Move and win roundup: Week of November 15, 2021

Samsung Ads Australia appointed Brigitte Slattery as APAC head of strategic marketing; Luke Carmichael as head of advertiser partnerships; and Qadeer Ahmed to head up insights and analytics. Slattery was previously with NBCUniversal where she was the director, marketing and digital APAC, and has also held senior marketing roles at Foxtel, HBO and Network Ten. Carmichael was previously at Google where he was agency lead. Carmichael spent more than a decade at WPP’s Mindshare in the UK. Ahmed has more than 13 years of experience in both agency and client roles. All three will report to Alex Spurzem, general manager for Samsung Ads Australia. 

Ivy Nhi Chau, former media and influencer relations specialist at Vero, has launched Ivy+Partners, a culture-focused PR firm in Vietnam that offers services such as strategic planning, personal branding, and business matching. (Full story)

Independent communications and PR agency GT Communications appointed Kelly Oversby as lead advisor in its Perth office, with a focus on B2B and corporate clients; Katie Rodwell as senior advisor in the Perth office, with a focus on B2C and reputation management; and Emilie Dye as advisor in the Sydney office, working across client portfolios focused on corporate communications, advocacy, policy development, issues management and media relations. Oversby has more than two decades of experience including operating her own boutique consultancy for 12 years and managing APAC marcoms in-house for a multinational. Rodwell has spent nearly 20 years in both agency and in-house roles in Europe, Asia Pacific and the Americas. Dye spent two years at the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance where she became policy director.

Grey Group appointed former Red Havas CEO Sarah Trombetta as chief client officer for Procter & Gamble in AMEA (Asia, Middle East and Africa). Based in Australia, Trombetta will be part of WPP and Grey's P&G global leadership team, working with Nirvik Singh (Grey's global COO and president of its international region) and Debby Reiner (president of Grey global clients and business leadership for P&G, WPP). Trombetta takes over from Yashaswini Samat, a 28-year Grey veteran who will support the business transition until the end of the year.

Creative operations advisory, Operative, founded by former former COO of Clemenger BBDO, Dave Keating, has launched in Australia. Operative aims to maximise productivity, margins and client satisfaction by understanding the people, skills, culture and objectives of the agency to develop a more effective operating model and workflow. Operative focuses on employee engagement enabled through organisational structure and operational model. Operative’s foundation client is Clemenger BBDO Group.

VCCP Singapore has hired Jaslyn Lam, as business director, and Guy Futcher, as regional creative director. Lam will report to CEO, Craig Mapleston, leading clients such as Cathay Pacific, Johnson & Johnson and Shell. She was most recently at Govt. Futcher was most recently with VMLY&R Singapore and now reports into ECD, Andrew Hook, and will be working across VCCP’s portfolio of clients.

Havas Group China has appointed Janet Zhang as chief human resources officer, reporting to Karl Wu, chairman and CEO of Havas Group Greater China, and Kevin Zhang, chief human resources Officer of Havas Group Asia Pacific. The appointment takes effect immediately. Zhang has more than 20 years of experience in human resources management and worked as vice president, People Experience, of Publicis Groupe China previously. 

Outbrain, a recommendation platform for the open web, has appointed Yury Glikin as head of Sales for its APAC team. He was last lead of Strategic Partnerships & Affiliate Manager ANZ at Fiverr.

General Hotel Management has appointed Clement Koh to be the group’s inaugural executive vice president for sales and marketing. Koh will continue to oversee GHM’s expansion of its collection of luxury properties, as well as brand development campaigns and new commercial initiatives. He previously served as GHM’s vice president of sales of marketing and presided over corporate strategic, branding and communications efforts.

Electriclimefilms has signed Australian director Clare Plueckhahn. The Melbourne-based filmmaker will be represented on an exclusive basis in the Asia and MENA markets.

FleishmanHillard has been chosen to provide international communications and media relations support for Guardforce AI, a security solutions provider in Asia. The agency will develop and implement a communications program to grow brand awareness internationally as Guardforce AI continues to expand its solutions, providing security services for public and private sector organizations in Asia.  

Botify, an enterprise software company for organic search, has launched in APAC and incorporated in Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo. Establishing locally allows the firm to better serve local brands and Botify is expanding in sales & marketing and professional services to support this push. 

Ogilvy Australia announced several senior promotions and hires in its Melbourne office. 

