Sunee_ParipunnaOmnicom Media Group has appointed Sunee Paripunna as the CEO of Omnicom Media Group, Thailand. In her new role, Sunee is charged with the leadership of all Omnicom Media Group assets in Thailand, working alongside Paul Spencer, MD of OMD and Jerapol Yavapan, MD of PHD Thailand.

Sunee joins the Omnicom Media Group from MEC Thailand, where she assumed the post of Managing Director for over 6 years. Prior to MEC, Sunee was the Executive Director for Starcom Thailand, leading the P&G account. Her appointment is effective in March and she will be reporting to Jasmin Sohrabji, CEO, South East Asia, Omnicom Media Group.

 


 

stratasys Stratasys Asia Pacific, a manufacturer of 3D printers and materials for personal use, prototyping, and production, announced the appointment of Hiroaki Katayama as the new President and CEO of Stratasys Japan.

Mr. Katayama brings more than 20 years of management experience to his new role, covering industrial machinery importing business including 3D printers in Japan, and also management of manufacturers in China.

Stratasys Japan will continue to focus on key verticals including automotive, education, consumer electronics, consumer goods, medical & medical equipment and industrial machinery.

Stratasys subsidiaries include MakerBot and Solidscape, and the company operates the RedEye digital-manufacturing service. Stratasys has more than 1700 employees, holds over 500 granted or pending additive manufacturing patents globally, and has received more than 20 awards for its technology and leadership.

 


 

capillaryCapillary Technologies announced a joint marketing agreement with American Express in which American Express will introduce Capillary’s industry-leading Intelligent Customer Engagement solutions to select medium-sized retail merchants in the U.S. Capillary’s solutions enable merchants to engage with their customers across in-store, social media, e-mail, local and mobile channels, with a view to increasing shopper loyalty and fueling online and physical store sales. Over the past year, American Express and Capillary conducted a pilot program in Singapore in which American Express introduced Capillary’s SaaS-based platform to select mid-sized retail merchants. The success of the pilot program led to the joint marketing arrangement in the U.S., where American Express will connect interested retailers with Capillary.

Capillary’s suite of Intelligent Customer Engagement solutions enables retailers to capture and analyze data on customer behavior and shopping preferences through social media, e-mail, in store, local and mobile channels and arms marketers and in-store sales associates with a host of intuitive tools for cross-selling, up-selling and strengthening customer engagement, and increasing loyalty and return on marketing investment. The solution enables merchants to provide real-time personalized recommendations to shoppers and offer relevant promotions across any channel they choose, including physical stores, retailer web sites, e-newsletters, mobile apps, mobile-enabled sites, and relevant social media including Facebook fan pages and Twitter.

 


 

Tata_CommTata Communications, a leading provider of ‘A New World of Communications’, has been awarded the Best Carrier Ethernet Business Application title at the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) Carrier Ethernet Awards for the Asia-Pacific region. In its second year as the Official Connectivity Provider of Formula 1, this prestigious award recognized the company’s ability to deliver world-class connectivity to all Formula 1 race locations over its network - the largest privately-owned global network.

Tata Communications’ Ethernet Services in APAC have been recognized by numerous independent organizations around the globe. Most recently, it was awarded leadership status in the Forrester Wave™ research: Asia Pacific Carrier Ethernet Services, Q4 2013. Tata Communications was also positioned in the Leaders Quadrant of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Asia Pacific Network Service Providers 2012. The Magic Quadrant evaluates Network Service Providers based on their completeness of vision and ability to execute.

 


 

ArleneOMDOmnicom Media Group has announced the appointment of Arlene Ang to the role of China CEO for OMD, effective immediately.

Previously, the Omnicom Media Group, China CEO for Digital, Arlene has been responsible over the past 2 years for building the agencies digital capability and creating business units across search, mobile, programmatic buying and social. Prior to her digital role, Arlene was the Managing Director of OMD Beijing and lead on the Intel business, having joined OMD in 2010.

Arlene has over 20 years’ experience in the industry ranging from traditional advertising to digital, CRM, social and mobile. She launched her own digital marketing agency AdXplorer that developed into a network of 8 offices across Asia Pacific, which was sold to Publicis in 2004. She then helped Publicis to build their digital offering with Publicis Modem.

 


 

Media Agency PHD has undertaken a unique approach to its structure in Australia, organising the agency around its game changing operating system, Source. The successful adoption of the OS – a gamified collaboration engine that fuses marketing science, innovation and paid owned earned investment optimisation – has led the agency to structure itself around the three hubs of Communications Planning, Investment Planning and Business Planning. The new structure, in conjunction with significant growth, has been completed with a number of promotions:PeterPHD

Peter Hunter
has been promoted to the newly-created national Head of Business Planning and joins the national Executive team. Hunter was previously the agency’s national Head of Digital. In an increasingly digitalised media world – his skills and leadership in that space will spread across all aspects of PHD’s business planning.

