has more than 20 years of marketing and communications experience including stints at PR firms GolinHarris, Ruder Finn and Ogilvy PR. This is Yang’s second stintat Ketchum, having served as general manager of Ketchum’s Guangzhou office from 2003 to 2009.

Publicis Groupe appointed Richard Frampton as managing director of strategic solutions for North Asia. He is based in Shanghai and reports to Sapna Nemani, chief product and solutions officer for Publicis Groupe APAC. He joins Publicis Groupe from Dentsu, where he was most recently head of strategy and solutions for the media service line. In his newly created role, Frampton will focus on connecting data-driven strategic solutions for clients across Greater China, Japan and South Korea. He will work as part of the Groupe’s "best-in-class product, analytics and technology experts", branded Edge, to "foster brand connections with consumers and culture" while accelerating "growth momentum for clients to win in the platform world", according to the company. Frampton has experience in the UK, Singapore and China, across media buying, communications planning, strategy and solutions. 

Lintas Live has won the social media and PR mandates for Bayer India’s largest consumer brands, Saridon and Supradyn, after a competitive multi-agency pitch. It comes after Lowe Lintas won the creative mandate for these brands earlier this year.

Full service independent agency Apparent has been appointed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra as its media agency of record. Apparent will manage all media strategy, planning and buying for the Sydney Symphony following an agency review.

The Hallway has further extended its relationship with Streamotion to develop the name and brand identity for Foxtel Group's streaming service Flash. Flash is a dedicated live news streaming service, featuring more than 20 local and global live news sources at launch. The Hallway was earlier appointed to manage the creative, media, channel planning and brand identity development for Binge, which launched in May last year and now has more than 730,000 paying subscribers.

InMoment, which provides SaaS-based customer survey and enterprise feedback management solutions, has hired Mehul Nagrani as general manager of AI product and technology. Nagrani brings extensive experience in machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) to deliver artificial intelligence (AI) products and technology. He was most recently the founder and CEO of Fokal AI, an AI automation company and platform for ML applications. Previously he served as the EVP and general manager of digital for Univision Communications, was an engagement manager for McKinsey & Company, and an IC design engineer for Micron and Intel. His appointment follows the recently announced acquisition of Lexalytics, a provider of cloud and on-premise natural language processing and machine learning. The Lexalytics technology team will report to Nagrani, and he will report to Andrew Joiner, InMoment CEO.

GroupM media agency Mindshare promoted Paige Wheaton to national head of investment in Australia. Formerly the Sydney investment director, she takes on the newly created role to lead the agency’s trading and investment strategy across all Mindshare’s Australian offices. Wheaton began her career with GroupM sister agency MediaCom and after spending time at several Australian independent media agencies returned to GroupM.

TBWA Sydney promoted Nitsa Lotus to the newly created role of chief growth officer of
TBWA Sydney Group. In her new role, Lotus will be focused on leading growth initiatives and innovation across each of the agencies within the TBWA Sydney Group—TBWA, Eleven, Fleishman Hillard, Fabric and Bolt—as well as continuing to lead significant client relationships. Lotus recently celebrated 15 years at the agency, and was appointed managing director of TBWA Sydney in 2017. Following her promotion, Tanya Vragalis has been promoted to managing director of TBWA Sydney. Vragalis has been with the agency for four years and steps up from her current role as general manager. She will Tanya continue to lead significant clients Optus and Carlton United Breweries.

Carat Melbourne has announced the retention of the $7.5 million Beacon Lighting account without a competitive pitch. The ongoing partnership will also now include growing Beacon’s ecommerce division, launching their trade offering and launch advertising in the US markets.  Beacon have also reengaged the Dentsu programmatic speciality which had previously been executed through a third party. Carat has held this account for the past three years.

Carat Melbourne also hired Emilia Chambers as head of digital. Chambers has spent the past nine years with Dentsu and joined the Carat team as client partner guiding the digital strategy and client leadership for Beacon, Kraft Heinz, Twinings and Our Watch, before being moved to this role. 

Mash, the Melbourne, Australia-based brand consultancy, is making its first international expansion with the opening of an Asia hub. Sarah Churchlow, Mash's director of operations and commercial will lead the push in with firm's Asia project lead Rich Akers, who until recently was based in China for 20 years. The duo and other team members will be between Singapore and Thailand, the agency noted. The move comes as Mash has been appointed by global sporting event company Ironman Asia to develop creative for this year’s Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon, and re-engaged by luxury timepiece brand, Breitling Asia, both without pitches. Building on the success of its initial work on the ‘Chosen Not Given' campaign, Swiss watchmaker Breitling has also engaged Mash once again for activation, and amplification for its women range in Thailand and Malaysia.

Independent creative agency Five by Five has hired veteran music manager Nigel Powell as business manager. Powell takes on the role of business manager bringing organisational and project management skills to the agency, garnered from four decades on the road with acts including The Eagles, Lionel Richie, Bryan Adams, and Kylie Minogue. Powell's appointment is part of a raft of new hires including designer Tiffany Gozal, art director Dan Craig and copywriter Charlie Dejean. The appointments of Powell, Gozal, Craig and Dejean are effective immediately.

