Move and win roundup: O&M, Cadreon, Publicis, PHD, Iris, BBDO, more

PEOPLE MOVES 

David Mayo takes over from John Deschner as Group CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur as Deschner returns to his native US after 18 months on the role. Mayo continues as the network’s CMO and CEO of Bates CHI & Partners, and also remains as a board member of the O&M Asia Pacific Executive Committee.

Cadreon, the programmatic unit of IPG Mediabrands, appointed Kenneth Wong as general manager of Cadreon Malaysia. Wong will be responsible for operations and product development across Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Hong Kong, South Korea and Vietnam. He was previously head of digital at Carat Media Services.

Sorcha John was promoted to managing director at Iris Singapore. She joined Iris Concise, the insight, CRM and consulting arm, in 2010 and later moved to Singapore in 2015 to lead Concise for the region. Previous MD Craig Mapleston has been promoted to a wider regional role as chief growth officer. 

Publicis Singapore appointed Sharim Gubbels as creative director of social. He was previously creative director with We Are Social.

Remona Duquesne joined Dragon Rouge Singapore as executive director, strategy and innovation consulting for Southeast Asia, reporting to SEA CEO Zayn Khan. She has held strategy leadership roles at Ogilvy & Mather, Grey Group, FutureBrand and most recently MullenLowe as regional strategic planning director.

Wesley Hawes left his role as joint-executive creative director of TBWA/Sydney to join the management team at Marcel Sydney as deputy ECD, working alongside ECD Scott Huebscher and Marcel creative chairman David Nobay.

Kara Yang (杨凯舒) joined McCann Worldgroup China as chief strategic planning officer from her previous positions as global planning director at Leo Burnett in Chicago. Yang will lead the planning department from Shanghai.

DigitasLBi hired Charlie Newbery to replace Mark Newton as head of media for APAC, and Sam Ko as head of media for Hong Kong. Newbery was previously with WPP’s Red Fuse Communications, and Ko was director of digital investment at Mindshare in New York. 

Cognito relocated Charlie Morrow from London to Singapore to bolster its APAC offering. Morrow joins as an associate director and member of the Singapore leadership team. He will handle Cognito’s key financial services PR clients. 

Wu Swee Sin joined MP & Silva as APAC managing director. He was formerly from Lagardere Sports Asia, where he held the joint roles of senior vice president of commercial football for Asia and country manager for Greater China.

GLOBALHealthPR announced the opening of its new Asia-Pacific headquarters, in Singapore, under the direction of James Yi, newly appointed executive director, APAC. Yi previously led the healthcare team at Fleishman-Hillard in Singapore. He had also started his own firm focusing on the health sector, and served as MD of Ogilvy Public Relations Vietnam and CEO and market leader for Burson-Marsteller Korea.

PHD Australia announced several appointments following PHD’s win of Volkswagen Group’s entire global media planning and buying business in June last year. Kim Raicevich was named group business director; she had spent almost four years at Fairfax as trade marketing director and other consultancy roles previously. Kate Milligan, formerly communication planning director at PHD, was named business director. She will be responsible for planning across all Volkswagen PV, CV and SKODA brands. Meanwhile, Brittany Crowley joins from Mediacom as group investment director. She will lead the VWG investment team.

Henry Wood, formerly head of APAC at Waggener Edstrom Communications’ Studio D founded his own company Marquis Insight to fill a gap in the market for PR firms with a focus on measurement and marketing analytics. 

Jonathan Lim (林亨健), formerly creative director at Grey Group China, moved to Xiaomi to take up a role with the same title but a much bigger scope of work that focuses on global markets, working closely with its global head of product management and marketing Donovan Sung and global VP Hugo Barra

Peter Ding (丁嘉玮) has a new job as planning supervisor at PHD China. Previously, he was a senior digital planner at MediaCom China, serving the Skoda client.

Mun Yin Liu (廖文彥), ‎digital media director at ‎Text100 Hong Kong, assumes the digital marketing director position for SCMP.com.

Porter Novelli Greater China, appointed Albert Chan (陳思敬) as its managing director. He will be directly reporting to the company’s president of the Asia Pacific region, Angie Schneider. Prior to accepting this role, Chan worked for eight years as the senior vice president at Ogilvy in China and head of the WPPGY Team Dell for the Greater China region.

AWARD NEWS

Asia Pacific Effie Awards 2017 named Ashish Bhasin, chairman and CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network South Asia and chairman of Posterscope and MKTG Asia Pacific, and Jean-Paul Burge, chairman and CEO of BBDO Asia, as its first heads of jury.

OFFICE OPENINGS

Australian content creation and influencer marketing agency Visual Amplifiers (VAMP) launched in Singapore and Hong Kong. VAMP has already handled local campaigns for Waft, Park Hotel Group, Hong Kong’s Hysan Place, and New Balance.

BBDO Asia opened an in-house music production facility in Beijing in collaboration with music production company Syn. The studio offers the following solutions including music composition, arranging, recording, mixing to orchestration, music supervision, sound design and rights management.

BUSINESS WINS

Bakeshop chain Red Ribbon named BBDO Guerrero agency of record following a pitch against five other agencies. The agency will develop integrated campaigns that will roll out in 2017. The Filipino-owned client has 370 outlets in the Philippines and 33 stores in the US. 

Iris Jakarta won a pitch for Indosat Ooredoo in December, beating out the brand’s incumbent agencies and five other digital agencies. Iris will handle Indosat’s IM3 Ooredoo portfolio for the next two years, covering integrated brand, digital and social media. 

Singapore Management University’s Institute of Innovation & Entrepreneurship (IIE) appointed Redhill Communications as the agency for partnerships and PR for the 2017 Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition (LKYGBPC).

BLK J DDB Worldwide, a partnership between DDB and independent creative shop BLK J that launched in November 2016, has been appointed by Singapore Tourism Board on a three-year retainer to boost recruitment in the hospitality industry.