Wavemaker has announced that it has appointed Sindhuja Rai as CEO in Asia Pacific. Based in Singapore and reporting to Global CEO Toby Jenner, Rai joins the media agency from Mondelēz International. As APAC CEO, Rai will drive the strategy and execution of how Wavemaker positively provokes growth for their clients and people around the region. Rai will join the Wavemaker Global Executive team, as well as the GroupM APAC Leadership Team ExCo, and collaborate closely with GroupM and WPP leaders across the region to connect the breadth and depth of the group’s capabilities to drive growth on behalf of Wavemaker’s clients. Rai currently leads Global Media Investment & AMEA Consumer Experience at Mondelēz International. Her leadership has step changed Mondelez’s media ROI, driven by creative excellence, engaging brand activation and a constant consumer-centric approach. With 20+ years in marketing, her experience also spans media agencies, among others Mindshare and Publicis Media. Rai has been featured on Campaign’s Asia-Pacific Power List in 2021, 2022 and 2023. She is a passionate advocate for inclusivity and champions her belief in a more diverse and equitable workforce through mentoring and coaching.
Frontify, the brand management platform, has announced the hiring of Hugo Timm as the company’s new creative design director. Timm brings over 20 years of creative and design experience to Frontify’s team, where he will lead in further developing Frontify’s global visual identity and helping the world’s biggest brands to do the same. Timm joins Frontify from WeTransfer, where he served as design director for just under two years. Previously, Timm worked as the design director for BBC Creative, where he led the implementation of a major brand update. As Frontify’s Creative Design Director, Timm will oversee the design, art direction and videography teams, guiding and uniting efforts under a shared brand vision.
Coincover, the digital asset protection company, announces the appointment of Vikki Sly as Chief People Officer (CPO), boosting the firm’s commitment to building a healthy scaling business. With a strong background in designing and implementing successful internal cultures, Sly will play an integral role in building a company culture that prioritises its people. Sly has held several senior leadership roles, including VP of People at Bitrise, where she led the company’s people operations and talent acquisition efforts. Prior to that, Sly served as the Chief People Officer at Blue Prism, where she oversaw the company’s global HR strategy and was responsible for driving employee engagement and retention. She also spent several years as the Vice President of Talent Development at Qlik, as well as household names Barclaycard and Vodafone.
Miroma Group, the UK’s largest independent global marketing business, has named Meta’s Rahul Chopra, former Global Director of Instagram Reels, as Chief Strategy Officer in a newly-created role based in New York. Chopra has in-depth experience building market-leading global products and businesses at some of the biggest and most well-regarded companies in the world, including News Corp, Dow Jones, Storyful, Snap, and most recently Meta. Over the past two and a half years he has held positions at Meta including Director at Facebook App and most recently Global Director of Instagram Reels and Camera. Here, he helped Meta launch and scale products from Instagram’s Reels to a portfolio of monetisation products ranging from the video ads business to things like subscriptions, tipping, commerce, and NFTs. He also spearheaded the strategy for Facebook’s $1bn Creator Fund, later running the team that oversaw the development and execution of programs that would invest that money into the creator economy.
Measure Protocol, a consumer intelligence technology company, has added several new team members across its sales, operations, engineering and marketing departments. James Guy has been hired as Senior Operations and Project Manager. He will oversee the day-to-day operations of commercial opportunities, working with cross-departmental teams to ensure each project is properly managed and delivered in full, while meeting timelines. Prior to joining Measure, Guy served in a number of management roles for dunnhumby, a customer data science platform focused on customer-first experiences. He will use his skills in project management, business strategy and seamless execution in his new operations position. As Measure’s new Head of Platform Sales, Ben Mills will be responsible for developing go-to-market strategies, managing customer outreach and running all elements of the sales function for Measure’s new technology offerings. He brings deep business development and business partnership experience to his new role, including leading global sales teams through company growth, mergers and acquisitions, and new product launches. Most recently, Mills was with Lucid, a global research and media measurement programmatic software company. In the marketing department, Katya Moskalenko has joined as Product Marketing Manager. Before joining Measure, Moskalenko held roles in digital marketing, product marketing and brand strategy positions at tech and media companies, including Warner Bros. Discovery and others. At Measure, she will help develop and refine go-to-market strategies, ensuring that Measure’s offerings effectively meet customer needs and preferences. By actively gathering market feedback and closely collaborating with the sales team, Moskalenko will contribute to shaping the trajectory of Measure’s products and optimizing their market fit. Measure has also added to its engineering team which includes a data engineer and front-end engineer, Graham Trail. Prior to joining Measure, Trail served in front-end engineering positions with companies like eHealth, PinionVote and LiveStack. He brings expertise in building dynamic and engaging web applications to the team. At Measure, he will closely collaborate with the company’s product management and engineering teams with a focus on building excellent, delightful user experiences for the company’s solutions.
AI-powered brand growth agency, G=MC2 has announced the appointment of Paul McGowan as Chief Growth Officer. Part of the original management team that grew Marketing Consultancy Added Value from a boutique agency into a global consulting firm of 400 consultants with offices in 10 markets, McGowan brings over 25 years of consulting experience and senior management responsibility. After Added Value was acquired by WPP, McGowan spearheaded the development of Kantar’s consulting practice. Operating first as CCO, then CMO and most recently CGO he won and led many of the firm’s largest client relationships in fashion, luxury, and the drinks industry, and reinvented its global consulting offer across growth strategy, innovation, brand positioning and cultural strategy. At G=MC2, McGowan will be responsible for the businesses growth strategy whilst continuing to lead some of the agency’s defining client relationships.
