Viacom International Media Networks announced the appointment of Paras Sharma as new Vice President of MTV Brand, Comedy Central & Digital Media Asia. Paras will start the job on March 17 and will be based in Singapore, reporting to Indra Suharjono, Executive Vice-President and Managing Director for Asia.

parasIn this newly expanded role, Paras will spearhead implementation of new strategies to drive synergies and grow the brands across the different lines of businesses and platforms in Asia.

Paras joins VIMN Asia with extensive experience from the world of movies, music and sports. Prior to VIMN, Paras was the Vice President of Fox International Channels (FIC), responsible for leading integrated marketing and communication programs across 24 markets in Asia, overseeing Consumer, Affiliate & Trade Marketing, Corporate Communications, On-Air Promotions & Digital Media.

Paras has also worked in leading advertising agencies including JWT and McCann Erickson, and handled a wide mix of leading global and national brands across categories including Citibank, MasterCard, adidas, Bacardi Martini, Pond’s, Nestle & Goodyear.

He graduated with a Degree in Mechanical Engineering and further to do his MBA in Marketing.

Paras replaces Sian Ju Tan, the Asia Vice President of MTV & Comedy Central Brands. Sian Ju who has been serving her notice, has been part of the MTV family for over 18 years. She leaves the company to pursue the next phase of her career. The company is grateful for Sian Ju’s leadership and during her tenure, she has provided solid expertise in driving the MTV brand to what it is today in Asia, and contributed to MTV’s global reach of more than a half-billion households and position as one of the most social-media brands in the world.

 

 

davidOne Llama Labs, the leader in audio artificial Intelligence for wearable devices announced the appointment of David Tcheng as the company’s Chief Science Officer.

One Llama Labs' audio artificial intelligence technology is based on research that began over 10 years ago at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC) National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in the Automated Learning Lab (ALG) which Tcheng co-founded. With funding from the National Science Foundation Tcheng helped develop a software environment for acoustic music analysis called M2K (Music to Knowledge) based on D2K (Data to Knowledge) a data flow machine learning framework. Tcheng has developed machine learning methods for academic, commercial and government projects for the past 28 years.

One Llama will be launching next month an app that will listen to danger when you are not paying attention. The new app called Audio Aware is the first of its kind that lets the hard of hearing and the distracted know when danger approaches.

 

 

AccuWeather announced it is working with Samsung to provide a pre-loaded weather app on the newly announced Samsung Galaxy S5. This is the latest step in a strong relationship between the two companies, providing weather with Superior Accuracy™ and the best possible user experience.

In fact, both companies have a long-standing relationship, with AccuWeather’s content and applications pre-loaded and made available on a wide range of Samsung mobile devices including the bestselling Galaxy S handsets and Note tablets.

The latest version of the AccuWeather widget provides Samsung’s Galaxy S4 users with weather on their home screens, as well as global 7-day forecasts, sky conditions, high and low temperatures, satellite images, and AccuWeather’s patented RealFeel temperature index. Samsung users will always have access to the most accurate and up-to-date weather.

In 2014, the company will launch the AccuWeather Channel, an “All Weather, All the Time™” multi-platform national channel for forecasts with Superior Accuracy.

 

 

The Digital + Direct Marketing Association Asia [D+D] announces its partnership with the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council, a global organisation of 7,000 senior marketers in 110 countries. Following the official launch of [D+D] in January, the renewed and revamped digital and direct marketing group will now be aligned with an influential executive network whose members control more than $400 billion in aggregated annual marketing spend.

The new partnership promises to expand opportunities for members of both organisations in the vital and growing Asia-Pacific market. Senior client-side marketers will benefit from the CMO Council’s global knowledge transfer network, research and events, as well as peer-level insights and engagement in the C-suite. Publishers, advertisers, solution/service providers, and agencies will find that the CMO Council’s surveys and studies provide perspectives and market data that will help stimulate new opportunities for business growth.

[D+D] and the CMO Council are gearing up for an eventful year ahead with plans to drive new initiatives that promote regional senior level marketer engagement, knowledge exchange, peer networking, talent sourcing and training. The two groups will also team on developing expert reports and publications featuring valuable localised content and best practice studies. Recent CMO Council reports in APAC have focused on digital marketing effectiveness, big data intelligence, as well as marketing and operational alignment around customer experience.