 

ErinPHDErin Jakubans joins as People and Development Director, having moved across from Omnicom Media Group in NZ.

 

StewartPHD

PHD Strategy Director Stewart Gurney
has been promoted to the overall agency Leadership Team and takes up the newly-formed role of Head of Communications Planning in Sydney. The latter is thoroughly deserved recognition for his work on many of PHD’s award winning work.

 


 

Rubicon Project, which operates the industry’s largest independent real-time trading platform for digital advertising, has recruited Chris Waterman as Sales Director – Seller Cloud, Asia Pacific.

Chris_WatermanBased in Sydney, Waterman will work closely with publishers and applications across the APAC region to help them improve efficiencies in their digital media and optimize yields via advertising automation.

Joining from Fairfax Media, where he began as Campaign Manager and most recently worked as a Platforms Specialist, Waterman’s range of advertising industry expertise spans digital media, programmatic trading, performance marketing and data driven advertising.

Rubicon Project’s real time trading technology enables the buying and selling of premium inventory from more than 500 of the world’s premium publishers through an automated advertising platform. Driven by innovation, the company has engineered one of the largest real-time cloud and Big Data computing systems, processing trillions of transactions each month within milliseconds.

 


 

POSSIBLE, a WPP digital company, strengthens its strategic capabilities in Asia Pacific with the appointment of Berlinda Lim as Head of Analytics, Asia Pacific.

BerlindaBerlinda is a seasoned CRM and Loyalty marketer with over fifteen years of experience across a broad spectrum of disciplines, including data analytics, loyalty marketing, CRM systems, call center management, ecommerce, brand development and creative planning.

Her expertise in these areas will strengthen and drive POSSIBLE’s “Does It Work” philosophy – the agency’s belief that the ultimate success metric is whether it has created real, long term value for its clients. This simple philosophy relies on analytics to ensure that POSSIBLE understands the impact of its efforts and seeks to continuously improve.

Berlinda has extensive regional experience working with multi-nationals and SMEs, delivering turnkey CRM projects across Asia Pacific, Europe and Middle East.

Prior to joining POSSIBLE, Berlinda was the Country Manager for ICLP, spearheading business development in China.

 


 

SpotXchange Inc., the trusted platform for video advertising, announced the appointment of Sujen Selva as Regional Manager, Southeast Asia.

In this newly created role, Selva will be responsible for leading SpotXchange’s efforts in Southeast Asia and supporting both publisher and advertiser relations in the region. Based in Singapore, Selva will report to Matt Von der Muhll, Managing Director for SpotXchange, Asia Pacific.

SpotXchange has achieved significant growth in the APAC region since opening its Australian office in 2011 and has seen programmatic video advertising revenue in the region grow almost 900 percent from 2011 to 2013. The company also continues to drive awareness and education for programmatic trading in the Asia Pacific markets.

Prior to joining SpotXchange, Selva held the role of Social Specialist at Adconion Australia, where he was instrumental in launching the social media platform for the company and managed its operations and product development.

 


 

logo-apaceffieAPAC Effie has announced the four Heads of Jury who will form up the Judging Committee for its 2014 Awards.

 


Ajay-KakarMr Ajay Kakar, Chief Marketing Officer – Financial Services, Aditya Birla Group, comes with a unique agency-cum-client perspective. He has worked at the agency end for over 14 years, at Ogilvy & Mather, across the 3 key disciplines of Direct Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations. And for the last 8 years, he has been a client. Today, he leads Marketing across the 9 lines of business of the Aditya Birla Financial Services Group, that include life insurance, asset management, broking, general insurance broking, online money management, non-banking financial companies (NBFC), private equity, project and structured finance, and wealth management & distribution. ABFSG enjoys the trust of over 5.3 million customers, across 500+ markets.

 

LightfootMr Ben Lightfoot, CEO, McCann Worldgroup Singapore, was appointed in 2010 after re-establishing the McCann presence in the New Zealand market, where he held a dual role of Creative and Managing Director. With more than 18 years of experience within advertising and communications, Ben has held senior roles in both creative and management across brand, retail, direct and digital, and has been internationally awarded for both strategy and creativity in each of these disciplines.

