Move and win roundup: Week of October 21, 2019

Indonesian ecommerce platform Bukalapak has appointed former Facebook exec Haswar Hafid as its vice president of advertising. In the newly created role, Hafid has been charged with developing a "sustainable and scalable" ad revenue model for the platform, working closely with agencies to scale offerings in the market, and striking partnerships with adtech providers. Hafid joins from Facebook where he was head of agency in Indonesia for more than five years. Prior to this, he held a variety of roles at Yahoo and Microsoft.

Following a competitive tender process and pitch, VMLY&R Brisbane won the Queensland Government’s public transit division account, TransLink. The agency will develop strategies across, brand, digital, social, CX and creative communications as well as content generation, with a mandate to encourage Queenslanders to continue using its integrated public transport network.

Creative communications agency TVC Group has hired Francesca Ayala as senior account director in its Hong Kong office. Ayala joins from Hong Kong’s Text 100 (now known as Archetype) office where she was a senior consultant. At TVC, her client portfolio will include Singapore Airlines, HSBC and Toray. She will report to Rachel Aeschliman, VP, global business development, and will work closely with the APAC teams at TVC’s parent company The Economist Group. 

Singapore-based B2B PR firm Ying Communications, Finn Partners Company, has promoted Joyce Liong to general manager for Ying Marketing, its business unit that provides digital marketing research and insights among other offerings. Liong first joined Ying as director of client services in 2016 and her new role will take effect in December. John Yan, who held the role for four years, will remain in the company till year-end to ensure a smooth transition. 

Enero Group appointed Ann Sherry as independent non-executive director and chair of the company effective 1 January, replacing outgoing chairman John Porter. Sherry is currently a director of National Australia Bank and Sydney Airport, chair of Unicef Australia and a director of international advisory firm The Palladium Group, Infrastructure Victoria, Cape York Partnerships, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. She is the former chair and CEO of Carnival Australia, former CEO of Bank of Melbourne and former CEO of Westpac New Zealand and Pacific Banking. 

Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) appointed Wunderman Thompson to lead a customer-experience project. The brand aims to "reimagine its category shopper experience for Australians, from in-store to inspiring meal making at home". Wunderman Thompson will help develop and test strategies to better understand shoppers and drive future progress by prototyping new products, supply chain processes and technologies. The partnership will create digital experiences that will engage Australians and inspire their weekly dinners, according to the companies. The project is expected to be live in 2020.

Finsbury appointed Paul Yang, previously GM of Ruder Finn in Beijing and then Kong Kong, as partner in its Hong Kong office. He has more than 16 years of experience providing senior counsel to government-related entities and private companies in China, as well as MNCs across Asia. Finsbury also has offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo and Singapore. 

Sydney independent The Core Agency won an appointment from digital wallet brand Beem It to help grow the app’s user base and launch a series of upcoming innovations. The remit covers strategy, creative, social and digital. The Core Agency is currently working in with Beem It's media partner, Bohemia, on customer acquisition and product engagement. Owned by Commonwealth Bank, NAB and Westpac, the app lets users pay friends, request money and track and split group expenses.

Nestlé Hong Kong appointed OMD for media planning and buying across its entire portfolio following a pitch. The new partnership covers 38 brands in the food & beverage, nutrition and health care categories. It starts in January and lasts for three years. “We are impressed with OMD’s strategic vision, passion and innovation capabilities," said May Chung, general manager of Nestlé Hong Kong. "We are excited about the future of our partnership to drive growth across all our brands.”

The Asia Pacific Effie Awards appointed David Porter, vice president of global media at Unilever AAR (markets outside Europe and the Americas), as chairman for the 2020 awards. Porter also chairs the World Federation of Advertisers Media Forum in APAC and the Mobile Marketing Association in APAC. He served as a head of jury at the 2018 APAC Effie Awards. Unilever currently holds the title as the Most Effective Marketer for the 2019 Effie Index, which ranks the companies with the most effective marketing communications ideas from around the world. This marked the sixth time that the company had been accorded the accolade since 2011.

Jatin Detwani, has joined TheAsianparent to lead its corporate finance, commercial and strategy function. Prior to joining TheAsianparent, Jatin was the former Asia-Pacific chief financial officer of Rocket Internet JV, where he managed over 15 businesses, and chief financial officer of GEM Eduventures in London - the investment arm of GEMS Education group investing in funds and technology start-ups globally. This appointment follows theAsianparent’s other recent senior hire of former Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) China CEO Susana Tsui as CEO of Media last month.

Happy Marketer, a Merkle digital agency, has been appointed digital analytics partner by NTUC Fairprice, Singapore’s largest supermarket chain, to execute data-driven personalisations in product offering, using Google Analytics 360 in a new redesigned web and online Fairprice app that has been launched in October. The strategy is expected to unlock user behaviour insights from Fairprice’s over 600,000 daily shoppers across devices and channels.

CHE Proximity launched a new practice, CHEP Mixed Reality, which will be led by Charlotte Bruton. Bruton has worked at Frost Collective and recently as McCann national digital and innovation director. The unit will focus on integrating premium augmented reality experiences into client work, leveraging CHEP’s existing advanced engineering team currently organised across commerce cloud, marketing cloud, ad cloud and data cloud teams.

TBWA Hakuhodo launched 65dB Tokyo, a social media monitoring, listening and analytics arm. The TBWA Group acquired 65dB in 2018 and is now expanding it across the global network, including France and South Africa. The new offering focuses on developing marketing strategy based on deep social media conversation analysis.