 

 

Integrated communications agency, Text100, announced key promotions within its Asia Pacific (APAC) leadership to support the continuing growth of its business in the region.

Preeti Gupta, Senior Account Director with Text100 Singapore takes on the role of APAC Sales Lead, while Text100 Malaysia’s Account Director Lee Tiam Siang moves into the APAC Marketing Lead role. They take over from Megan Rosier who moves into a Regional Senior Consultant role focusing on key clients including IBM.

In her new capacity, Preeti will be responsible for driving new business activities and winning key regional accounts to add to the agency’s exiting portfolio of technology, consumer, healthcare and energy clients. Working alongside Preeti, Lee will be focused on profiling Text100’s integrated communications work through paid, owned and earned channels.

In addition, Senior Account Directors Chee Yih Yang and Corina Chee have been promoted to Co-office Leads for Text100 Malaysia. Reporting to Marc Ha, Text100’s Vice President and Managing Consultant for Singapore and Malaysia, both Yih Yang and Corina will share the responsibility of overseeing the Malaysian operations, while growing a robust team of communication consultants.

Preeti, Lee, Yih Yang and Corina will all continue to have client consulting responsibilities in addition to their new APAC roles.

MeganMegan, who is based in Melbourne, Australia, comes with 18 years of experience in B2B communications across many industry sectors. Megan helps her clients improve the way they engage audience and influencers across paid, owned and earned platforms.

 

 

Preeti_GuptaPreeti, who is based in Singapore, has nearly 14 years of communications experience, of which 10 years were spent in Text100 across markets including San Francisco, New Delhi and Singapore. Beyond her international experience, she was instrumental in winning, and retaining key accounts in Singapore, including Intel, Vodafone and BlackBerry.

 

 

Lee_Tiam_SiangLee Tiam Siang, a pioneering member of the Malaysia office, has been in the communications industry for almost 12 years with a solid background in corporate and marketing communications. Having led some of the agency’s long-standing client relationships, he also contributed to several wins for the Malaysia office including NHN Line, Cartoon Network and Fox International Channels.

 

 

Yih_YangYih Yang Joined Text100 Malaysia in 2010. He provides senior level consulting to clients including Lenovo, Fitness First and Old Town White Coffee and is also responsible for the office’s business development and is the Text100 Malaysia Digital Lead.

 

 

CorinaCorina, has spent over six years in Text100, has been a key member of the senior team in Kuala Lumpur. Corina heads several key technology accounts, while leading Text100 Malaysia’s people management and the delivery of consultancy training and development programmes.

 

 

Over the past two years, Text100 has driven a considerable number of digitally integrated campaigns for key clients across APAC, including Lenovo, Multimedia Development Corporation, Old Town White Coffee and IBM. In 2012, Holmes Report awarded Text100 the Winner of APAC Digital Consultancy of the Year.

 

 

Phu_TruongTubeMogul, an enterprise software company for digital branding, has promoted Phu Truong to Managing Director, Southeast Asia, and expanded its executive team to help brands and advertising agencies accelerate the adoption of automated buying.

Mr Truong, who acted as director of the company’s operations in Asia for eighteen months, is the former Vice President of Commercial Operations for the BBC, where he worked for more than five years. He also worked at The Wall Street Journal’s digital unit for seven years, where he held the position of director of international advertising sales.

Yogesh_FofliaTubeMogul has also lured Singapore-based video industry sales executive Yogesh Foflia to join its team, appointing him as Southeast Asia sales manager. Foflia has held senior Asia-wide sales roles at Google, advertising and technology sales network VeNA, and InMobi. In addition, the company said Suzie Porter has been appointed as TubeMogul’s regional business development manager. Porter has held publisher development roles in Asia and Europe and, is charged with servicing ad agency clients and technology, media and data partners in the region.

TubeMogul’s software enables brands and agencies to buy video ads across all devices, and provide ad serving, targeting, optimisation and brand measurement. With a sole focus on the buy-side of digital video advertising, the company offers 100% transparency, which means advertisers control which sites their ads are running on, and whether their ads are actually being viewed.

 

 

Monika Rudijono and Sawitri Hertoto have been appointed as General Manager and Business Director of Shopper for Grey Group Indonesia respectively. Both of them will be reporting to Agus Sudradjat, Chairman & CEO of Grey Group Indonesia.