Team ITG, the technology-led multichannel marketing activation business, has hired industry veteran Phil Burroughes to head up the Capture & Innovation departments, to lead sustainable marketing campaigns and tech innovations at the photography, film and TV studio. Burroughes has previously worked in the media sector with the BBC and Guardian before moving to the agency side working with clients such as Adidas, H&M, Target, Co-op and Tesco. He brings with him years of experience across multiple industries with a deep understanding of business growth from both a supplier and retailer’s viewpoint, and will support Team ITG to deliver outstanding marketing communications to their clients.
Team ITG has also hired industry veteran Roger Binks as a Managing Partner to drive the company’s continued growth throughout the UK and Europe. Binks has previously held senior positions at Intu, IWG, Marriot International and Dixons Stores Group, and will lead Team ITG’s go-to-market strategy in both the UK and European markets. Bringing decades of experience in client-side customer roles, Binks will support Team ITG’s global client base including brands such as Haleon, M&S, PUMA, Co-op and Matalan. The hire forms part of a series of recent appointments, which includes William Eccleshare as Chairman and Natalie Somerville as Global Managing Partner. Binks recently delivered a keynote speech at ProcureCon Marketing 2023 in London, exploring how Team ITG are modernising operating models for their clients through seamless collaboration between people and technology.
SurveyMonkey, an online leader in surveys and forms, has announced Eric Johnson has been appointed as CEO. Johnson brings a wealth of leadership experience and a strong record of growing companies to the role, as well as deep expertise in delivering digital products that people love. As SurveyMonkey’s interim CMO and Head of Growth for the past eight months, he is already deeply rooted in the company’s customer-centric culture, evolving market dynamics, and user needs.
Fivetran has announced the appointment of SaaS industry executive Rachel Thornton as the company’s new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Thornton brings more than 25 years of B2B tech experience, having served in marketing and leadership roles at Amazon/AWS, Salesforce, Cisco Systems and Microsoft. She will report to COO Taylor Brown and serve as a member of the Fivetran executive team, overseeing brand, customer, partner, field and product marketing, public relations, analyst relations and events. Recently, Thornton served as CMO of Amazon Web Services (AWS) where she led all aspects of marketing. During her time in that role, she was responsible for building and scaling field and partner marketing, customer acquisition and self-service revenue contributions, enterprise marketing, advertising, sports marketing and events including marquee events such as re:Invent. She spent a total of nine years at AWS leading various marketing teams and driving their go-to-market strategy. Prior to AWS, Thornton held several roles at Salesforce including Dreamforce chair, Head of Field Marketing and Americas Marketing, and early in her tenure, launched and marketed Salesforce Service Cloud.
Zero Trust Network Access provider Cyolo has appointed industry veteran Jason Schaaf as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). As an accomplished technology sales leader with more than 20 years of experience in the business, Schaaf has a proven track record driving multimillion-dollar revenue growth. He has worked for several multinational cybersecurity and technology companies including ActiveFence, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks and EMC, where he headed up a $150M Data Protection Specialty Sales team. Schaaf joins Cyolo at a pivotal moment after the company experienced rapid growth in its first two years. They completed a $60M Series B funding round in 2022 to expand Cyolo’s leadership and accelerate the global presence of its identity-based access solution. In his new role, Schaaf will be responsible for building a world-class sales team and developing a go-to-market strategy that generates results worldwide.
Ogury has announced the appointment of Brian Lesser to its Board of Directors. Lesser is a well-known veteran in media and advertising, having held top leadership positions at WPP, GroupM, and AT&T. Currently, Lesser serves as Chairman and CEO of InfoSum, the world’s leading data collaboration platform. Prior to that, he was the CEO of Xandr, AT&T’s advanced advertising business, now part of Microsoft. In 2011, he founded the pioneering programmatic advertising business, Xaxis, part of WPP’s GroupM. Lesser led GroupM, as CEO of North America, from 2015 to 2017. Lesser has been an active board member for other dynamic technology businesses, such as AppNexus, acquired by AT&T in 2019. Lesser is a popular speaker at major conferences and is an advisor to several emerging advertising technology companies. He has been named Ad Age “40 Under 40,” and Adweek “Executive of the Year.”
European omnichannel advertising platform Hawk has appointed Luke Scowcroft to the newly-created position of regional sales director as it continues to support the increasing number of its UK customers that are based outside London. Scowcroft’s appointment is in response to the ongoing growth of the regional market as companies continue to seek a truly UK-wide presence. He joins Hawk from Dentsu, where he spent almost eight years in the Manchester office, most recently as associate director for Amplifi Display. Prior to that, he held paid search manager roles at MediaCom, also in Manchester. At Hawk, he will focus on expanding existing relationships and building new ones as Hawk makes omnichannel advertising a reality for all brands, regardless of their size and location.
Leagas Delaney London has appointed a new Managing Partner, Chris Boyton, following a period of sustained growth. Boyton joins from M&C Saatchi World Services where worked for the last four years as a Business Director. Prior to his time at M&C Saatchi, he spent five years at Engine working on campaigns for the UK Government including Royal Navy recruitment, The Army, Department of Work & Pensions and the Cabinet Office. He started his career at Publicis joining on the graduate scheme and working on clients including P&G, Malibu and Confused.com. Boyton joins Leagas Delaney with a broad brief and will be part of the leadership team, headed up by CEO Gareth Davies. Davies said of the hire, “We’re enormously proud of the growth that the agency has seen over the last couple of years and it’s a pleasure to be able to invest in talent like Chris, alongside our other recent hires, in support of that growth”.