 

Nicky-LimMr Nicky Lim, Regional Director for the ASEAN region for Geometry Global, WPP’s latest and largest shopper activation agency, the current Vice President of 4As Malaysia, joins the jury, too. He was Grey Group’s Area Director for Malaysia and Thailand in April 2012 after leading Grey Group Malaysia as CEO from October 2007. As a strong advocate for ideation and effectiveness, Lim’s leadership at Grey Group Malaysia drove the agency to become a top achiever at every single Malaysia Effie awards for five consecutive years. Lim’s single minded ambition was to mainly focus on effectiveness in addition to creativity, which produced both local and international award winning work. Lim was also appointed as Jury Chairman for Malaysia Effie awards in 2012 and 2013.

 

Pully_Chau1Ms Pully Chau, Chairman and CEO of Draftfcb Greater China, has a deep history of involvement with the Effie program with multiple years of experience judging for Effie China as both a judge and jury leader. She has been named Advertising Person of the Year for China twice. Pully’s industry experience also includes her position as the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi China, prior to her current role at Draftfcb Greater China.

The group of Heads of Jury will form the Judging Committee, together with Ms Connie Chan, the Awards and Judging Chairman for APAC Effie Awards 2014. The Committee will head up the jury curated from the industry across Asia Pacific in the judging sessions.

Finalists will be announced in end of February 2014, with the Awards Gala set to take place in Singapore in April 2014. For more information, visit www.apaceffie.com.

 


 

The SUN International Finance Group (SUNIFG), a Hong Kong based financial group, has launched a rebranding campaign, which uses the core element of sun to communicate the brand benefits to consumers.

Developed by Havas Media Hong Kong, the objective of this campaign is to position SUNIFG as a one stop professional investment firm, which can help investors navigate the unpredictable world of investment.

Taglined “Together We Rise” the campaign was launched on 13th January and will run until end of the year by making use of three key media including TV, print and OOH to drive awareness about the brand.

Targeted at consumers looking for investment services, the creative strategy for this campaign involved using the imagery of “sun” to communicate how the investment environment can be positively impacted by a stable and influential company, similar to the way in which sun can bring one’s family better life, hope, and a good future.

Creative executions of this campaign use images of sunlight to depict how it can give hope to families during a bad weather. In order to differentiate itself in the competitive investment market category, SUNIFG chose the consumer focus approach to bring out the brand benefits as opposed to the popular tradition adopted by competitive brands focusing on their products to promote the brand.

 


 

John2Qihoo 360 Technology Co. Ltd., a leading Internet company in China, announced the appointment of Dr. John Liu as Chief Business Officer, effective immediately.

Before joining the company, Dr. Liu served as the Corporate Vice President and Head of Greater China at Google Inc. since  anuary 2008, where he was responsible for business development and operations. From 2002 to 2007, Dr. Liu was the CEO of China Operations at SK Telecom. Prior to that, Dr. Liu held various senior management positions in a number of tech and telecom companies.

He received his B.S. degree from Beijing Normal University and earned his Ph.D from Technical University of Denmark.

 


 

VersionOne Inc., recognized by agile practitioners as the leader in agile application lifecycle management (ALM) software solutions, announced today that it has expanded its leadership team, adding executives with proven experience in helping customers with agile project success and in business leadership with high-growth software companies.

Lowell Lindstrom has joined as vice president of services; Peter Herbert has joined as vice president of marketing; and Andy Powell has been promoted to vice president of customer experience. These executives join VersionOne's accomplished leadership team to help accelerate growth and meet increasing customer demand for agile solutions:

LowellLowell Lindstrom – Vice President, Services

Lowell Lindstrom is among the early pioneers of agile and has been deeply involved in developing and deploying software products for 30 years. Before joining VersionOne, Lowell led the Oobeya Group, an agile and lean services firm he founded to help organizations succeed at agile adoption. Prior to founding Oobeya, Lowell was a partner at Object Mentor, an organization that helped launch the agile movement and developed partnerships that laid the groundwork for the Agile Manifesto and formation of the Agile Alliance. Lowell holds a bachelor's degree in computer science and a master's degree in management from Northwestern University.

peterV1Peter Herbert – Vice President, Marketing

Peter Herbert has nearly 20 years of experience in strategic marketing and corporate communications, including demand generation, public relations, corporate and product positioning, content strategy, and channel development for both global and emerging technology companies. Prior to VersionOne, Peter served as vice president of marketing at Brightree, where he led the company's marketing and product marketing efforts, helping the company triple revenue over three years. He has also held senior marketing roles at technology companies such as TerraGo Technologies, DataPath, S1, and Radiant Systems. He holds a bachelor's degree from New York University and an MBA from Emory University.