MonikaMonika Rudijono joins Grey most recently from ISOBAR where she was the CEO. She successfully grew the agency from scratch to a well-known digital agency in the industry today with blue chip accounts, including Bank Mandiri, Nestle, Samsung, Telkomsel, Quaker Oats and GM. Prior to Isobar, she was with Leo Burnett for more than six years where her last exposure was as client service director and new business development director. Under her leadership and guidance, she brought the agency to new heights to become the agency with most new business wins based on R3 assessment. Rudijono graduated from the University of California Berkeley with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration where she focused on Marketing & Finance.

 

SawitriSawitri Hertoto was director of Shopper & Retail Leo Burnett, prior to Grey, where she focused on helping brands to achieve new heights through her vast experience in understanding consumers’ behaviour. She has worked across all advertising disciplines in her 15 years in the business, both at local and multinational agencies, including Dentsu, Lowe, Matari, Pantarei, Y&R and Leo Burnett. She stepped into the advertising industry at Dentsu Jakarta as research manager before moving to account management as it was the perfect role to satisfy her interest and passion to ideas and inspirations. In addition, she has also served as marketing communication senior manager at Bank Danamon for three years, which gives her valuable holistic perspective on brand building.

 

 

Chad_MackenzieGrey Group Australia announced the appointment of Chad McKenzie as Creative Director for the Sydney office.

Prior to joining Grey, Chad was the Creative Director at JOY Sydney. The experienced creative has worked across a diverse portfolio, including Nike, Subaru, Energizer, SBS, GlaxoSmithKline, HP, Peugeot, Olympus, Audi, Smirnoff and Cadbury Schweppes. Chad will work with Paul Worboys, COO of Grey Group Australia, and the growing Sydney team.

 

 

adobe1Adobe has announced the appointment of Mark Henley to the newly created position of Director of Transformation and Digital Strategy, Asia Pacific (APAC), and Jennifer Ruth to the position of APAC General Manager for digital agency Adobe Digital.

Mr Henley has spent the past seven years at Fairfax as CIO for the Australian Financial Review, Director of Editorial Solutions (Fairfax Metro), and Director of Technology Strategy, Fairfax Media. Prior to Fairfax, Mr Henley worked in the UK, USA and Australia for a start-up specialising in e-commerce and subscription solutions. He held VP roles as country manager and in international sales, and the company was eventually acquired by Digital River. He worked with diverse media groups including Disney, WSJ, Bertelsmann and Macmillan.

Ms Ruth joins Adobe from American Express where she was an accomplished and innovative Senior Marketing Executive. Ms Ruth has extensive global experience across finance, marketing, digital, general management and business development. She will lead Adobe Digital, the company’s digital agency specializing in digital marketing efforts across search, display and social media.

Adobe is the leader in digital marketing, with Adobe Marketing Cloud offering a complete set of analytics, social, advertising, targeting and web experience management solutions to best deliver the right content to the right people in real time.

 

 

Cheza_EstacionHavas Media Ortega (HVMO) announced the appointment of performance marketing expert Cheza Estacion as the Director of Ecselis and Head of Analytics for the group.

Reporting in to Hermie de Leon, Managing Partner of HVMO, Cheza will be responsible for the digital analytics and performance marketing offering at Havas Media Ortega. Her responsibilities will encompass data analytics and reporting for media, digital social media, and search.

As the Director of Ecselis, HVMO’s specialist performance and quantitative marketing arm, Cheza’s key focus will be to provide quality reports and actionable data to enrich the business outcomes of HVMO clients. Leading a team of performance marketing experts, she will enhance the effectiveness of client’s marketing investments across paid, earned and owned media.

Cheza joins HVMO after almost three years at Wunderman, where she worked as the Campaign Measurement and Performance Lead of Team Microsoft in Asia-Pacific. Her previous roles include stints at ABS-CBN Interactive, Upfront Media and Viper technologies.

 

 

Spikes Asia grows to four days

The Spikes Asia Festival of Creativity, Asia Pacific's premier Festival & Awards for the creative communications industry, has announced this year's Festival dates as 23 - 26 September 2014.

