Move and win roundup: Week of December 6, 2021

Campaign compiles a new 'Move and win roundup' as each week progresses.  This edition will cover December 6 through 10, 2021.  Catch up on past people moves and business wins.

Belina Tan has joined The Walt Disney Company as VP of corporate communications covering the Asia Pacific region. In the role, Tan will lead corporate communications teams to support the growth of the company’s media and entertainment, studio and consumer products businesses in diverse markets. She will oversee Disney’s external and internal communications, thought leadership and corporate social responsibility, reporting to The Walt Disney Company APAC president Luke Kang. Tan joins from Bloomberg where she was APAC head of corporate communications. She has over 20 years of communications experience across Singapore, Beijing and New York.

Wavemaker India has created a specialised unit in collaboration with One Mercuri which will focus on helping brands leverage the entertainment and content businesses in south India. The southern entertainment industry releases more than 900 movies in a year. The new unit will provide brands with access to this industry right at the conception stage. The unit will help create original content IPs, enable better brand associations in films and audio and video OTT content, and collaborations with writer rooms. The unit will be based out of Wavemaker’s Bangalore office and led by Anilkumar Sathiraju under the leadership of Karthik Nagarajan, chief content officer of Wavemaker India.

Auto manufacturer GWM has appointed The Hallway as agency of record for its Australian and New Zealand businesses. The Hallway will manage brand strategy, advertising, digital, social and CRM. GWM is the world’s 10th largest auto manufacturer by market capitalisation. It relaunched in Australia in 2016.

Luxury and lifestyle communications consultancy CDGL has rebranded into Eclair Asia and moved into its Shanghai office after securing private investment to grow its team and consumer-facing second-hand fashion platform, DejaWooo. Established in Hong Kong 2018, the consultancy has worked on cross-border communications and marketing projects for the likes of Kering Group, Bluebell Group, Unibail Westfield Rodamco and Mac Cosmetics.

LinkedIn has hired Alistair Jedlin as head of communications for Australia and New Zealand, per Jedlin's LinkedIn. He replaces Shiva Kumar, who has relocated to Singapore to take on the role of APAC consumer communications lead. Jedlin joins the networking platform from an eight month stint at TikTok, where he was B2B marketing and communications manager. Prior to TikTok, Jedlin was client partner at Edelman and a consultant at Herd MSL. 

Inner Mongolia Mengtai Group selected Ogilvy China to lead brand strategy consulting for the company’s Mengtai Whiskey Distillery. Ogilvy Consulting will help the company plan and launch a new Chinese whiskey brand. The remit includes market research, segmentation and product portfolio definition, as well as brand positioning, naming and visual identity.

Brand suitability platform and YouTube measurement programme partner Channel Factory has launched in Australia, appointing former TikTok head of product marketing Kevin Wong as vice president of Asia-Pacific. The company claims to give brands greater control over contextual targeting and conscious advertising on user-generated content platforms. Wong will work with MD Alex Littlejohn to spearhead growth in Asia-Pacific, leading operations, product strategy, development and sales growth.

Social and Influencer agency One Green Bean promoted Amber Abbott to general manager and appointed Mary Proulx as head of social and influence. Abbott was previously head of client services and has been with the agency sincce 2014. Proulx was previously at sister agency Red Havas where she was group account director.

Leo Burnett India won integrated communications duties for Roposo, an entertainment commerce platform. The agency has already created the first campaign for the brand, announcing a new brand identity. The brand, which is a business unit under Google-backed Glance, an unconsolidated subsidiary of InMobi Group, will be handled by the agency’s Delhi office. 

Global production company Sweetshop signed director Zac Ella for representation in Greater China. Known for a fun on-set presence and a knack for drawing the light-hearted beats out of
briefs, has done work for Adidas, Sports Direct, Lawn Tennis Association, Dominos, TikTok, Dr Martens, McDonald’s, Amnesty International and Converse.

Vanessa Nabia Muzaffar joined Image Pakistan as head of marketing. Her previous roles incliude JWT-Grey, IAL Saatchi & Saatchi, and Ogilvy and she has worked on campaigns for Unilever, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, P&G, and Engro Corp.

The Monkeys has hired Beth O’Brien as head of innovation. Based in Sydney, she starts in January next year. She will join the Accenture Interactive creative agency from Colenso BBDO Aotearoa, where she has been creative director since January 2020. O’Brien started her career at Colenso BBDO, in between stints she has has held senior creative roles at Droga5 and RGA in New York. Her work has been celebrated at major global and local creative award shows including Cannes, D&AD, The One Show, Clio, Spikes. She also launched 'Love This', a podcast that interviews creative leaders from around the globe.

South Korean beauty and cosmetics conglomerate Amore Pacific has extended Carat's media remit in China, its largest market, without a pitch. Carat China takes on the strategic planning and buying agency for Amore Pacific in China, with an increased focus on digital transformation.

Virtue has appointed Victoria Fernandez as business director to lead key APAC clients and drive new business. Based at Virtue’s regional headquarters in Singapore, Fernandez joins after almost seven years at BBH Asia Pacific where, as account director, she led brands to create work for the likes of Nike, Google, Netflix, Disney, Unilever, Uber, Agoda and Red Bull. She was also a key organiser and mentor of the BBH internship program.