• Creative promotions include Ogilvy veteran of 20 years’ Lenna Boland and her creative partner Ryan Clayton to group creative director and creative director, respectively.
• Creative directors Sharon Condy and Josh Murrell have also been promoted to group creative directors. The pair will lead the creative charge on the Mondelez portfolio across chocolate, confectionary, and biscuits. They will also carry on their creative leadership on CPA Australia, HostPlus and Swinburne Online accounts.
• Andrew Vohmann moves into an experience design lead role after four years as senior digital designer.
• Senior creative executives John Pantzopoulos and Stephen Sheldon have joined Ogilvy from CHE Proximity, where they spent the last four years working on the Mazda account.
• In account service, senior account director Bianca Kerr has been promoted to group account director, after four years at Ogilvy focusing her efforts on the Mondelez business.
• Jenny McLarney has been promoted to senior account director while Cherry Lin moves into a senior account manager position.
• Strengthening the accounts team, new arrivals include Kirstie Ly, Kim Thompson and Raj Thind, joining Ogilvy Australia’s Melbourne team as account directors. 

Publicis Groupe announced several senior hires across its creative and digital agencies in Indonesia. Mudit Trivedi joins as managing director, Publicis Communications, from VMLY&R Jakarta and Rohit Mallela will lead Digitas Indonesia and serve as the digital acceleration lead across Groupe agencies. Also joining the creative team are Oliver (‘Obey’) Sarmiento and David Price as senior creative directors. Sarmiento joins from VMLY&R Jakarta and Price joins from Taiwan and has spent over 15 years in Asia across markets and agencies.  

UM has appointed Ben McCallum to lead its Sydney office. Joining as managing director, McCallum takes up the role on February 1, reporting to UM CEO Anathea Ruys. Previously, McCallum held senior leadership roles at Mediacom for nearly five years, most recently as managing director. 

SmarTone has appointed Norman Tam as its executive director and deputy chief executive officer.
Tam brings twenty-plus years of experience in product development, operation
management and startup investment, having previously concurrently been a vice president of
Tencent Cloud International, vice president of JOOX Music, and the chief executive
of WeChat Pay Hong Kong Limited. He is also a director of Save the Children Hong Kong.

Redhill, a public relations and communications agency, has been appointed to manage the opening of Voco Orchard Singapore, the first property in South East Asia under IHG Hotels & Resorts’ premium brand, voco Hotels. Redhill will work closely with the voco Orchard Singapore team to execute a full launch strategy. 

Soolegal, a digital platform for law in India, has onboarded Ants Digital, a marketing agency, as its digital, brand and creative partner to expand its digital footprint.

Glad U Came, a PR and influencer marketing agency has been awarded with the PR mandate for IG Wrapple Street Fruitisserie, a Mumbai, India-based concept eatery. The mandate encompasses providing strategic communications support to the brand with PR outlook to increase the brand's awareness and reach. The account was won following a multi-agency pitch.

Creative agency BMF has appointed Josie Fox and Harry Stanford as senior creatives. Fox is an art director while Stanford is a copywriter. The duo, who has worked together at Special Group for the past five years, will work together as a pair at BMF. In their previous role, they worked on campaigns for the like of Uber Eats Australia and Taiwan, CUB, Amaysim, and Yalumba including the ‘Tonight I’ll be Eating’ campaign with Simon Cowell and the Wiggles. Meanwhile, Erica Mallett and Angel McMullan join BMF as a new junior creative pair. Mallett is a musician, content creator, podcaster and most recently, breakfast radio host on Triple J. McMullan cut her teeth in publishing as a book designer and picture book illustrator; she also had a stint at Special Group as an art director. 

72andSunny Singapore hired marketing veteran Judy Ang as group brand director. Ang has over 16 years of experience across major networks in Singapore and Shanghai. She led and grew the Scoot business at Publicis and helmed the HSBC and Changi Airport Group accounts while at J. Walter Thompson (now Wunderman Thompson). She previously worked on Unilever and Castro at Ogilvy and Mather Shanghai, and also has client-side experience as regional marketing director at the Furama Hotel Group. The agency also promoted Jaclyn Lee to senior strategy director and Jonathan Tan to brand director. Both Lee and Tan been with the agency for over two years and lead the GIC, Carousell and Singapore University of Technology and Design accounts among others. 

Outbrain, a recommendation platform for the open web, has appointed Yury Glikin as head of Sales for its APAC team. He was last lead of Strategic Partnerships & Affiliate Manager ANZ at Fiverr.