Move and win roundup: Week of February 28, 2022

Campaign compiles a new 'Move and win roundup' as each week progresses.  This edition will cover February 28 through March 4, 2022.  Catch up on past people moves and business wins.

UM has promoted Gareth Nicholls to the role of managing director in Melbourne and Brisbane, and Brett Elliott to the role of managing director in Canberra and Government. Both Nicholls and Elliott both report directly to UM Australia CEO Anathea Ruys. The promotions follow the recent appointment of Ben McCallum to managing director in Sydney.

Out-of-home media company Shopper has appointed Sam Noble in its Sydney agency team as group sales manager. Noble has over a decade of experience in out-of-home media. He was most recently at JCDecaux where he worked across large agency groups such as GroupM. 

Diageo appointed Wilson Del Socorro as corporate relations director for Asia Pacific, based in Singapore. He will be working with the regional and market teams to lead corporate relations, covering public policy and government affairs, communications, and responsibility and sustainability efforts. He has been with Diageo for almost 10 years in Asia and the UK, most recently as global director of government affairs based in London. Before joining Diageo, he was with KPMG Australia.

Virtue, the creative agency of Vice Media appointed Nuno Dores as associate creative director. He has worked at Ogilvy Shanghai and BBH Shanghai on brands including Korean Air, Shiseido, ABInBev, and Google. He has relocated to Singapore.

ITC chocolate brand Fabelle awarded its creative mandate to Mullen Lintas. The agency will help the brand shift the perception of Fabelle "from luxury chocolates to unparalleled, distinguished chocolate experiences". Mullen Lintas' Bangalore office will lead the account.

DLF Brands assigned digital, brand and performance marketing duties to Ants Digital for its flagship home decor brand , PURE Home + Living. The agency will strategise to enhance the online presence across digital, ecommerce and various social platforms, increase footfall in stores and create campaigns for the D2C channel. 

Publicis Sapient has hired Abby Godee as chief experience officer. Godee will be responsible for setting the vision for how customer, user, and employee experiences contribute to the realisation of Publicis Sapient’s clients’ digital business transformation ambitions. She joins from Deloitte Consulting, where she served as partner, driving the growth of a human-centric innovation and design strategy practice. Previously, she was chief design officer at Philips Consumer Lifestyle and later led the design of Philips’ healthcare software experiences. She also held leadership roles at Frog Design in the US and Europe and was a partner with Smart Design in New York and San Francisco. Godee's new role is effective immediately. She will join the Publicis Sapient global leadership team and report to global chief delivery officer Bob Van Beber.

Appnovation has appointed Christian Ward as business development director and will be responsible to connect teams across the company’s full-service digital capabilities and offerings. Prior to this, he led a new online business in China for Cornerstone Global Partners, and before that he was regional account manager at LinkedIn APAC. Appnovation also appointed Joy Ng as client partner where she will oversee the company’s client servicing capabilities around the region while creating digital solutions to customer needs. She joins from AnalogFolk where she was the business director.

Retail media agency Channel Bakers has promoted Carol Lai to VP of Asia Pacific. Lai has more than a decade of experience developing go-to-market strategies for brands representing a variety of industries. The company’s APAC region represents 132 assorted advertiser brands, supported by a growing full-service in-region staff.

Dhiren Amin, CMO, Asia for Kraft Heinz and Siew Ting Foo, CMO, Greater Asia for HP, have been announced as the first two heads of jury for the APAC Effie Awards 2022. They will lead the jury in evaluating this year’s entries and rewarding effective works in the region. Amin’s responsibilities span brand management, innovation development, consumer insights, media and R&D. Meanwhile, Foo is focused on driving brand relevance and purpose by combining data and emotional connection for HP. The remaining heads of jury will be announced in the coming weeks.

Wieden Kennedy has hired Santosh “Paddy” Padhi as chief creative officer for India and expanded the independent creative agency into Mumbai, where he will build out the shop’s second India location. Wieden Kennedy has been established in Delhi since 2007, working for Indian brands including IndiGo Airlines, Royal Enfield, and the Government of India. Padhy co-founded Taproot in 2009, which was acquired by Dentsu in 2012. He quit the network in September 2021. 

Technology company Dyson has retained Mindshare China as its media agency in mainland China to handle media planning and buying activities, and extended its remit to include ecommerce activities. In December 2021, Mediabrands had won Dyson's global media account worth $600 million from Mindshare. 

Mirum Thailand has appointed Tawin Tusnajareon as managing director. He was previously head of technology for The 1, a loyalty platform.  

Media agency Initiative Melbourne has been appointed agency of record by the member-owned wellbeing company, Australian Unity. Initiative will lead strategy and all media campaign activity, tasked with delivering sustainable business growth by expanding Australian Unity’s member and customer base.

Singlife with Aviva, Singapore’s homegrown financial services company, has appointed Blak Labs and Wachsman as its creative and communications agencies respectively. Blak Labs will drive the creation of Singlife with Aviva’s creative assets, while Wachsman will focus on amplifying its strategic priorities. 

Havas Health & You (HH&Y) hired Jini Mathai as regional business strategy director for SEA. Located in Singapore, he has nearly two decades of experience providing strategic guidance for clients across health specialties. HH&Y is active across nine markets in APAC: Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia, Korea, Japan, Greater China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The network is the market leader in China and Japan and is continuing to recruit in India, Singapore, and the Philippines.

Communications consultancy Vero announced three regional appointments for existing employees. Suwanya Tungpanya will take on the newly created role of VP of client journey, Sasha Alwani will take on the newly created role of VP of growth and Vu Quan Nguyen will expand his current internal culture and external marketing remit to Vero’s key clients and take on the VP of culture and brand.

Impact.com, a partnership management platform, promoted Ayaan Mohamud from regional marketing director to a newly created position of regional vice president of marketing with a remit to further expand the company's marketing team across the region. She appointed Laurence Nelmes to the newly created role of marketing executive for ANZ and is actively recruiting for another team member in Sydney. In addition, Deborah Kan joins as partnership development manager, ANZ after a two-year stint as account manager at Are Media’s Beauty Voices; Hayley Tse joins as customer success manager, ANZ after three years’ affiliate agency experience at Acceleration Partners and IProspect; Kim Sippel joins as corporate account executive, APAC, from web governance SaaS company, Monsido; and Diana Letran has been appointed pre-sales solution architect after a 10-year career across digital ad operations, sales, trading and programmatic, most recently at Finder. Finally, Tanya Suna was promoted to the newly created position of director of people and culture, APAC, from her prior role as people development manager, APAC.