HK4As has appointed jury president Mihnea Gheorghiu, chief creative officer of Publics Italy & Le Pub Amsterdam to helm all panels for the 2021 Hong Kong Kam Fan Awards. Mihnea will personally chair the creative and digital panel, composed of creatives from different markets and countries. Industry veteran Ray Wong will chair the media panel, composed of agency professionals and brand marketers. Representing Hong Kong on the creative and digital panel is Nick Lim, founder and director of Hellonick.

Korean fried chicken brand KyoChon has appointed Kingdom Digital as its social media agency and the brand has launched a new “Future chicken” menu—a meat-free series featuring a “Future Chicken” burger and “Future Chicken” tenders. The menu name was inspired by Phuture’s plant-based products, which are the main ingredients that replace the “chicken” in the burger and tenders.

NAB (National Australia Bank) has retained Mindshare, extending a decade-long relationship. The new contract will see Mindshare handling all aspects of media planning and buying, including performance media, SEM, social, programmatic, owned media through SEO, and analytics. The client cited Mindshare's agility over the course of the partnership and its inclusive, proactive and innovative mindset as reasons for the extension. The business is led by Melbourne MD Chris Solomon, client lead Sylvia Pickering and enterprise lead Mark Tzintzis, and also involves national head of adtech Charlotte Bannister, biddable lead Bhanu Singh, chief analytics officer Juan Franco and national head of planning and analytics Sally Hellyer.

The Secret Little Agency (TSLA) named Rachel Tan as its second head of mothering, Brandon Ellison as content creator in the in-house production arm T-Studios, and Kifaya Taha as senior strategist. Tan joins from BBDO Singapore, where she spent more than seven years, most recently as head of account management. She will work with the agency's first head of mothering, Ariel Lee, helming clients including Netflix, Starhub, Mandai, DBS, KFC and National Heritage Board. Ellison previously worked as a stunt performer and choreographer in Japan and Singapore and has 15 years of experience in Hollywood, where he worked as a practical special effects designer, a voice and motion-capture actor, a director and a producer. Taha joins from Mother Los Angeles, where she led strategy for new business and clients including Sonic and Postmates. She becomes the eighth member of an all-female strategy team led by partner and head of strategy Eunice Tan.

Brand-experience agency Uniplan promoted Judd Christie from ECD to managing director in Hong Kong. He will report to Geraldine Chew, CEO for Greater China. Christie joined the agency in 2018 and has more than 20 years of experience in the Asia-Pacific region. 

London International Awards (LIA) appointed Terry Savage as its new chairperson. The former chairman of Cannes Lions, Savage is the founder of a consultancy called Savages Unlimited and the global chair of The Marketing Academy.

The Hoffman Agency announced its appointment as the official PR, media and creative agency for #BuySingLit, effective October 4. The agency will be strategising and overseeing #BuySingLit’s rebranding from a two-weekend campaign to a year-long programme, including branding, creative guidelines, marketing activations and counsel on media placement.

Dentsu promoted Ronald Barreiro to CEO of the creative service line for Dentsu Philippines. He was previously managing partner and general manager of Dentsu Jayme Syfu. In addition, Dentsu announced that agency founder Alex Syfu is being appointed chief advisor to Dentsu Jayme Syfu. The moves follow the promotion of Merlee Jayme, Dentsu Jayme Syfu chairmom, to APAC chief creative officer. Barreiro joined DM9 Jayme Syfu as general manager in 2009 and was "instrumental" in setting up Dentsu Jayme Syfu in 2016 after Dentsu acquired it. He began his career as an account executive at Basic/FCB in 1992 and later worked in account management at Publicis-AMA and Publicis Manila before joining DM9 Jayme Syfu.

Manisha Seewal has been named CMO of Gumtree, CarsGuide and Autotrader in Australia. She was previously CEO of classifieds-marketplace site Jualo.com and Group CMO of automotive marketplace Carro, which acquired Jualo.com in 2019. She will move from Jakarta to Sydney for the new role. Earlier in her career she held marketing roles with Tokio Marine Insurance, Zurich Insurance, Aviva, HSBC Insurance and Great Eastern Life. 

Metal detector manufacturer Minelab Electronics appointed Lion & Lion to launch the brand in the Indonesia market. The partnership, which officially started in September, will focus on raising audience awareness of Minelab’s products and drive visits to the brand’s website. The agency developed a go-to-market strategy and will run a full campaign that makes use of data and analytics to curate strategic content placement in media and creative asset production.

Artefact APAC appointed Pierre Cohade as a senior advisor to support business growth acceleration in China and the rest of Asia. Cohade is currently a global board member at JCI (Johnson Controls) and CEAT Tyres, and China board member at Deutsche Bank. He was previously CEO of Triangle Tyre, China’s largest privately owned tyre business, and is former president of Goodyear Asia Pacific.

Imagination expanded its Sydney team with the appointment of Ashley Diamond as project director and Antonia McInnes also joins as account director. Diamond, previously with George P Johnson, has 18 years experience across large-scale events and broadcast-quality content production. McInnes was previously with Pim Group.

Digital consultancy Appnovation appointed Penny Wilson as its global CMO, reporting to Arnold Leung, CEO and founder. The CMO position is a new role created to harness the full capabilities of the business to drive brand, demand and customer growth, the company said. Wilson has more than 30 years of experience in marketing and executive leadership roles and joins from Hootsuite, where she was the CMO for over four years. Her previous roles include CMO at Juniper Networks, CMO at Macromedia and senior executive positions at Alias Wavefront and Merrill Lynch.