IRI®, a specialist in innovative solutions and services for consumer, retail and media companies, has appointed Florian Clemens as Vice President of Advertisers & Agencies EMEA. He will work with FMCG brands & beyond – and the agencies that serve them – to improve the impact that media advertising has on in-store and online sales. At IRI, Clemens will be working with brands and their media agencies across EMEA to deploy IRI’s range of media solutions so that they can align their media and advertising strategies increasing incremental value sales in the regions and stores where demand is the greatest. This ensures that they can improve ROI from rapidly changing media plans. Clemens joins IRI from Amazon Advertising, where he built the Global Accounts team to support global media relationships with top advertisers in FMCG and beyond.
Walr, the res-tech company behind the Walr data creation platform, has started the year with the appointment of Courtney Bergh as Director of Platform Commercialisation. With a background in Market Research as well as product development, Bergh’s previous roles include Key Account Director at System1 Research and Senior Director at GfK. She has supported and driven the expansion of several existing products and brought new ideas to market across multiple industries including FMCG, Media, Retail, and Tech & Durables. In her new role as Director of Platform Commercialisation, Bergh will be responsible for collaborating with the tech, product, and commercial teams to bring the Walr Platform to clients.
Good-Loop, a purpose-led ad tech company that converts people’s engagement with ads into donations to good causes, has announced its head of brand & agency partnerships, Julia Hitchman, has been promoted to chief commercial officer. In her new role, Hitchman, who has been at the ad tech company since 2018, will be responsible for driving the company’s global revenue growth, as well as continuing to oversee the development and execution of the advertising platform’s commercial strategy. Hitchman, who has worked in the industry for over 15 years, will also have oversight of the wider business, providing guidance and support across other teams in the business. Based in London, Hitchman will continue to report to Good-Loop CEO and founder Amy Williams, who is moving to New York this month to support the company’s US expansion plans.
Kyndryl, the IT infrastructure services provider, has announced a new Country leader in the UK and Ireland. The appointment underscores the company’s commitment to modernising and managing the world’s mission-critical systems and services and Kyndryl’s focus on a differentiated business to drive long-term growth. John Chambers is named as President of Kyndryl in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Chambers was previously Senior Partner for Kyndryl’s customer advisory practice, where he was instrumental in progressing high-growth opportunities with customers and partners, advising and assisting them with designing and deploying advanced technology environments to tackle the increasing demands of a digital world. Chambers was previously the Chief Information Officer at Lloyds Banking Group. During his career, Chambers has been responsible for delivering large scale IT solutions, building teams that can operate at scale, and working as part of global operating environments.
Braze, a comprehensive customer engagement platform that powers interactions between consumers and brands they love, has announced the appointment of Priyanka Singh as Chief People Officer (CPO), as well as new positions for Myles Kleeger, President & Chief Commercial Officer, and Astha Malik, Chief Business Officer. Singh has nearly 20 years of experience in human resources leadership roles, and joins Braze after serving as the Chief People Officer at Compass, a real estate technology company. Prior to Compass, Singh spent over ten years at premier asset management firm Bridgewater Associates where she most recently held the position of Chief of Staff to Co-CEO. Braze also announced new positions for two existing executives, Myles Kleeger and Astha Malik. As Braze enters its next phase of maturity and growth, the company has evolved its go-to-market (GTM) organization design for greater scale and efficiency. With this evolution, Braze has created a new centralized GTM Strategy & Operations group, which along with the Global Marketing organization will be led by Astha Malik, who has been promoted to Chief Business Officer. Joining this new GTM Strategy & Operations group is Devang Desai, SVP of GTM Operations. Myles Kleeger will assume the role of President & Chief Commercial Officer, and will continue to lead all customer-facing GTM teams, including Sales, Customer Success, Global Support & Services, and Growth.
