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When it rains, it pours (with appointments news galore)—UPDATED

Sheesh, it’s been a big week in the biz. ANZ is now in TBWA’s hands, the National Bank brand looks like it’s set to be sacrificed, Mojo has just won a few cars and online advertising has moved ahead of radio and magazines in terms of ad revenue. And while all that’s been happening, a range of humans have been moving and shaking all over the show. So, without further ado, Pauline Hanton resigns from her Hypermedia post; ex-Telecom boffin Matt Crockett takes up a big gig with APN in Australia; Barnes, Catmur & Friends gives the new head of digital some natural light; Yahoo!Xtra expands its sales team; and Republik welcomes a new addition.

Hanton departs

Just a couple of weeks ago we ran into Pauline Hanton, who left her sales manager post at Adshel last year to take up a role with Hypermedia, a shopper marketing start-up linked to Ogilvy’s managing director Greg Partington. Despite getting a release a couple of weeks back that said she had been given a new role as head of sales for both Hypermedia and its new demonstration arm Demoworks, we’d heard rumours she was leaving, so we asked if that was true. No way, she said. Well, it turns out it is true, something blamed on a disagreement with Partington.

She is yet to return calls.

Updated: “The official line is that it just didn’t work out,” Hanton says. She still thinks Hypermedia was a good opportunity, especially with the shareholding on offer, but that shareholding wasn’t realised.

She says she returned from leave recently and decided it shouldn’t be quite that difficult and that “there was more to life than this”.

Fractious relationships were always a possibility given Partington’s reputation, but she says despite rumours about her leaving the role earlier on in the piece, she has only made her decision in the past few days. And in a similar fashion to when she left Adshel, she was amazed how fast the word got round.

She doesn’t have anything on the horizon at this stage, although she’s been talking to a few outfits, so she’s just planning on soaking up the glorious Auckland weather for while.

“But reality will probably bite next week,” she says.

Crockett like it’s hot

Ex-Telecommer Matt Crockett has been named as APN News and Media’s chief development officer, a new position that will see him report directly to chief executive Brett Chenoweth.

Crockett will head back to his homeland to lead corporate strategy, new business development and “all major new digital initiatives” for the media behemoth.

“We are repositioning APN for growth. Mr Crockett will play a pivotal role driving strategic growth and business improvement initiatives across the company,” Chenoweth says. “Matt is an impressive senior executive. He has extensive experience in developing and executing successful strategies for companies in Australia and New Zealand in a range of industries. He will be a valuable addition to the leadership team.”

Crockett worked at Telecom for seven years and was most recently chief executive of the Wholesale and International Division, a job he pulled the pin on in June last year after three successful years in the role. Under his leadership it became one of Telecom New Zealand’s fastest growing and highest performing business units.

He also held a number of senior positions covering fixed line, mobile and internet businesses, including Xtra (and its key relationships with MSN and later Yahoo!7).

Crockett, who worked at McKinsey and Company prior to Telecom, is currently a director of Orion Health.

Barnes, Catmur adds full-time digital friend

Former Renaissance digital chief Greg Elisara has taken up the role of head of digital at Barnes, Catmur & Friends.

“We’ve worked with a number of digital ‘Friends’ recently but the volume of digital work has increased to the extent that it made sense to have a dedicated resource within the agency,” says managing partner Daniel Barnes. “Initially Greg had a design background but over the last few years has been increasingly concerned with the business aspect of digital, which we think is vital for someone in his role.”

And not wanting to be left out, Paul Catmur also piped up.

“Digital is part of what we do everyday, an additional channel that the whole agency appreciates and works with rather than treating as an alien life-force. We’ve brought Greg in to bolster our knowledge and to give us an internal production capability. He’s a great guy, though is obviously suffering from being shut in dark rooms for too long.”

Three more musketeers

In response to significant growth, Yahoo!Xtra has added three new members to the roster, appointing Nick Paschalis, Andrew Atkinson and Michael Buhagiar to its direct sales team.

“We have had an extremely strong start to our year and could see that we needed more people on the ground to support our growing sales activity”, says Laura Maxwell-Hansen, general manager. “These new appointments will allow us to build on that momentum and provide the service that has resulted in Yahoo!Xtra’s success over the last year.”

Nick Paschalis

Paschalis, previously the sales manager at Media One and key account manager at Fairfax Suburban newspapers for 12 years before he joined the Yahoo!Xtra team, has been appointed to head of direct sales.

Michael Buhagiar

Andrew Atkinson

Atkinson previously worked at TVNZ as the business sales manager – digital and Michael Buhagiar previously worked at Parkside Media as advertising manager. Both come to Yahoo!Xtra as senior account managers.

Framp it up

Kylie Framp has joined Freeman’s Bay indie Republik as account director and will work on the Waterfront Auckland, Rentokil Initial and Visique accounts.

She has moved on from Ogilvy where she worked on the transition to the Auckland super city and before that she worked at Y&R on Microsoft and Independent Liquor.

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