MEC Thailand's former GM Petch Phaewphraikulto has been promoted to managing director and former MD Mana Jantanayingyong has been elevated to executive chairman.
The three senior managers will implement plans to further diversify MEC's range of specialised services this year, which will include the creation of a formalised team sometime in the second quarter to focus on areas outside the realm of mass media, such as roadshows and PR. The new team will be drawn from existing executives as well as new hires. The final details are being hammered out but the team will probably fall under the remit of the new executive chairman.
One of Arpha's chief tasks will be to oversee the planned expansion of MEC's planning division, as MEC intends to add a further two to three executives to cater for an increasing volume of work. She also has been handed direct responsibility for the Colgate Palmolive brief, one of the agency's largest clients. Other key clients include Citibank and pre- paid mobile brand Happy.
Arpha, a former drama student with a theatre degree from Silpakorn University in Bangkok, entered the media business in the early '90s as media planning manager with Grey Thailand and Vietnam, after gaining an MA in integrated marketing communications and advertising from Emerson College in Boston in the United States.
Her career also includes stints at media departments in McCann Erickson Thailand, where she was media planning group head, and Hakuhodo, which became Media Intelligence after the Japanese agency merged its media department with two local operations.
Her most recent job was with MediaCom.
MD Petch said that one of the agency's key challenges for the year ahead would be to develop channel planning and implementation capabilities.
"Today, there's not much differentiation between media agencies," he said. "We all need to mark out our different territories."
