Capital show
FCB New Zealand has appointed Sean Keaney as general manager of its Wellington office. Keaney, who is currently general manager at Clemenger BBDO, will start in December.
FCB New Zealand chief executive Brian van den Hurk says Keaney’s 20 years of experience in advertising and marketing, both at agency and client side, will be a huge benefit to FCB’s Wellington clients and the FCB team based in the capital.
“Sean has a unique perspective on advertising, and his experience in marketing and proven leadership track record will complement the skills we already have in the Wellington office,” say van den Hurk.
Keaney previously held leadership roles in New Zealand agencies RBR, The Tin Drum and RAPP/DDB.
His business experience aligns with FCB New Zealand’s client base, having spent most of his career working on public sector brands and commercial business.
“I’m really looking forward to working with Brian and the FCB team once again, and now on a permanent basis. The agency has attracted several major clients in recent years, produced some very successful campaigns and now has more government clients than any other agency. It’s an exciting time to join an agency that is ranked as one of the top agencies for social change marketing in the world. I’m looking forward to being a part of the team.”
He replaces current general manager Paul Irwin, who is moving to Education New Zealand as general manager, marketing and channel development.
More MediaWorks moves
After seven years at Mediaworks, the last five of which as general manager of interactive sales, Graeme Underwood has resigned to move to a sales manager position at Seek NZ. And less than a week into the job, Scout’s news editor Francis Cook has resigned.
Integration/rationalisation
Stuff up
Fairfax recently restructured its newsroom as part of the News Rewired programme, rescoping 159 roles and creating 174. And as a few of the old campaigners depart, it has announced a number of new hires.
Bridget Hope’s appointment in the newly-established role of group editor, life, was announced a few months back and she arrived this week.
Herald life and style editor Nicky Park has joined Fairfax as life channel director.
Pip Keane has been appointed as news director of the Sundays team. Keane worked on the Sunday Star-Times from 1997-1999 as a general news reporter before moving to Holmes at TVNZ. She became their youngest executive producer in 2001 and stayed there until 2004 when she moved with Paul Holmes to Prime and then moving to producing Prime News. She moved to Radio Live in 2009 to produce the Marcus Lush breakfast show and few weeks in Mark Jennings asked her if she’d be interested in replacing Carol Hirschfeld on Campbell Live. Initially she said no, but she joined and spent six years there.
Amy Maas has also been appointed as news director of the Sundays team. She was most recently chief reporter for the Herald on Sunday and was this year named best crime and justice feature writer at the Canon Media Awards. She has previously worked as a reporter for the Sunday Star-Times.
Kim Choe has joined Fairfax as news director after spending the first half of 2015 in the United States, where she was a Fellow at the City University of New York’s Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism. Prior to that she was chief of staff for 3news.co.nz and a 3 News television reporter.
At Stuff, Angela Quigan, currently the chief editor of Mediaworks’ 3News.co.nz, has been appointed homepage editor. She piloted the site through its biggest periods of growth and helped build the 3 News Facebook page to more than 180,000 fans. She will do double-duty for Stuff, as part of both the five-strong homepage editor team and the six-strong Social & Stuff Nation Producer team.
Joanne Butcher will be emigrating from Newcastle in the UK where she is a content editor for ncjMedia. Her multi-platform newsroom operates the Chronicle Live website and several print titles.
Joining as digital producers, Victoria Young has worked in the parliamentary press gallery and as a senior producer on Morning Report before her four-year stint as a homepage editor at nzherald.co.nz and Rhonwyn Newson is a former weekend editor for nzherald.co.nz and editor of the Family Health Diary.
Jeremy Rees and Cathy O’Sullivan also joined earlier this year.
Fairfax comms manager Emma Carter also confirmed to the NBR that a sales restructure “to better serve clients across the regions” is also underway.
Bye bye Bauer
Suzanne Bull, Bauer’s agency sales director, has resigned after just over a year in the role.
Commercial director Paul Gardiner said she is “an excellent operator and her deep understanding of advertising agencies and New Zealand media has been a fantastic asset to the business. She has played an instrumental part in a number of key projects, particularly around trading and improving our sales processes.”
It’s not clear where Bull is heading.
A replacement is expected to be announced in the coming weeks.
New kingpin
Sovereign has appointed James Perrin as head of brand.
Perrin has 18 years’ experience building and leading integrated and digital specialist marketing teams across a range of key finance and telco businesses including GE, Prudential (UK), T-Mobile (UK) and Telecom. He previously held the role of head of digital marketing at ANZ.