AndyAndy Powell – Vice President, Customer Experience

During his 13-year career in the software development industry, Andy Powell has assisted in numerous enterprise agile rollouts with companies such as Siemens, Adobe, EMC and Sabre. Since joining VersionOne in 2006, Andy has served in various roles that include product management, leading VersionOne's sales engineering team, and serving as a product evangelist for the company's strategic initiatives. Recently, he has helped lead VersionOne's strategy with respect to agile program and portfolio management. Andy holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Notre Dame.

 


 

AddieStarMobile, Inc., a company that offers a disruptive, cloud-based solution that delivers enterprise mobility at a fraction of the cost and time of any other approach, announced that Addie Bourne has been named executive vice president, sales and marketing, reporting directly to StarMobile President and CEO Todd Fryburger.

Bourne is an accomplished senior executive with 30 years of global sales and marketing experience at established and emerging technology companies. She has led high performance teams focused on enterprise mobility at Kony, SAP and CAS, working with CIOs and line of business executives to develop and execute their mobile strategies. Bourne also previously served in executive roles at Cybercash, Seer Technologies and Legent Corporation.

She has a Bachelor's degree in Journalism and Marketing from The Ohio State University, and resides with her family in Atlanta, Georgia.

 


 

The Internet Marketing Association (IMA) has announced that Jeff Marcoux has joined the organization's Board of Directors. Marcoux currently serves as Senior Product Marketing Manager for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

JeffMarcoux has a strong record of accomplishments in the marketing automation and consulting industry where he has led service, consulting, implementation, marketing and sales engineering teams. He also worked in the residential real estate industry to leverage mobile technology for lead generation.

He attended theUniversity of Washingtonwhere he received his MBA in Leadership, a Certificate in Technology Entrepreneurship, and was a Board Fellow for Leadership Eastside. Marcoux also currently sits on the board of Washington CASH, a non-profit organization focused on helping those in poverty create businesses to change their lives.

In 2013 Marcoux received special Congressional recognition for Excellence in Internet Marketing Leadership from U.S. CongressmanJohn Campbell. And he was honored with two IMPACT13 Awards by the Internet Marketing Association, one for Excellence in Business Leadership and the other in the Webinar: Educational category for the management of a Microsoft webinar series.

With more than 900,000 members, the Internet Marketing Association is one of the fastest growing professional organizations in the world and encompasses a wide spectrum of educated professionals in sales, marketing, business ownership, programming, creative development and related fields.

 


 

Irdeto, the world leader in Multiscreen, Media Protection and Revenue Assurance solutions, announced a new partnership with Envivio, a leading provider of software-based video processing and delivery solutions, that will better enable operators to streamline live channels over-the-top (OTT) across multi-screen platforms and devices.

Irdeto and Envivio are excited to include Microsoft PlayReady LiveTV content protection in their live linear OTT solution, available on multiple platforms including Windows, iOS and Android devices, gaming consoles and connected TVs. The joint solution will be first deployed in the market with a Tier-1 European cable operator in early 2014.

The Irdeto and Envivio solution combines automatic key rotation and PlayReady LiveTV which minimizes the number of license requests per subscriber, while helping operators significantly reduce the backend infrastructure footprint and control their costs. In addition, the support for fast-channel switching enables a smooth, uninterrupted end-user experience in live TV scenarios.

 


 

Saatchi & Saatchi Arachnid has been reappointed as the Digital Agency of Record for PETRONAS Lubricants International (PLI), following an agency review involving seven other leading agencies. Saatchi & Saatchi Arachnid Malaysia won the business based on their credentials, track record and an in-depth review process with PLI.

As the incumbent agency for PLI for the last three years, Saatchi & Saatchi Arachnid has been responsible for the development and management of all digital properties for PLI globally, which include web, social and internal campaigns, as well as solutions.

In line with PLI’s aggressive marketing plans in 2014 and beyond, Saatchi & Saatchi Arachnid will be tasked with growing the brand’s visibility in the digital space and engaging with its business and consumer targets through various initiatives, starting with revamping the current PLI group website to cater to the requirements of their various global offices.

 


 

Opera Software announced that Danish electronics manufacturer Bang &Olufsen is now shipping the latest version of the Opera Devices Software Development Kit (SDK) on selected high-end connected TVs, bringing Bang &Olufsen viewers first-rate support for online video streaming services.

The SDK powers the user interface of Bang &Olufsen’s smart TVs, deploys HbbTV, and adds a unified video architecture for a simplified way to serve video content. It renders the popular web applications Spotify and BBC iPlayer, and enables content certifications for YouTube Leanback 4.0 so viewers can enjoy their favorite online clips on their TVs.

