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Movings|Shakings: 11 March

King and Leybourne step up for Carat

Carat has promoted Oliver King and Kim Leybourne to the newly created positions of joint general managers for New Zealand. The appointments come following Robert Harvey’s promotion to CEO of the Dentsu Aegis Network New Zealand last year, as the growing agency bolsters its senior management team. Robert Harvey retains the role of managing director of Carat New Zealand.

“It’s fantastic that Olly and I, working together with Rob will continue to build on the momentum we have already created for the Carat brand in the New Zealand market,” says Leybourne. “With an amazingly talented group of people to work alongside, I’m excited for what the future holds.”

King was equally enthused about the prospect of taking on the new challenge.

“I’m thrilled to be working with Kim and Rob to help nurture and grow Carat NZ,” he says. “We already have a talented group of people working alongside an incredible portfolio of clients. I feel honoured to be part of this team and look forward to what’s in store for Carat NZ.”

Leybourne joined Carat three years ago with more than 20 years’ marketing experience in London, Australia and New Zealand. She has been responsible for strategic planning and implementation across a number of high profile clients in retail, FMCG, finance, government, pharmaceuticals and travel. Her most recent roles prior to joining Carat were as the general manager of MediaCom NZ and group account director within DDB as the strategic lead on The Warehouse.

King has been strategy director for Carat since 2011 and has held senior positions within media and advertising throughout his career, including roles with ZenithOptimedia, DDB/Media Wise and Saatchi & Saatchi. He has won a number of local and international awards for his work including several CAANZ awards and a Cannes Media Gold Lion.

Carat has recently won a number of new clients in New Zealand, including Barfoot & Thompson, Mastercard and Spotlight, adding to its existing client partners, which include GM Holden, ASB Bank, Adidas, Mondelez, and Sovereign Insurance. 

DDB launches Empower  

In celebration of 2014 International Women’s Day (IWD) on 8 March, DDB Worldwide, part of Omnicom Group (OMC; NYSE), launched ‘Empower,’ a website featuring photos of real women from across the DDB Network. 

The website, created by DDB Chicago, was inspired by the movement to portray real women in the media as was recently seen in Getty Images’ ‘Lean In’ collection.”

And as part of this global initiative, DDB Group New Zealand has just announced a scholarship for its female staff.

The Empower Scholarship will be awarded to five women chosen from within the group and provides them with a senior mentor, three work/life coaching sessions and an external training course relevant to their development.

When filling out the application, staff members are asked to name the top two issues facing women today and who they think is New Zealand’s most inspiring woman as well as what personally empowers them.

“This industry is often accused of being male-dominated and perpetuating stereotypes,” says DDB’s human resources director Karen Sew Hoy. “We know it’s not, but the more empowered women working in it, the better it will represent our nation and more than half of its people.”

“The DDB Empower website struck a chord with many of the women in our office and we wanted to help celebrate this important day,” she adds.

In related news, Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook and founder of Lean In, recently recruited several celebrities to appear in a campaign called ‘Ban Bossy,’ which aims to challenge the widespread perception that women in positions of power are controlling.

And following on from this campaign, BBDO New York has launched a spot in which young girls speak about the impact that society’s preconceived notions have had on them.  

Seven Kiwis appointed Cannes Lions jurors

The 61st Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, which celebrates creative excellence in advertising and communications, has announced the appointment of seven New Zealand jury representatives. New Zealand will be represented on the Media, Cyber, Design, PR, Direct, Promo & Activation, and Radio Lions juries for 2014.

The jurors are:

Cyber: Aaron Turk, Colenso BBDO
Direct: Josh Moore, Y&R NZ
Promo & Activation: Megan Clark, Copper Brand Experience
Design: Arch MacDonnell, Inhouse Design
PR: Angela Spain, DraftFCB
Media: Kate Thomas, Dynamo
Radio: Shane Bradnick, DDB

Last year New Zealand was awarded 32 Lions at Cannes, the 11th most awarded country overall, rising to second globally when ranked by size of ad market and first when ranked by GDP.

“It’s a privilege to announce  such respected industry professionals to judge and reward the world’s best work at Cannes,” said Suzie Lamborn, the sales director of Val Morgan, the official New Zealand Cannes Lions representative.  

3rdeye recruits a media veteran

Barry Williamson, one of the stalwarts of New Zealand’s media industry, has joined recruitment and talent management agency 3rdeye as senior consultant of media, a position in which he will manage media roles and talent at 3rdeye and work closely with media owners and agencies. 

Williamson has had a long career in full-service agencies, including McCann Erickson, Saatchi & Saatchi, Generator and Y&R Group and more recently in media agencies Media Palace and Mediaedge:cia now MEC/Y&R Media.

In addition to having account management, media strategy and trading experience, Williamson has established and co-managed a creative agency, and has also been actively involved within the industry via the CAANZ media training programme, which he set up and ran from 2000-2006. 

He was also integral to the development of the CAANZ media awards programme, which he subsequently chaired for four years and is currently the chairman of the Industry Research Group (IRG), which is responsible for the development of the CMI media research product with Nielsen. He has been recognised twice by the industry for his contributions in these areas.