New Zealand is reported as having the third lowest penetration of insurance among 31 OECD countries with only Greece and Mexico having a lower insurance penetration. And, “building on Sovereign’s 25 years of helping Kiwis take charge of their lives, we’re poised to push boundaries even further to find new and effective ways of addressing the issue of underinsurance”.
Sovereign’s chief marketing and innovation officer, Chris Lamers, says Perrin’s strong integrated marketing and digital experience is critical as Sovereign focuses on targeting New Zealanders who have not traditionally engaged with insurance companies, yet don’t have a plan to pay the bills if they are not able to work for an extended period of time.
“Last year we started the journey of shaking things up in the insurance industry and as a result thousands of New Zealander’s now have peace of mind knowing that if they can’t work, we’ll look after their finances. With James’ expertise we’re ready to significantly increase investment in our digital strategy, with the ultimate aim of continuing to help New Zealanders take charge of their lives.”
Ben Rose was previously head of brand and moved to head of business operations in May.
Postr children
NZVIF, Angel HQ, ICE Angels as well as industry execs from Europe and APAC are among the investors that have backed the ad-blocker resistant mobile advertising platform Postr. And Roger Shakes and Megan Hansen have joined forces to head up the Auckland office.
Postr has expanded its team to include five full time staff and a number of contractors. Hansen has been appointed VP sales servicing the agency world and managing ad-serving and she comes from an extensive background in digital media, having worked at Seek, TradeMe, and MetService.
Roger Shakes, as VP Partnerships, is looking after the platform alliances of the business and he brings both international and local digital marketing experience, having started and successfully sold an agency in the UK. He was previously at Running with Scissors. And his mission is to add more value to the user experience of Postr by adding a variety of content options as well as displaying premium ads on the mobile locksreen, while building key relationships around that.
“We’ve seen this huge transition from desktop usage to mobile devices and it’s time to really capture that marketplace,” says Hansen. “It’s easy to forget how much time people spend on their mobiles, with an average of 80-90 daily sessions per device on Androids in New Zealand. Postr delivers 100 percent viewable ads to these user sessions and is 100 percent resistant to mobile ad blockers.”
To date, publishers have focused on in-app and m-site advertising while Postr focuses on user targeted advertising with every unique mobile device user session via the lock screen.
“Postr uses a proprietary targeting and distribution mechanisms for ad serving, creating a data flow that sits outside of ‘conventional’ digital and mobile ad serving. This means our platform is not affected by ad blocking software like Shine. Postr is an opt-in advertising experience for users so this makes sense from an experience point of view too,” Hansen says.
Since March, Postr also facilitates content from NZ Herald, GrabOne, and MetService on the lock-screen through a set up function that allows users to access personalised content up to 3 times faster than through conventional apps or mobile browsers.
A creative loss
DDB Asia Pacific chairman John Zeigler has retired after nearly three decades with DDB Group and 11 years at the helm of DDB Asia Pacific. He will remain with the network as chairman emeritus Asia Pacific.
DDB Group Australia & New Zealand Chairman, Marty O’Halloran, continues to lead the Pacific and focuses on further growth of the region, while president and CEO DDB Singapore, David Tang, steps into Asia’s top job, chief executive DDB Asia. O’Halloran will now report directly into DDB Worldwide chief executive officer, Chuck Brymer.
“In his time as the head of the region, John has achieved outstanding financial growth and has championed our creative success,” says O’Halloran. “John has been a great mentor and supporter of my efforts to grow DDB Australia and New Zealand and I’m going to miss those crazy ideas!”
Zeigler has been with DDB since the network bought his agency, Kuscyinski and Zeigler in 1986. Under his tenure he has led and managed agencies in Melbourne, Dallas and Singapore before assuming his current role in 2004.
He has been credited with leading one of the most successful agency networks in Asia Pacific spanning 26 agencies in 14 countries with more than 3,200 employees. In 2010 and 2012, under his watch, DDB Group Asia Pacific was awarded Campaign’s Creative Network of the Year and he was named Campaign’s Agency Head of the Year in 2010. John was instrumental in leading the agency’s creative renaissance with DDB claiming Network of the Year at Spikes Asia and AdFest in 2010, 2011, 2012 — and has consistently remained in the top three ever since.
In 2013, Zeigler was honored as Global Marketer of the Year by the Academy of Marketing Science along with the Brand Leadership Award at the CMO Asia Awards.
“I have worked with many talented people, and the time is right for these same people to continue to drive DDB Asia Pacific forward under Marty and David’s helm. DDB has been my extended family for so long, and I will always think of it with fondness, pride and admiration,” Zeigler says.
