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People on the Move: Hires and departures at Google, Apple, Xaxis and more

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By Rebecca Stewart | Trends Editor

July 29, 2016 | 8 min read

This week has seen another wave of appointments and departures at brands, media owners and agencies. The Drum has rounded up the key moves from the EMEA, APAC and North America regions below.

PEOPLE ON THE MOVE THE DRUM

[Left to Right] Xaxis' Nicolas Bidon, Google's Eileen Naughton and Apple's Bob Mansfield / The Drum

EMEA people are on the move

Google

Google’s managing director of its UK and Ireland business Eileen Naughton is its vice-president of people operations worldwide.

She replaces Lazszio Bock, who has spent the last ten years shaping the culture of the internet behemoth. He moves to an advisory role, reporting to chief executive Sundar Pichai, that will see him work with other companies and non-profit organisations.

Naughton, who is a founding member of the Women@ initiative, will now report to Ruth Porat, the chief financial officer of Google’s parent business Alphabet.

GumGum

Computer vision platform GumGum has appointed former Exponential and InMobi commercial director Ed Preedy as managing director for Europe.

Based in GumGum’s London office, Preedy will be responsible for leading the company’s growth across the continent, establishing new offices in the major European territories and building partnerships with advertisers and publishers.

Preedy has almost 15 years' worth of experience in digital advertising, and has worked for the likes of Capital Radio, Rivals Digital Media, Exponential and more recently InMobi.

Havas Media Group

Havas Media Group has announced a string of key appointments for its new Connection Partners division which will focus on strengthening the group’s digital first model.

Eliza Dashwood, Daniel Thompson and Paul Holman have come aboard to head up the new division and will be tasked with furthering integration between the planning teams and the opportunities across owned, shared, earned and paid channels.

The trio will be responsible for connecting the expertise in the areas of social, mobile performance, data tech, UX, cinema and OOH to clients’ individual needs and will report to Havas Media Group’s managing director of investments and solutions, Julia Jordan.

CreativeRace

Independent agency CreativeRace, has made a series of key appointments to strengthen its creative offering and grow its London office. The team behind creative agency babyGRAND has joined CreativeRace, with Julian Calderara appointed as managing director for London and Steve Chetham as creative director for London. As part of wider company growth plans, Nick Hoadley has been appointed as strategy director and Jennifer McBeath joins as new business director.

These appointments follow CreativeRace’s accelerated growth following the rebrand from Gratterpalm last year. CreativeRace now employs 152 people, with offices in both London and Leeds, and has delivered award-winning, creative work for clients such as Asda, Greggs, Pets at Home, DFS and Caravan Club.

APAC people on the move

Saatchi & Saatchi Arachnid

Two industry veterans with 17-years of career experience, Wong Sen Kiat and Ng Teck Yew, have been snatched up by Malaysian creative shop Saatchi & Saatchi Arachnid - a Publicis One agency - taking the role of creative director and creative director of art and design respectively.

Having completed a five-year run leading the digital creative team at Naga DDB, Sen Kiat’s vast experience includes stints at Leo Burnett, BBDO, Publicis and JWT, working with clients such as Maxis, Celcom, HSBC, Citibank, PETRONAS, BMW, Ford and Proton.

Teck Yew, began his creative journey at The One Academy, following his an experience at Wieden + Kennedy Shanghai and Agenda Kuala Lumpur. He was most recently creative group head at McCann Worldgroup Kuala Lumpur, where he spent five years prior to joining Saatchi & Saatchi Arachnid.

North America people on the move

Apple

Apple has reportedly brought its former senior vice-president of technologies out of retirement to head up its automated car initiative, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Bob Mansfield will lead the secretive ‘Project Titan’ team as they aim to get a driverless vehicle on the road as Apple seeks to beat Google to the punch amidst reports that the project may be struggling as an estimated roll out date slips from 2020 to 2021.

As an Apple veteran from its Steve Jobs heyday, Mansfield led the development of iconic products such as the MacBook Air, iPad and iMac.

Xaxis

Xaxis has named Nicolas Bidon as chief executive for EMEA, replacing Caspar Schlikum who is relocating to APAC where he’ll head up Wunderman.

As Xaxis chief executive, EMEA, Bidon will be responsible for leading its strategy and operations across the company’s markets in the region, including helping to drive growth for Xaxis specialist companies Light Reaction, Bannerconnect and Plista.

Prior to this role Bidon served as global chief executive for Plista. He will be succeeded by Jana Kusick, who will take over leadership of Plista as global managing director - a promotion from her current role as managing director for Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

GroupM

GroupM is intent on raising the bar in digital advertising by tasking John Montgomery with expanding ad accountability and clamping down on fraud globally.

As brand safety officer, Montgomery, also executive vice-president, will work to ensure “the highest standards for digital advertising viewability, third-party audience verification, and anti-piracy controls”.

He will work with digital advertising and media trading experts at Mindshare, MEC, MediaCom, Maxus, Essence, Xaxis and scores of regional companies to create a set of global safety standards to clean up ads across the board.

Possible

WPP digital creative agency, Possible has announced the creation of the chief data officer, a new c-level role as part of its commitment to data inspired creativity.

Jason Carmel will take up the position of first chief data officer effective immediately.

Carmel receives the promotion to chief data officer after nearly a decade as the agency’s global senior vice-president of marketing sciences. He has been with the agency since its inception and in its earlier incarnation as ZAAZ, originally joining as a senior optimisation manager and has continually evolved the agency’s marketing science discipline.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce, an e-commerce platform for fast-growing and established brands, has announced that Jimmy Duvall has joined the company as chief product officer. With more than 20 years of leadership experience at commerce-related companies — including Magento, eBay, GSI Commerce and Yahoo! — Duvall will lead BigCommerce’s global product organization, overseeing all aspects of product management, design and strategy.

Duvall joins from Hootsuite, where he served as vice-president of product since December 2014, helping to grow small business and enterprise adoption of the platform. Prior to Hootsuite, Duvall was head of product for Magento at eBay.

CTP

Marketing agency CTP, which runs campaigns for the likes of the Boston Red Sox, DraftKings, Save the Children, Microsoft and Eastern Bank, has announced Tyler Jordan has been hired as the agency’s director of analytics.

Jordan, who spent nearly 10 years in analytics at Cogency Marketing and Allen & Gerritsen, will now lead the analytics practice at CTP. Under his leadership, the agency will continue to enhance clients’ strategic services from brand measurement, media performance, and business intelligence to eCommerce performance, testing strategy and forecasting.

Want to get your career on the move? Check out The Drum Job page and follow @TheDrumJobs for updates.

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