Given that Williamson has such a broad skill set, 3rdeye’s director Andy Sive is confident that his new recruit will be able to deliver strategic recruitment advice to those in media.

“Barry’s profile and standing in the media community is such that 3rdeye will be well positioned to now provide a total recruitment service to the industry, across media, creative, digital, suiting, PR and planning,” says Sive.

And Williamson seems equally optimistic about the prospect of joining the recruitment fray at 3rdeye.

“Andy Sive and I had been chatting about this opportunity for several months while I was contracting and it just seemed a logical move for me to continue my passion and enthusiasm for this great industry, having had experience from the industry side of things. I have always taken great pride in the calibre of people I have been able to employ in my various management roles and now realise just how much I enjoy seeing people grow and flourish in their roles,” he adds.

New face to guide Kiwis across the ditch  

After 19 years of service, Margaret Spiro has left her position as the regional manager of Tourism Victoria to pursue alternative career opportunities.   

Joanna Garrie, who has 11 years’ experience at the Tourism Victoria head office in Melbourne, has been brought in to fill the hole left by Spiro. 

Garrie has held several roles in the international marketing division, most recently holding the position of business development manager for New Zealand and North America.

New Zealand continues to be a key priority for Victoria, rating as the second largest inbound market next to China based on visitation and yield. Tourism Victoria has been operating in New Zealand for more than twenty years.

Garrie said she is looking forward to getting started in the new role and continuing the successful activity undertaken by Tourism Victoria in New Zealand.

“Tourism Victoria is committed to continuing its brand campaign activity in the New Zealand market and I look forward to collaborating with key industry partners to motivate Kiwis to keep on exploring Victoria,” she said in a release.

Serena (Stevens) to serve at Dow Design

Serena Stevens has moved from advertising and campaigns to brands and packaging, joining Auckland’s Dow Design as account director after spending 12 years at DDB.

Prior to her long stint at DDB, she worked with Saatchi & Saatchi in Wellington.

Her experience at both of these agencies has seen her work on several high profile and award-winning accounts for DDB, including the Axis-winning Cadbury account and the McDonald’s account, which won Gold at the 2010 Marketing Awards. 

Her new role will see her assisting Dow’s clients in brand strategy and development as well as packaging design projects. 

Launder tries on new hat at World of Wearable Art

World of WearableArt Limited, the company behind the World of WearableArt (WOW) competition and show, has announced the appointment of Tim Launder to the position of General Manager. Launder is currently General Manager of Weta Limited, and will take up the role, based at WOW’s headquarters in Nelson, on 13 May 2014.

Dame Suzie Moncrieff, WOW Founding Director, said she was delighted that Launder was joining the company to lead WOW in its next phase of development.

“Tim is a very good fit for the company and brings an outstanding skill set, as demonstrated by his contribution to the growth of Weta Limited over the last six years, and extensive international experience with Fonterra before that. We very much look forward to working with Tim,” she said.

Launder expressed excitement about the prospect of taking on the new role.

“With so many people blown away by their experience of WOW every year, the role offers the excitement of being a part of a creative product as well as the commercial opportunity of further developing the business from both a commercial and creative perspective. I will miss the team at Weta who have been such an important part of my life for the past six years but look forward to continuing to work with them in their capacity as a valued partner of WOW,” he says.

This move will see Launder replace Megan Matthews, who has served as the organisation’s general manager for two years. WOW spokesperson Shelly Doherty said she was uncertain of where Matthews would be taking her career next.  

Changes at Pfizer

Pfizer today appointed Melissa McGregor as managing director of Pfizer New Zealand. McGregor has had roles within Pfizer Australia since 1998, most recently leading the commercial operations team for Australia and New Zealand. She will take up her new appointment on 1 April, and will be relocating from the Sydney offices to be based in Auckland.

McGregor has spent the bulk of her career in the healthcare sector and has extensive experience across a number of therapeutic areas, including pain, the central nervous system, women’s health, respiratory and urology.

“Pfizer has a strong 50-year history in New Zealand and I am delighted to have been appointed to this role,” McGregor said. “Every day our medicines make an important difference to patient health. We are responsible for bringing a leading portfolio of medicines and vaccines to New Zealand for the prevention, treatment and cure of diseases across a broad range of therapeutic areas.”

McGregor has experience in organisational leadership, marketing, sales and training. In her role as commercial operations lead for Australia and New Zealand she was responsible for driving innovation, commercial effectiveness and efficiencies in specialist support areas including analytics, market research, digital marketing and training. McGregor has a degree in chemistry and biochemistry from Melbourne’s La Trobe University and has undertaken further education in strategy management and leadership development.

McGregor replaces Pfizer’s outgoing New Zealand managing director Frances Benge, who has accepted a regional role based in Asia within the Pfizer organisation. 

Managing talent

Simone van Asbeck has taken on the role of senior agent at Represent Management, the new division of leading voice talent agency Word of Mouth.

“Represent Management is a natural progression for Word of Mouth,” says the agency’s manager Alana Schultheis. “We were looking to diversify and saw an opportunity to get Simone involved”.

Formerly of talent agency Talento, van Asbeck has been travelling for the past few years before being lured back to the talent industry. She is excited by the opportunity to nurture and manage the careers of actors once again.

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