Move and win roundup: Week of September 28, 2020

Campaign compiles a new 'Move and win roundup' as each week progresses.  This edition will cover September 28 through October 2, 2020.  Catch up on past people moves and business wins.

Dentsu International has promoted Gautam Mehra to chief data and product officer for Asia-Pacific, effective immediately. Based in Mumbai, Mehra will report into Zhengda Shen, President of Merkle APAC. Most recently chief data officer and CEO of Dentsu Programmatic for South Asia, Mehra led the creation of Dentsu’s proprietary adtech product, the Dentsu Marketing Cloud ecosystem, used in over 32 markets globally. He also led the unification of the data sciences and Amnet teams to create Dentsu Programmatic, the leading programmatic player in India today. Gautam started his career 20 years ago as an entrepreneur, starting one of the first web development firms in India before stints in digital advertising with top brands like Viacom, Government of India, Standard Chartered and Microsoft. He joined Dentsu in 2013.

IPG media and marketing technology unit Kinesso has appointed Nicholas Nozawa as representative director, president of Kinesso in Japan. Nozawa will report to Koichi Sonoda, CEO and country manager of Mediabrands Japan and the global president of Kinesso, Arun Kumar. Nozawa, who joined Mediabrands Japan in 2019, and currently serves as chief product officer will take on the additional role overseeing Kinesso Japan, effective immediately. Nozawa is an applied expert in the area of data science and business intelligence, digital transformation, marketing automation system design, and process optimisation. He worked as as head of digital at AIG, was founding director COE data analytics at Metlife, managed the business insights division at Amway Corp, as well as at SAS and Apple and was most recently chief product Officer at UM Japan. 

INVNT Group has launched branded content studio and content marketing agency, Hevē in Sydney, to service the entire APAC region. Ee Chuan Fong (also known as “Peanut”), has been appointed to the newly created role of creative director for Hevē APAC, responsible for building out the brand’s offering, driving the creative direction of all content and overseeing production. A former Volcom creative director turned filmmaker, Peanut has delivered branded content and content marketing campaigns for the likes of Samsung, SAP, Barton Perreira, Sass & Bide and Pure Blonde.

KFC Singapore selected Goodstuph Singapore as its social media agency of record following a three-way pitch conducted in August. The one-year appointment will see the agency provide strategic and creative counsel for the KFC brand with regard to social-media marketing, working closely with newly appointed lead brand and creative agency TSLA. In a release, the brand said Goodstuph presented an exciting content strategy and displayed a strong understanding of pop culture and consumers insights. Juliana Lim, senior director of marketing & food innovation at KFC, also thanked incumbent agency, Ogilvy, which was a "great partner for the past five years".

Hivestack, an adtech company for programmatic digital out-of-home (DOOH), appointed Nigel Clarkson as global chief revenue officer. He will report to CEO Andreas Soupliotis and will be responsible for the growth in APAC, EMEA, North America and LATAM. Clarkson was previously commercial director at Global Outdoor. He has also held leadership postions at Exterion Media, Weve, Living Social, Primesight Outdoor and Yahoo.

Finsbury appointed Daniel Bogler as a senior advisor in its Tokyo office. (Full story)

Shandong Linglong Tire (aka Linglong) appointed IDEA Communication as its agency of record to handle integrated communications and digital campaigns in conjunction with the company's product roll-out in overseas markets. (Full story)

Following a pitch, Touch PR will represent Glow Recipe and Nudestix, two 'cult' beauty brands from the US. The agency will also add Thailand and Indonesia to its existing Foreo account which currently already covers Singapore and Malaysia. (Full story)

Havas Group Singapore promoted Russell Lai from general manager to managing director for its media operations, with immediate effect. Lai will continue to report to Jacqui Lim, group CEO of Havas Singapore and be responsible for leading integrated media solutions, strategic client management and new business for Havas and Arena Media. Lai joined Havas in 2015 as executive director and was promoted to general manager in 2018. His media planning and client management experience spans 19 years across verticals including FMCG, government, telecommunications and financial services.

Edelman has appointed Yvonne Koh as head of corporate for Asia Pacific. She was partner at Klareco Communications for the previous nine months. She will be responsible for building on Edelman’s corporate specialisms across the region, including digital crisis management, employee engagement, B2B marketing and thought leadership for social media. She will report to Dave Samson, global vice chair of corporate affairs and will also serve as a member of the global corporate practice team. Koh spent three years as the Asia Pacific head of communications at PayPal, and also worked at MSLGROUP earlier in her career, where she led Southeast Asia and moved to the US as senior vice president of the agency's New York office.

Integral Ad Science expanded its operations in Indonesia and appointed digital media veteran Arfitrianto Zulnaini as sales director. Arfitrianto has over 19 years of sales and leadership experience in digital media and was previously VP of digital marketing and group strategy at Emtek in Indonesia. Before that he served as SEA programmatic lead at Yahoo, based out of Singapore and Indonesia, and has also held leadership roles at Carat, Mindshare, Initiative, and Starcom. He will lead efforts to establish strategic relationships with brands and agencies to help them maximize their digital investments in Indonesia.

BCW announced the appointment of Rikki Jones as MD and market leader in Singapore, a role Jones will take on in addition to her existing responsibilities as MD for GCI Health Asia-Pacific. Jones has been with the BCW Group for over a decade, having started at Cohn & Wolfe in the UK before going on to be the founding leader of GCI Health's presence in Europe and Asia. BCW also named Cindy Lim as senior director, APAC integrated communications. Lim joins from Shangri-La Group where she was assistant vice president, global brand communications, food & beverage. 

News Corp Australia’s digital marketing service News Xtend is expanding to Singapore through a deal with Singapore Press Holdings to target the island state’s small and medium business market. The partnership, SPH said, expands its already extensive advertising network to include a one-stop, outcome-based digital marketing solution for small and medium-sized enterprises. Companies can sign up for digital marketing packages through a monthly subscription model with the option for their businesses to be marketed online, with the optimisation of marketing through channels including SPH digital assets, programmatic advertising, search-engine marketing and social-media advertising. Clients may also add on other SPH media assets to their subscription package.