Anita Swan

InMobi announced the appointment of Anita Swan as Regional Marketing Director, Asia Pacific. She will spearhead the company’s marketing strategy for the region, including Southeast Asia, China, Korea, Australia, New Zealand and India, and work with the local marketing teams in these markets. She brings with her over nine years of experience in the Asia Pacific telecommunications space and a further seven years in the digital advertising space.

Anita was previously Head of Marketing, Asia Pacific at Alcatel-Lucent where she led a multicultural central marketing team across product, campaign functions, digital, and events. Prior to Alcatel-Lucent, Anita led the marketing efforts of various telecommunications providers around the Asia Pacific region including Vodafone, Digicel, Telstra and Telecom NZ.


Arun Kumar

IPG Mediabrands , the media innovation unit of Interpublic Group, appointed Arun Kumar to the new position of President Mediabrands Audience Platform (MAP) G14 .

Reporting to Brendan Moorcroft, Global CEO of MAP, Arun will drive the IPG Mediabrands digital practices that include Cadreon, Spring Creek Group, Ansible and Reprise and help instill a fresh, new approach across the G14, evolving and developing the agencies and their exciting performance driven capabilities. Arun, who brings to the new role over ten years’ experience in driving digital development globally, will further extend their reach into IPG Mediabrands’ G14 markets, its 14 most strategic markets outside of North America, whilst developing their products and services to make them even more relevant and effective to clients.

Arun’s passion for digital surfaced in his first role at UM India and later at Starcom as Planning Director and Digital Director working on P&G in China. Before joining IPG Mediabrands, Arun was Director of Digital Operations at Aegis Media, where he advised clients such as Sony, Nokia and P&G on their regional digital strategy and initiatives. He was also closely involved in developing Aegis’ search offering, its standardized digital tools and processes across the region. Before that Arun was CEO of Carat Singapore.

He has most recently been working as Head of Digital for IPG Mediabrands in Asia Pacific, overseeing its digital offering and working closely with clients to create integrated and value-driven digital strategies.


Allanjit Singh

Creative agency iris is building on its vital growth in Asia with the launch of a new regional PR arm. In addition to focusing on the printed press and traditional media relations, the new department will also encompass all aspects of social strategy such as community management, social media and digital channel planning. The new PR division will be headed by iris’ newly appointed Social Strategist, Allanjit Singh, who joins from Ogilvy Singapore.

According to Craig Mapleston, Managing Director of iris Singapore “The PR professional of the future needs to be a hybrid of channel planner, community manager and brand guardian” and believes that Allanjit has all of those skills.

A digital marketing and communications strategist, Allanjit previously worked for Ogilvy Singapore since September 2009 as a lead digital strategist and for some of Singapore’s leading PR agencies such as LEWIS Public Relations and Fleishman-Hillard prior to that.

In his new role, Allanjit will lead the regional team out of iris’ Singapore office, spanning iris’ offices in Jakarta, Sydney, Delhi and Beijing. Projects in the pipeline will include digital planning and PR support for iris’ diverse range of clients.


Prashant Kumar

IPG Mediabrands, that controls a $34 billion global media buying portfolio, has announced that Prashant Kumar will assume the role of Regional President, World Markets Asia, overseeing Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and The Philippines. He was formerly CEO of IPG Mediabrands in Malaysia, and will continue to hold that role. In this newly expanded role, Prashant will report directly to Mauricio Sabogal, President World Markets, UM and Initiative.

Prashant will be in charge of continuing the transition to the Mediabrands clusters structure that is driving consistency of talent, product enhancement for clients, and assistance with more efficient allocation of resources. Prashant will work closely with Mauricio Sabogal, President, World Markets and Andrea Suarez, COO, World Markets, UM and Initiative.

Under Prashant’s leadership, UM Malaysia went from ninth in size to become the second largest media agency in the country. As a Google certified professional himself, he launched Reprise, IPG Mediabrands’ search outfit, and Rally, the social marketing outfit which both became top players in the market.

