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Movings/Shakings: 9 September

New names

Chapman (left) and Davy. 

Following on from the arrival of Zoo in the New Zealand market, Auckland has another new creative agency called Davy & Chapman, which describes itself as “a multi-disciplined creative agency underpinned by strategy”. 
 
Campaign director Aaron Davy and creative director Mike Chapman are behind the new agency and the pair have worked together for over 15 years in creative, design and print fields, most recently at CCL Communications Group.
 
Davy & Chapman represents a diverse range of businesses with clients including Southern Cross Hospitals, Rowing New Zealand and Auckland Conventions, Venues & Events.
  
“As with many business sectors, ours is a crowded and competitive market with everyone vying for a point of difference. We are all about relationships, are confident in our creative expression and strive for excellence in our service delivery,” says Davy.
 
Chapman adds: “There’s no substitute for great relationships, passion and authenticity. We thrive on working in partnership with our clients to create brands that influence perception and create a truly engaging experience … We’re not afraid to push the boundaries so we can genuinely connect with people. In a creative agency, it’s about harbouring that challenger mentality and striking the right balance between creative collaboration and delivering measurable results.” 

Skellern moves on

After three years as general manager marketing at Heinz Watties and one as chief marketing officer of the Australia-New Zealand HJ Heinz operation based in Melbourne, Tim Skellern has left the company and is seeking new opportunities. 

Skellern spent three years with Wattie’s after immigrating to New Zealand from the UK in 2004. As business manager – meal solutions with Wattie’s, he played a leading role in the creation of two major marketing campaigns, the award-winning FMCG television commercial ‘Wattie’s – What Else!’ and Beanman, perhaps the world’s only legume superhero (moderately interesting bean fact: most commercial baked beans are stewed, not baked). He then set up his own company Black Sheep Brands in 2007 and started as general manager marketing in 2010 and oversaw a major change to the Food in a Minute platform in 2012

Hyde and seek

Qrious, the big data business launched by Spark Ventures in March, has announced the appointment of Ed Hyde as its chief executive officer.

Hyde brings a wealth of experience in senior roles with technology companies in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, and has been instrumental in the successful establishment of the Spark Ventures innovation and incubator business unit within Spark New Zealand.  

“Qrious is ready to expand its horizons and deliver insights to more New Zealand businesses,” says Rod Snodgrass, chief executive of Spark Ventures. “Ed has a strong strategic, product and commercial focus, but more importantly Ed is a guy who wants to push boundaries, challenge the status quo and change the game. That approach and mind-set will be pivotal as Qrious helps New Zealand organisations create value from data, analytics and applications.” 

Hyde says we are living in a new digital age, where the smart use of data is an exploding global phenomena.

“It’s rapidly changing the way people live and do business. Qrious helps businesses better leverage available data to make quicker and more improved decisions than previously possible. Significant benefits can be derived from the combination of information, the insights that can be gleaned from that information, and the application of those insights into valuable action. Qrious brings together a powerful combination of platform and people expertise to help New Zealand businesses better utilise data. Organisations can privately and securely host their own data and combine this with other public or private datasets such as demographic data, address databases and weather to create more powerful insights than previously possible. Our experts can help them to work with this data to derive valuable information and understanding.” 

Like the clappers

Jason Clapperton has ventured out on his own with a company called Make it Matter. After originally founding Running with Scissors, he moved to Blackwood Communications Group, then to DraftFCB Australia for two years and then to Droga5 before a two year stint back at Running With Scissors. 

He’s still working with Running with Scissors as a strategic consultant, but he now works with multiple agencies and directly with clients. 

Snakk snatches Google number cruncher

Snakk Media has announced the appointment of Bob Mohan as the company’s inaugural chief financial officer. He joins Snakk from Google where he spent the last 11 years working across the search engine giant’s corporate finance operations, including leading the merger and acquisition efforts for more than 130 acquisitions such as Android, DoubleClick and YouTube.

American-born Mohan joined Google in the US a year before its 2004 IPO, then moved to Sydney in 2009 to lead the company’s Asia Pacific accounting team of 30 members across six regional offices.

Mohan’s career includes 20 years’ experience in corporate finance positions spanning startups through to Fortune 500 companies. Most of this time has been spent in future-focused and fast-growing internet companies.

“Mohan’s extensive experience will be a huge benefit to Snakk,” says group chief executive Mark Ryan. “We are a small company with tremendous opportunities in front of us. We’ve come to a point where we want to take some significant steps forward with our growth plans. Now that we have a presence in Asia and are looking more closely at strategic investments and a potential ASX listing, it is the right time for us to bring on board someone of his calibre. He’s a rare talent who’s been involved in some of the world’s largest technology merger and acquisition deals, strategic equity investments as well as Google’s pre and post IPO processes. We are thrilled that he’s joined the executive management team.”

Mohan started his new role on 8 September, and is based in the Sydney office.

He will be in New Zealand for the company’s 2014 AGM and #SnakkLive evening panel event on 16 September where he will be joined by other members of the Snakk executive management team.

Suiting up

Pead PR has added a corporate division to its stable of specialist services.

“While Pead PR is respected for its expertise in the consumer brands space, the reality is we have always been called upon to deliver corporate work for our clients,” says client services director Candice Robertson. “Demand is such that we are now in a position to create a specialist division to service businesses with all their corporate communication needs – from reputation management, to community and stakeholder relations, managing issues and of course, first class media relations.” 

The team also has a strong interest in financial and investor communications. It has previously managed communications for the sale of drinks brand Charlie’s to Asahi-Schweppes and IPO communications for Ecoya, Moa Beer and most recently Scales, the Christchurch-based agribusiness company.  

The corporate division is led by: 

  • Candice Robertson, client services director, who has experience in both consumer and corporate PR, both in NZ and the UK. She oversees strategy and new business development.
  • Account director Leandri Smith, who has PR experience in both NZ and South Africa with a focus on business, financial and industry related clients. She manages client relationships and media relations.
  • And senior writer David Paine, who is a seasoned PR professional specialising in IT, business and marketing copy. 

Grabbing a pen 

Marketing executive Erin Riley has departed from GrabOne after more than four years to start a freelance writing service called Lingo. 

Creative team leader Alex Macrill, who started with the company about two years ago, has now stepped into her position.
Both employees started their careers at GrabOne as copywriters, before quickly moving up the ranks. 

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