Publicis Media boosts commerce with hires across the globe

Six months after launching its commerce practice, Publicis Media is fortifying its capabilities in the space by appointing three regional commerce leaders across the America, APAC and EMEA.

The leaders include Amy Lanzi in the Americas, Samrat Sengupta in APAC and Jonathan Lewis-Jones in EMEA, who was promoted from global commerce director at Starcom. Each lead will help bolster the commerce practice in their regions across the Publicis Media portfolio, which includes Starcom, Zenith, Digitas, Spark Foundry, Blue 449 and Performics.

All three leaders are reporting to Ali Nehme, Publicis Media’s global commerce practice lead.

Lanzi comes to Publicis Media from Omnicom retail marketing shop TPN, where she managed the New York office and helped expand the agency’s service offerings. Throughout her career, she has worked on omnichannel initiatives for the likes of Comcast, The Hershey Company, Nabisco, Revlan, The Miller Brewing Company and more.

Sengupta has held various leadership posts across Asia and Africa, including at Rocket Internet, Tokopedia and Shoppee. In his new role for Publicis Media in APAC, he will collaborate with the agency network’s data science practice. In addition to Nehme, Sengupta will have a direct line into Navaneeta Das, head of product and client development at Publicis Media.

During his time as Starcom’s global commerce director, Lewis-Jones played a role in developing the agency’s commerce capabilities and developed commerce propositions for clients such as P&G and Samsung. Prior to Starcom, Lewis-Jones held a number of digital, commerce and management roles at companies including Lowe, Nokia and Fusepump.  

"Commerce has become a priority for our clients and they are increasingly looking to us as their partner who can bring a blend of media, sales, content, data and tech expertise to help drive decisions in this important and growing space," said Nehme in a statement. "Amy, Samrat and Jonathan’s expertise runs deep and diverse. We are confident in their ability to lead end-to-end commerce strategy and media optimisation across the organisation and position our clients for success to transform their business."