M&C Saatchi London has boosted its creative firepower with the appointment of two new teams, following a series of new business wins at the end of 2022. Alex Lucas and Jon Farley join the agency as Senior Creatives from Saatchi & Saatchi. The duo previously spent nine years at Adam & Eve DDB, before joining Saatchi & Saatchi in 2021. Lucas and Farley’s work has picked up multiple awards. Their most celebrated campaigns include Harvey Nichols ‘Could I be any clearer?’, which won two Cannes Lions, three D&AD Pencils, two Campaign BIG Awards, and two EPICA Awards; and the Marmite ‘Dynamite’ campaign, which won Gold at the Campaign BIG Awards and was named as one of Campaign’s best outdoor ads of 2021. Newly formed team Holly Sutton-Williams and Dan Lacey are also joining M&C Saatchi London as Senior Creatives. Sutton-Williams was most recently a Senior Copywriter at Colenso BBDO Auckland, where she spent nearly five years, producing work for brands including Amnesty International and Spark (New Zealand’s largest telco company). Her most awarded work includes the New Zealand Government’s Covid-19 response. Dan Lacey started his career as an Art Director at Adam & Eve DDB, where he spent five years working on clients such as Volkswagen, Esso and Mars Temptations – creating the world’s first ever talking cat collar. He then had a brief stint at MullenLowe London before working for the last few years as a freelance Art Director.
Kantar, the marketing data and analytics company, has announced the appointment of Cheong Tai Leung as CEO of its Insights Asia Pacific business. Reporting to Chris Jansen, Kantar’s Chief Executive, Ms Leung will lead Kantar’s regional team in growing our relationships with some of the world’s most dynamic brands; partnering with them as they redefine their growth strategies for the most challenging period in recent history. Ms Leung takes over the leadership role from Wayne Levings, who will now focus exclusively on his role as Kantar’s Chief Client Officer. Most recently, Ms Leung served as Regional President, Asia Pacific at GfK, responsible for driving transformation, growth and profitability for the company’s portfolio that included market intelligence and digital solutions across the region. During her 5-year tenure at GfK, Cheong Tai successfully built relationships across the region and profitably grew the APAC business year-on-year.
Ogury has announced the promotion of former COO Geoffroy Martin to the position of Chief Executive Officer. Former Ogury CEO Thomas Pasquet, who co-founded the company and served in the role for eight years, will transition to Chairman of the Board. In this role, he will help promote Ogury’s mission and vision externally. An industry veteran, Martin has over 25 years of experience in tech companies. Prior to joining Ogury, he was General Manager and Executive Vice President of Growth Portfolio at Criteo, where he created and significantly grew the retail media division. Before that, he was CEO of Art.com, which he grew to become the world’s largest online art retailer. In his new role, Martin will lead the entire company, setting and executing Ogury’s strategy, mission, vision and culture to accelerate its worldwide expansion.
Movable Ink, the global software content personalization provider, has announced Bryan Wade as Chief Product Officer and member of the Movable Ink leadership team. With more than two decades of experience scaling product organizations across the martech software industry, including Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Wade will lead Movable Ink’s product, strategy, and execution. Wade begins his post in January 2023 and will report to Vivek Sharma, Movable Ink’s CEO. Most recently, Wade served as Chief Client Officer and then Chief Product Officer at Terminus, an Account-Based Marketing technology company, following its acquisition of Sigstr, an early-stage startup, where he served as CEO.
Lynsey Rollinson has been appointed as ROAST’s Head of Planning, as the independent agency continues to broaden their services by moving into offline media planning and buying. Rollinson will join the performance agency armed with over fourteen years of industry experience to strengthen the strategy and planning offering to their clients. Rollinson has moved from McCann Bristol where she was Digital Media Director, as well as senior planning roles at agencies such as 360i (now Dentsu Creative), STEAK and Sideshow Group. She has previously delivered multiple award-winning media campaigns, with a brand portfolio including Bitstamp, Visa, Prudential, TUI, The Post Office, Eurostar and LV=.
Infoblox Inc., a specialist in cloud-first DNS management and security, has announced that Jesper Andersen has decided to retire as Chief Executive Officer and the Board of Directors has appointed Scott Harrell as the new President and Chief Executive Officer. Andersen will continue to serve on the Board and support Harrell through the transition. Harrell brings strong executive leadership and portfolio management experience having spent two decades in leadership roles at Cisco Systems and Intel. Prior to joining Infoblox, Harrell was the Senior Vice President and General Manager for Cisco’s $20 billion Intent Based Networking business unit where he oversaw the entire portfolio and engineering teams across the enterprise, IoT and data center markets.