Taking place at Suntec, Singapore, the 2014 event has been moved to take place in the week following the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix. The revised dates allow for an exciting change to the Festival, as 2014 sees it grow from a 3-day to a 4-day Festival.

Commenting on the changes, Terry Savage, Chairman of Lions Festivals, says "Moving the Festival back by a week positions it better for growth, allowing us to offer delegates even greater content with four days of relevant and essential industry learning and networking. It's an exciting time for the region and we look to reflect that in the Festival and Awards."

Spikes Asia Key Dates:

• Spikes Asia Festival Dates: 23 - 26 September 2014, Suntec, Singapore

• Delegate Registration Opens: 17 April 2014

• Delegate Early Bird Deadline: 17 July 2014

• Entries Open: 15 May 2014

• Entries Deadline: 25 July 2014

Spikes Asia offers four days of seminars, forums, networking, exhibitions and academies. The Awards, which draw the Festival to a close, honour and celebrate the best work from the industry and ultimately set creative precedents within the region.

Last year's winners are currently available to view on www.spikes.asia, along with photos, interviews and seminars from Spikes Asia 2013

 

 

robertMillennial Media just announced Robert Woolfrey’s promotion to Managing Director, Asia Pacific. Robert was previously Managing Director for Southeast Asia, and has been instrumental in the rapid growth of the company’s client portfolio and staff in this region. In his new role, Robert will lead the company’s operations for the entire region out of Millennial Media’s Singapore office.

As Managing Director of Asia Pacific, Robert will oversee Millennial Media’s growth in the broader region, tapping markets like Japan, China, and Korea. He will also be responsible for building relationships with developers and publishers, while working with premium brands and agencies to help them execute effective mobile advertising campaigns. Robert has been based in Asia since 2005 and worked with a number of multinationals in the digital marketing space. He also currently serves on the Mobile Marketing Association’s Asia Pacific Board of Directors.

Millennial Media is focused on redefining advertising using mobile as the foundation, working with brands, agencies, publishers, and developers. And in the last 24 months, Millennial Media has become a partner of choice for agencies and developers in Asia. The Company’s client portfolio spans industries, including technology, finance, consumer products, automotive, food and beverage, and travel. Clients in the region include Buick, McDonald’s, Procter & Gamble, and Samsung, among others. The team has also expanded rapidly, from 12 employees in Singapore a year ago to over 35 today, and continues to grow.

For its work with Procter & Gamble’s Gillette, Millennial Media recently won a gold award for Best In-App Advertising and a silver award for the Best Mobile Advertising Solution at the Mob-Ex Awards 2013 in Singapore. The company also received a special recognition in the Media Company of the Year in Mobile category at the SMARTIES APAC 2013.

In September 2013, Millennial Media launched the Millennial Media Exchange (MMX) in partnership with AppNexus, enabling advertisers to buy mobile inventory more efficiently and on a real-time programmatic basis. Close on the heels of the MMX the company also launched Omni Measurement Solutions, a new suite of measurement products, specially designed to evaluate and demonstrate the effectiveness of mobile advertising campaigns. Most recently, Millennial Media announced the completion of its acquisition of Jumptap.

 

 

Judd_LabartheGrey Group recently appointed Judd Labarthe as vice president, global strategy director. He will lead strategic planning for GSK work in Asia Pacific, overseeing both global and regional brands, such as Panadol, Scott's, Sensodyne and Polident.

Based in Singapore, Labarthe takes up the role with immediate effect. He will be reporting to Nirvik Singh, Chairman and CEO of Grey Group Asia Pacific and Alina Kessel, Executive Vice President, Managing Director Global Client Service for GSK.

Labarthe returns to Singapore after six years in Berlin, Germany. There, he served as Executive Planning Director at G2 Germany from 2008 to 2012 where he advised brands such as Volkswagen, Ballantine’s, Leica, The Berlin Philharmonic, Nestlé and the Deutsche Bahn before founding his own consultancy, Planner at Large, which focused on creative turnaround marketing. He has also previously held planning leadership positions at DDB (in Chicago, Berlin and Amsterdam) and Ogilvy & Mather (Taiwan, Singapore).

A multi-award winning planner with dozens of international creative awards under his aegis, Judd has also helped his employers, clients and colleagues win over 50 Effies – with the most recent, a 2013 Gold Euro Effie for VisitScotland.