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Movings|Shakings: 20 November

Back to the homeland

Vodafone has announced the appointment of Louise Kuegler as its head of brand and insights.

She replaces Bart de Beucker who has decided to return to Europe after a three-year stint developing the Vodafone brand on this side of the world.  

Most recently, De Beucker was integral in the lauch of the well-received Piggy Sue campaign, which was this year selected as the the winner of the People’s Choice award in the StopPress TVC of the year competition.   

Kuegler is still finishing up at Icebreaker, where she serves as chief marketing officer, reporting to the company’s chief executive Rob Fyfe. 

Prior to this she has had extensive experience working in advertising agencies including Ogilvy and Mather, Colenso BBDO, and Publicis Mojo for clients including Coke, Unilever and Diageo. Earlier in her career, she worked for Nestle and Schwarzkopf as brand and product manager. She has also had broad international experience working in both global and local roles in Auckland, London, San Francisco and Singapore.
 
She is set to start her new role in January. 

In other Vodafone news, former TVNZ reporter Libby Middlebrook has joined the telco as its external communications manager.

Middlebrook’s shift into PR comes off the back of a long journalism career, which has included stints at Sunday, Fair Go, Campbell Live, the Sunday Star-TImes and the New Zealand Herald.  

Digital stripes

Accenture has appointed Ben Morgan as digital director for Accenture Interactive New Zealand as part of a move to expand its digital capabilities in the local market.

Morgan is a senior digital executive with more than a decade of consulting and industry experience around the world. His recent focus has been leading teams developing and implementing digital products across a range of consumer industries.

Morgan joins Accenture from Air New Zealand where he has been leading the airline’s digital experience vision, strategy and roadmap. 

“Ben has strong credentials in digital products, delivery and transformation and we feel he’s a great addition to our growing team,” says New Zealand country manager Justin Gray.

“In the UK Ben created digital business units at organisations such as Tesco and his extensive experience spanning strategy, concept definition, product development, design, UX and agile delivery will be invaluable to our New Zealand clients.” 

Morgan will be based in Accenture’s Auckland office. 

Going rural

Tracta Advertising, an agency focused on the farming sector, has appointed Mark Lorrigan as a creative director. 

“Mark’s coming to work with us is really terrific,” says Tracta managing director Andy Walker. “We’ve been talking for about a year now, getting to know each other and making sure the move was right for both of us. There was never a question of Mark’s capability, and he’s added a lot of horsepower to our engine. So that just left ‘fit’, but even there it was pretty obvious it was never going to be an issue. He’s a great guy with a lovely (long suffering) family and he’s starting to look really comfortable in a pair of Red Bands.”

Lorrigan most recently served as a creative director of retail at DDB for over six and half years, and previously also held roles at the local and London based offices of Saatchi & Saatchi.

Lorrigan admits he faces a very different challenge as he sets about plying his trade in the rural sector.    

“While I’m not an expert in Agri yet, working amongst a group of people that are experts has been a massive kickstart for me,” says Lorrigan. I’ve been here for six weeks and have spent half my time on farm, in orchards and at various processing plants. I’ve always worked on quite varied categories in the past so it’s been a nice change to be able to give my full attention to Agribusiness, which is such an important sector in NZ. Andy and the team at Tracta have so much knowledge, passion and a very clear direction when it comes to rural advertising. I’m very excited to be part of it. 

The founding trio

Newcomer to the Auckland market, Urban List has appointed three staff members to run the local arm of the organisation. 

Marilynn McLachlan (left) joins as the content manager, Caylie Honeycombe (middle) as marketing manager and Olivia Atkinson (right) as a communications executive. 

McLachlan arrives at the online publication off the back of a four-month stint serving as the head of lifestyle products – digital at NZME. Before that, she spent a year as a writer at New Idea.

Honeycombe joined the organisation after a nine-month stint as the marketing and communications manager at Hawkins, and has also worked in the global communications department of Unilever in the united Kingdom. Earlier in her career, she worked at BurgerFuel.

Finally, Atkinson joins from content-markting publication Toast, where she served as digital editor for approximately seven months.   

Urban List founder Susannah George also told StopPress that she was looking to recruit someone for a sales role in the new year. 

Local expansion

Due to an influx of orders for its PocketMedia product range in New Zealand, Z Card has opened a local office and recruited Stuart Thompson and Melanie Heap to run it.  

Thompson has over 20 years of national and international media and advertising experience as well as a creative background that spans 25 years, having held senior positions at NZME in radio as well as with Bauer Media in New Zealand, and he previously also worked with The Wall Street Journal, Lloyd’s List and Intelligent Media. His New Zealand experience also includes senior management positions with APN News and Media, Val Morgan Cinema Advertising and NZ Picture Library.

Heap headed up Superdockets New Zealand for three years, after which she worked for 7 Group and Titan Outdoor within the highly competitive UK FMCG marketplace and held senior positions at APN News and Media. More recently, she has been enjoying the world of fashion, managing the marketing activity for a number of high profile brands throughout New Zealand.

Both Thompson and Heap have already started their new roles.

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