Move and win roundup: Week of October 5, 2020

Toby Hussey has joined Bear Meets Eagle On Fire (BMEOF) in the newly created role of managing director. He joins from The Monkeys, where he was the account lead on Telstra. Hussey previously spent nearly a decade at Wieden+Kennedy across its offices in London, Portland and New York.

Independent creative shop, The Core Agency, has hired Sarah Mould as a copywriter. She will work across all agency clients, with a particular focus on QBE, IGA and Just Better Care. In addtion, Sophie Adams joins the Core design team to bolster the agency’s digital and UI design capability. 

GroupM's Essence appointed Monica Bhatia as MD for Singapore. She will be responsible for driving continued client-centric innovation in data, analytics and technology, as well as business growth and company culture. As MD, she will report to APAC CEO T. Gangadhar (aka Gangs). She will continue in her current role as Essence’s senior vice president and client partner, APAC, leading the agency’s Google business and reporting to Dave Marsey, Essence’s president and global client partner. Prior to joining Essence in 2017, Bhatia headed the digital practice for GroupM’s Maxus in APAC. She was a member of Campaign Asia-Pacific's Women to Watch in 2016.

Independent UltraSuperNew appointed two senior creative directors and a senior copywriter in Tokyo. Creative directors Cesar Augusto and Yousuke Ozawa are both graduates of the Miami Ad School. Augusto joins from Vice Media in-house agency Virtue in Berlin, where he ran the art and creative department as creative director. Ozawa was previously CD at Havas Tokyo. Nobuaki Nogamoto, a trilingual copywriter, joins from Foton VFX. In addition, account manager Asumi Yamayoshi and junior account manager Allison Lee have joined agency. UltraSuperNew said the new hires will be working with Uber Eats (with Special Group), Beats by Dre, Lululemon, Mitsubishi FUSO, Tabasco and a project for the Tokyo 2021 Olympics.

Uber has appointed GroupM agency MediaCom, which it already worked with in the US and Australia, as its global agency of record. (Full story)

In-app marketplace AdColony appointed Adrian Watkins as its director of marketing and growth for APAC. He was most recently chief strategy officer for theAsianparent, which followed a stint with IGN Entertainment.

Twitch hired two former Dentsu Aegis Network executives to its Asia-Pacific team: ex-Amplifi APAC president Sunil Yadav and Mandar Kambli, formerly head of products and partnerships at DAN APAC. (Full story)

Dentsu International's Singapore office announced a series of recent business wins including a new commerce-related appointment from Singapore-based fintech startup Hoolah. In addition, the agency reported it is extending its work with Panasonic through a new regional platform rollout across nine markets in APAC and said that its CRM group, led by its global creative B2B agency, Gyro, has welcomed global network infrastructure provider CommScope as a new client. Dentsu also said it will continue its relationships with the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.