The Opera Devices SDK is an industry-leading toolkit for developing Smart TV solutions. With advanced web-standards support – including HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, SVG, 2D Canvas and WebGL – the Opera Devices SDK takes connected devices to a new level, for superior streaming performance and web-content rendering.

 


 

Taiwan’s Institute for Information Industry (III) has joined the HomeGrid Forum Board. III adds an Asian voice and point of view to the Board, better enabling HomeGrid Forum to understand and react to the needs of Asian Operators, vendors and consumers.

Founded in 1979 as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), think tank and management consultancy, III’s goal is to promote the development of Taiwan’s ICT Industry and the deployment of ICT in both the public and private sectors. III is at the very heart of the ICT revolution in Taiwan, continuously working to evaluate and then energetically promote leading ICT technologies such as G.hn.

HomeGrid Forum members have brought G.hn from only a concept to successful global adoption in less than three years. G.hn is the premier high-performance wireline home networking technology available anywhere. It provides a robust network backbone for streaming multiple simultaneous video channels - including HDTV and Ultra-HD, audio and VoIP, video surveillance and gaming over any wire to any room in the home.


 

MicrosftMicrosoft Corp. announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Parature, a leading provider of cloud-based customer engagement solutions. The acquisition will add world-class customer self-service capabilities to further accelerate the Microsoft Dynamics vision of helping organizations deliver amazing customer experiences.

As a provider of cloud-based customer service software to midsize and enterprise organizations, Parature has a well-earned reputation for outstanding customer service with 70 million users worldwide and more than 500 well-known brands, including Ask.com, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, IBM, Saba Software Inc., Tagged Inc. and Threadless. The company also received the 2013 Frost & Sullivan Customer Value Enhancement Award for using social media to help organizations deliver outstanding customer service.

Parature's approach to its solutions enables organizations to take advantage of an extendable knowledge base available through self-service portals on the Web and Facebook, support ticketing, mobile customer care on virtually any device the customer chooses to use, social customer support, and chat for both traditional customer service scenarios and proactive sales engagement to create new, revenue-generating opportunities for the business. These capabilities complement the existing Microsoft Dynamics CRM customer-care solution with core strengths in workflow, extensibility and process-driven user experiences that allow contact center agents to do their best work. Microsoft will continue to offer Parature solutions and support all new and existing customers as the company works to further enhance these offerings.

 


 

Dedicated to providing the highest-quality video platform, Vimeo announced this week the debut of its fastest player yet. Rebuilt from the ground up, Vimeo's new player offers the most elegant viewing experience across any device by automatically defaulting to HTML5. Vimeo also continues to empower creators by adding in-player transaction support for VimeoOn Demand that allows any Vimeo PRO member to sell their work their way, on their own sites or across the web.

"Since launching the VimeoOn Demand platform last year, we've continued to add new features that empower filmmakers to sell directly to their audiences on their own terms," said Vimeo CEO, Kerry Trainor. "The addition of in-player transaction support allows creators even further control by making any embedded Vimeo player a point of sale, be it on a creator's own website or any page across the web."

Key features include:

  • Faster playback: The new player is much faster with 50% reduced load and click to playtimes.
  • Smarter and more responsive: The player now defaults viewers to HTML5 to provide the most elegant viewing experience possible on desktop, mobile, and tablet. It also employs responsive web design to provide dynamic loading of design elements and further assure the optimal viewing of Vimeo videos.
  • In-player transaction support: Viewers who encounter VimeoOn Demand content embedded off Vimeo.com can make purchases directly from the video player.
  • Wider accessibility: Vimeo increased viewer accessibility with screen reader and voiceover compatibility. Plus, creators can now add closed captioning and translated subtitles to their videos, supporting viewership around the world.
  • Better sharing: The new player offers better sharing with improved tools that allow users to email, embed and post to social networks in one place.

 

Encryptics, a provider of patented data privacy and protection services for businesses and government, announced today that receivables management company Gila LLC will use the Encryptics Data Protection API™ to protect outsourced data from government agencies.Gila's use of the Encryptics API, in addition to the adoption of Encryptics' flagship email product, will allow the company to reduce liability and increase secure e-communication.

Encryptics provides a patented data protection and Digital Rights Management (DRM) platform ideal for enterprise-wide implementation. Encryptics solutions address common security risks by protecting data at the device level, before a transfer takes place, and providing data access controls that can be enforced in real time. Seamlessly integrated into an organization's existing infrastructure, these solutions protect against breaches and leaks that can occur when using data backup, cloud storage, e-communication, content management, and other data-handling systems.