Digitas has been appointed by Aptamil, the premium milk powder brand under Danone in China, as the digital service agency for Parenting Hub. Parenting Hub is a newly launched program by Aptamil which aims to provide help and support to parents throughout their parenting journey. The cooperation with Aptamil has launched already.

McCann China has appointed Rowena Chung as general manager of Craft China, a specialist production agency. Rowena will be based in Shanghai and will report to Emily Chang, CEO of McCann China. Rowena has a strong track record in digital product development, production and innovation. In the past seven years, Rowena led the digital development and production team for EF Education's children's department. Prior to that, she was an investment director at Citi Ventures for three years. Before Citi, she was responsible for the marketing, publishing, and operations of Electronic Arts in Shanghai for six years.

Sumit Kanungo has joined Grivy as SVP of Agency Business, an APAC role in line with Grivy’s growing network in the region. Kanungo brings over twenty-five years of agency experience in India working at Starcom Mediavest Group, Madison World, Lintas Media Group, Mediaedge:CIA (MEC) to name a few. He was most recently with Havas Group Indonesia where he was spearheading the group’s strategy function.  

Index Exchange has hired Ray Ghanbari as its chief technology officer (CTO). Ghanbari will oversee the company’s engineering, IT, and infrastructure organisations and will be focused on building solutions that "accelerate the ad technology evolution". He was most recently CTO of Omnitracs (now part of Solera Holdings), in addition to running the North American engineering organisation at Solera. He previously served as a technology executive for companies like Fico, UnitedHealth Group, Overture/Yahoo!. Ghanbari will report to Index’s president and CEO, Andrew Casale.

Wavemaker China has appointed Frank Lin as its chief transformation officer. Lin was most recently at ChiefClouds, before joining Wavemaker. The agency also promoted Josephine Har as chief strategy officer, Eddie Zhuang as national head of OOH, Riki Li as national head of content and Tanya Xing as national head of Precision. All of them will be based in Shanghai and will be part of CEO Jose Campon’s China leadership team. Har adds this new responsibility to her existing role as chief growth officer.

In other Red Havas news, Havas Ortega has appointed Mel Panabi as new business director of the agency’s PR, social and experiential agency Red Havas. Panabi has more than 25 years of experience in public relations, corporate communication, stakeholder relations, crisis management, political communications, and marketing.

Red Havas has appointed Lawrence Muskitta to head its newly created public affairs offering. As head of public affairs, Muskitta will lead a unit that spans government relations, stakeholder engagement, patient/consumer advocacy, public behaviour change campaigns, policy monitoring and intelligence gathering, crisis management and strategic partnerships. He joins from Facebook, where he spent the past year as Public Policy manager, Stakeholder Engagement EU Affairs, based in Brussels.

M&C Saatchi appointed Shelley Parsons as executive creative director and Ben O’Brien as deputy ECD on Woolworths. Parsons returns to Australia after 20 years overseas, most recently as global creative director for Levi Strauss in San Francisco. At M&C Saatchi, Parsons will lead the creative team at Greenhouse, the bespoke model which is part of the Woolworths Group ecosystem. O’Brien joins M&C Saatchi with over 20 years of experience as a creative leader in the Australian market. He most recently ran his own agency, O’Shea & O’Brien, for six years before it was merged into Banjo Advertising over five years ago.

UM Australia appointed Mat Rawnsley to the new role of national head of planning. He starts January 10 and will report to national chief strategy officer Raj Gupta. Rawnsley worked at The Hallway for more than four years, initially as head of strategy and later as head of connections and media. 

Alibaba Group appointed Toby Xu, deputy chief financial officer, to succeed Maggie Wu as the company’s chief financial officer, effective April 1. Wu will continue as a partner in the Alibaba Partnership and serve as an executive director on the firm's board.

Former Tanishq, HolidayIQ and Verse marketer Karandeep Singh Kapany has been appointed as learning app Duolingo's first official representative in India. Kapany will act as the country marketing manager and lead growth, marketing, and operations in the Indian market. 

The Works, part of Capgemini, appointed Tim Brothers as senior creative. He was most recently associate creative director at Dig Agency, where he was responsible for the creation of fully integrated campaigns for Hungry Jack’s, Post-it and Command. Brothers will now lead creative output with a particular focus on social and digital creative for The Works clients including Goodman Fielder, Aware Super, Masterpet, H&R Block and Subaru.

Vero, a Southeast Asia-focused communications consultancy, hired Thach Quang Nguyen as data intelligence unit lead. He will be responsible for boosting data performance capabilities across the region. Prior to joining Vero, Nguyen worked as a market and consumer insight analyst at Unilever. The comoany also appointed Catherine Napalai Faulder as storytelling director.  

Outlast Sports & Entertainment has been appointed by SPOTV as its exclusive representative for Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Macau, Mongolia and Taiwan to boost regional and local advertising as well as sponsorship inventory on the latter's platforms. These include on-air, digital and social media. Outlast Sports & Entertainment will be responsible for the commercialisation of SPOTV’s content including MotoGP, tennis tournaments Wimbledon and the US Open, The Open (golf) Championships and Asian offerings such as the V.League Japan, Korean V-League and Korean Baseball League.