At the same time, IPG Mediabrands announced that Daniel Simon has resigned as Chief Operating Officer of both UM and Initiative Asia. Daniel will be taking time off to spend with his family. There is no current plan to appoint a G14 head in Asia and Jim Hytner will continue to oversee all G14 countries for UM and Eric Bader for Initiative.


Terry Smagh

QlikTech, a leader in Business Discovery user-driven Business Intelligence (BI), appointed Terry Smagh as Vice President of Sales for South East North Asia (SENA). Smagh will be in charge of the company’s sales, Qonnect Partner Program as well as other key operational, strategy and marketing functions.

Smagh has more than 10 years of experience in enterprise sales and channels strategies in the intelligence-on-demand technology sector, and has held senior executive positions with Actuate, Informatica and Oracle.

In his previous role as Head of Channel Sales at Informatica, Smagh excelled at establishing and managing key partner footprints in the region for the company. He was also responsible for developing key go to market strategies for different markets in Southeast Asia and India during his tenure at Oracle/Hyperion.

Smagh first joined QlikTech in January 2010 when the company was launched in Singapore. In the crucial first six months, he helped built up QlikTech’s channel marketing program, identified key system integrators, and drove business revenue up by 250% in key markets.


Craig Weber

Celent, a division of Oliver Wyman, Inc., focused on advisory services and research for the global financial services market, announced that Craig Weber is replacing Mike Harding as Celent's CEO. Craig joined the firm in 2002 and has been a senior vice president, with global responsibility for Celent's Insurance division, since 2007. In recent years, he led the team's expansion in North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Craig has a BA summa cum laude from Saint Michael’s College, Vermont and a MA in communications from Emerson College, Massachusetts.


Exedra Events Once Again Finalists in Three Categories

The Asian Conference Awards 2012 will reward excellence and innovation in Singapore this March by celebrating and honoring individuals and teams in 14 disciplines. Exedra Events has been honored once again in three categories of the Asian Conference Awards: Best Marketing Team - Exedra Events team; Best Operations Team - Exedra Events team; and, Best Development of an existing conference in Singapore - Hospital Management Asia. They are also awaiting the results of two more categories. Exedra Events, the Asian-based conference management company, specializes in conceptualizing and organizing regional conferences and awards programs in Asia.


MOL Global Pte. Ltd., one of Southeast Asia’s largest internet companies announce that its wholly owned subsidiary, MOL AccessPortal Sdn. Bhd. (MOL), has partnered with Electronic Arts Inc. to distribute prepaid game cards, available for purchase in more than 600,000 channels in six Asian countries, including India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines. Players can use these prepaid game cards to purchase virtual goods in popular EA and Playfish™ social games, including The Sims Social™, Pet Society™, Restaurant City™ and EA SPORTS™ FIFA Superstars.

MOL is one of Asia’s leading electronic payment service providers for online games and social payments. MOL’s flagship product, MOLPoints, is a virtual currency used by social gamers and online consumers in the Asian region to acquire in-game credits and digital goods.

Gamers can easily purchase cards for EA and Playfish games via online systems and popular retail chains such as 7-Eleven stores in Singapore and Malaysia; MOL affiliated cybercafés such as India’s Sify Cybercafés and Philippine’s Netopia internet cafés; online banking services such as Maybank2u in Malaysia and telecommunication partners such as Singapore’s SingTel GXCredits, Indonesia's Indosat I-Pay and Thailand's One-2-Call.

Playfish, an Electronic Arts Inc. studio and leading developer of social games, has engaged tens of millions of players worldwide with popular titles like Pet Society and Restaurant City.


The Third World Communication Forum in Davos: 8 – 10 February 2012. Private or public? This time you can choose from over 30 top speakers from 20 countries worldwide. The forum agenda is designed to gather the new digital elite and enable trend-makers to exchange their ideas and views on privacy/publicity in our upcoming transparent future, communicating scientific breakthroughs, machine-generated content as the possible prospect of communications and ways to sustain territorial reputation. World Communication Forum in Davos has been gathering communication influencers since 2010, to provide them with a platform for discussion on the future development of communications and their role in media, technology and business. For the full program please visit: http://www.forumdavos.com/programme, or check out the speakers’ profiles at: http://www.forumdavos.com/speakers/2012.