Move and win roundup: Week of January 21, 2019

Campaign compiles a new 'Move and win roundup' as each week progresses.  This edition will cover January 21 through 25, 2019.  Catch up on past people moves and business wins.

Fifty-five has opened a Shenzhen office in the city's Futian district, its newest after Paris, London, Hong Kong, New York, Shanghai and Geneva. Many Shenzhen-based clients, such as Huawei, Vivo, DJI, are going global and demand more proximity and local presence from the data agency, according to Baosheng Gao, managing director of Fifty-five in China.

VMLY&R Melbourne appointed Robyn Bergmann as creative director. She was previously with Ogilvy in Johannesburg, South Africa, and will partner with James Wills, who was recently promoted to the same position. Bergmann has worked on brands including Audi, Siemens, Unilever, Ponds, Coca-Cola, Philips, Cadbury and KFC. 

Hawaiian Airlines appointed WhiteGrey as its agency partner for Australia and New Zealand following a pitch. The agency will be responsible for strategy, creative, events and sponsorships, and will partner with fellow WPP AUNZ agency MediaCom.

Audience Serv appointed Paul Sage as vice president of global business development operations. He was previouslt country Manager for Australia at eGENTIC, a performance-marketing business, and also has a further 10 years of publisher experience in Australia and Singapore.

Consultancy The Leading Edge promoted APAC CEO Gillian O'Sullivan to global CEO. O'Sullivan joined The Leading Edge in September from Ipsos Marketing in Sydney, where she was MD. She will lead the business from Sydney. Meanwhile EMEA CEO Chris Paxton moves to sister agency Hotwire Communications as chief strategy officer at the start of February and x, managing partner, will take the lead for the EMEA region, reporting to O'Sullivan. Both Hotwire and the Leading Edge are owned by the Enero Group.

Creative Capital has merged with Altavia Asia, with Altavia as the majority shareholder. Jing Legrand, previously CEO of Altavia China, will step up to become Altavia Asia CEO. Louis Houdart, founder of Creative Capital, will remain in his role of CEO of Creative Capital and also become chief strategy officer of Altavia Asia and report to Jing.

Lyndon Morant has left GroupM after 12 years and started at Colgate-Palmolive as marketing director of integrated marketing communications. Morant's most recent role at GroupM was chief strategy officer of L’Atelier serving the LVMH Group client. He also spent time at Mindshare in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Shanghai and London.

Vice announced a new content licensing and co-production agreement with Hulu Japan, bringing 250 hours of its programming to the internet streaming platform. It includes content from Viceland, Vice News, Munchies and Noisey, and Vice Studio will co-produce drama and anime features with Hulu Japan. 

Prudential announced its title sponsorship of the PRURide Six Day Hong Kong, a bicycling event at the Hong Kong Velodrome Park from 8 to 10 March. The event is part of a Madison Sports Group international series that takes place in six other cities; the Hong Kong stop will be its first in Asia. The normally six-day event, which takes place with "lights turned down and music turned up" will be compressed to three days in Hong Kong, but will include all the same race formats. Riders from The Cycling Association of Hong Kong will participate alongside international racers, and the event will count toward Olympic qualification. Olympic and world championship medallist Sarah Lee Wai Sze and Asian Games champions Leung Chun-wing and Cheung King-lok are scheduled to take part.

PubMatic promoted Peter Barry, from country manager in Australia and New Zealand to regional director for the same territory. The company said it plans to increase its global headcount by more than 20% in 2019 due to significant growth in key areas, particularly mobile app and video monetisation. In-app video increased by more than 200% and direct publisher partnerships more than doubled year-over-year in 2018, according to the company. 

MercerBell appointed Brad Bennett as executive strategy director and Jo Gascoigne as strategy director in Melbourne. Bennett has been strategy director and head of digital at independent creative agency The Hallway, as well as director of production at The White Agency. Gascoigne, who will report to Bennet, was most recently a business design lead at Fjord (part of Accenture Interactive).

SPH is appointing Maureen Wee as chief executive officer of SPH Magazines with effect from March 1st 2019, taking over the helm from Mr Loh Yew Seng, who will be returning to SPH’s finance division after 12 years. Wee first joined SPH in 2000 and progressed to be the advertisement sales director in the marketing division of the newspapers group. Most recenly in 2018, Wee took on the role of managing director of the business solutions team. 

Havas Group India appointed Mayur Hola as national creative director for Havas Creative, effective immediately. Based in Gurgaon, he replaces Nima Namchu, who moved on from the agency in November. Hola was most recently ECD and EVP at Contract Advertising, and he has also worked with McCann, TBWA, and Grey.

Genesis Healthcare appointed Karl Bustamante as brand manager, Ujwal Sharma as communications manager and Nicholas Chong as e-commerce Manager, as the company gears up for expansion of its GeneLife consumer brand of genetic testing kits in Singapore and Southeast Asia in 2019. All three will report to Thomas Haugan, who joined as head of marketing and partnerships in November.

72andSunny hired Ida Siow as its first executive strategy director in Singapore. She joined from J Walter Thompson, where she was head of planning for both Singapore and Southeast Asia. Siow has also previously worked for DDB Singapore, BBH London and Ogilvy & Mather Shanghai. 

Havas Group Singapore promoted Kenny Yap to general manager. Yap will lead social, content and PR as the head of Socialyse and Red Agency, and seek to grow revenue in these areas as part of Havas Group's integrated offering. 

PHD has named Priya Alexander as MD in Singapore, effective in February. (Read more)

Mondelez International selected MSL as its PR agency of record for Southeast Asia. Following a competitive pitch late last year, MSL will oversee Mondelez's communications strategy for Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines. The appointment comes in tandem with the snacking company's focus on emerging markets. 

Travel data co-op Adara has expanded into APAC and appointed Rice Communications as agency of record for all its media duties. Adara offers data and insights from more than 750 million monthly unique traveller profiles.  

Experiential content agency Spinifex appointed Pepin Portingale as lead real-time artist, Jonathan Kafkaris as Unity developer and James Betar as senior producer. Portingale returns to Spinifex Group after founding Litmus VR in 2017. He previously spent eight years at the agency, where he was Head of 3D from 2009. Kafkaris has 12 years of experience as a Unity developer at kafkaris.com, The University of Sydney and Virtual Republic. Betar has been a consultant for online learning and development platforms and producer for a range of video game cinematics.

List Sotheby’s International Realty (List SIR) appointed Johnson Goh as CMO for its Asia businesses (excluding Japan). He will oversee COOs in Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Hong Kong while retaining his current role as executive director of marketing for List SIR’s Singapore office. He was also appointed as a member of a group level strategy committee. Johnson was previously chief operating officer of Singapore Real Estate Exchange or SRX. He has also held senior roles at Singapore Press Holdings, Media Corporation of Singapore (Mediacorp) and Singapore Yellow Pages.

After working with Coca-Cola for four years in Singapore, Manila and China, Visual Latina, a shopper marketing and digital agency headquartered in Buenos Aires, has announced that it will partner with Pixelsior, an independent marketing consultancy based in Singapore, to expand its operations in Asia Pacific. Ranajoy Roy, MD and founder of Pixelsior, will head Asia Pacific operations and lead new-business development. He has more than 20 years of experience including client-side with Coca-Cola and with Ogilvy as a regional business director.

Matt Rowley, director of sales and publishing at Nine, has been elected as chair of the IAB Australia Board. He replaces Cameron King, who resigned from News Corp late last year and who will be finishing his tenure as IAB Chair immediately.