Performance marketing people: Former HSBC APAC CMO joins Standard Chartered Bank, easyJet hires ASOS big hitter as CMO and Tug gets new Toronto MD

Suresh Balaji, former HSBC APAC CMO, has joined Standard Chartered Bank as Global Head of the bank’s Corporate Affairs, Brand and Marketing team (CABM) for consumer, private and business banking. Balaji was at HSBC for 17 years. He oversaw HSBC's acquisition of real estate in the Sandbox, and the bank is the first global financial services giant to leap into the metaverse. Balaji is Co-Founder of the Web3 Marketing Association. 

Robert Birge has been named budget airline easyJet’s new Chief Customer and Marketing Officer. He joins from fast fashion giant ASOS where he was Chief Customer Officer overseeing the delivery of marketing, the end-to-end customer experience and data insight for the company. Previously, Birge spent six years at Kayak as CMO and was part of the start-up team behind US online travel agency Orbitz.

Programmatic specialist multilocal has appointed three new senior members of staff. Dharmesh Patel joins as Director, Ad Operations. Patel previously managed Twitter's performance advertising product and revenue across APAC, MENA, and LATAM. Fara Fayz has been appointed Senior AdOps Analyst, and Matt Kay joins as Programme Manager. Tom Bowman has now joined multilocal’s board as a non-executive director. He has held a number of global roles at organisations such as Microsoft and BBC Worldwide. 

Digital performance marketing agency Tug has hired Darra Naiman as Managing Director Toronto, tasked with doubling the size of the business in Canada over the next two years. Naiman joins from OMD Canada, where she was an Associate Director in the Toronto office. Prior to this Naiman was a Media Supervisor at Neo@Ogilvy and Bensiimon Byrne.

Media agency The Specialist Works, part of What’s Possible Group, has announced the appointment of Lee Baring as Managing Partner, Implementation Planning. In the newly created role, Baring will be responsible for leading all specialist teams that span AV, Publishing, Online, Radio and OOH, and help deliver the best work and market-leading solutions for clients. He was previously Head of Investment at VCCP Media, with his career at the company spanning nine years. Baring has also had roles at Havas, ITV, MCS and Sony.

UK discount site VoucherCodes has hired Jo Hayes in the newly created role of Customer Initiatives Director, leading customer initiatives responsible for growing VoucherCodes’ affinity audience of student and NHS customers, as well as that of the brand’s browser extension, DealFinder. Hayes brings more than 20 years of experience growing online media businesses, with her most recent role being heading up the development of the Genie Shopping Google CSS service. Previous roles include Head of Transactional Video at Amazon and Head of Media sales at LoveFilm. 

Jenny Pham has joined Wavemaker as APAC Head of Media for Colgate-Palmolive. Pham will be responsible for leading the Colgate-Palmolive business for the region. In July, Wavemaker launched a new agency model for Colgate-Palmolive, creating an Asia-Pacific hub in Singapore. Pham previously worked in senior roles at GroupM agencies in Australia, including Essence Digital Global as VP Client Partner, MEC Australia as Managing Partner and at Mindshare as Business Director. Prior to joining Wavemaker she was General Manager, Marketing & Strategy at GTI Tourism.

B2B marketing agency Punch! B2B has hired Stephen Johnson to its senior management team. Johnson joins the agency as Account Director, bringing more than 20 years of experience working at marketing agencies and in-house across global brands.

Matthew Koontz has been appointed as connected TV (CTV) ad platform tvScientific’s first Head of Product. He will lead development of tvScientific’s CTV platform advertising experience by accelerating innovation in CTV buying and AI-led optimization and attribution. Koontz’s previous role was Director of Product Management at Attentive Mobile; before that he was Director of Ad Product Management at Hulu where his team launched the Hulu Ad Manager. He has also served as Director of Product Management, TV marketplace at Xandr and worked at Snap where he built and launched Snapchat’s ad platform and its self-serve/programmatic ad buying interface.

Integral Ad Science has named Thomas V. Joseph as Chief Technology Officer. Joseph will lead the engineering team to develop and scale new offerings while continuing to evolve existing products. Joseph brings more than two decades of tech-industry leadership experience, having previously served as SVP Engineering at SiriusXM and Pandora. Prior to this he spent several years at Microsoft, culminating with the launch of Microsoft Office on iOS and Android.

Fashion marketplace Finsu has appointed new Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer, Ric Rodriguez, to lead its marketing, branding, creative, content and e-commerce strategy following significant company growth. He previously served at fine jewellery disruptor Vashi where he established the digital marketing function and ESG approach. Prior to that, he held roles at Yext and marketing agencies within Dentsu, Croud and Hearst’s iCrossing. 

Adtech company TripleLift has promoted Kama Ostoya to General Counsel as part of the company’s executive leadership team. As General Counsel, Ostoya assumes responsibility for TripleLift’s global legal and privacy organisations. Ostoya first joined TripleLift in March 2020 as the company’s Deputy General Counsel. She has served as senior counsel at Amazon Web Servies, law firms Latham & Watkins and Clifford Chance, and investments banks including Bank of America, Merril Lynch and Barclays. 

Partnership management platform impact.com has appointed Ning Wang to its Board of Directors. Wang is the CEO of Offensive Security and was previously Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer of HackerOne, the hacker-powered security platform used by all leading technology firms and U.S. Department of Defense. 

Snacks manufacturer Calbee Group has welcomed Claire Hooper as its Marketing Director. Hooper was previously Head of Brands for Valeo Foods UK snacks division and spent eight years at Pladis Global.

Talking Medicines, the world’s first Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven patient intelligence company, has appointed Mike Strassberg as Chief Customer Officer – the Scottish company’s first US-based appointment. He has led sales and marketing at Eversana Intouch B2D for the last three years and brings 30 years of experience in the health and life sciences industry.

B2B adtech specialist PR agency The Digital Voice has announced eight new hires to take its team to 26 across the UK and Europe. Camealia Xavier-Chihota joins as Marketing Lead, having previously worked as marketing operations at leading brands such as River Island. Akinyi Odhiambo joins the events team as Senior Events Executive and Jelena Zoric joins as Brand Storyteller. Rosie Hutchinson has been appointed as Events and Content Executive and Noor Sheikh joins as Social Media executive. Ren Bowman has been hired as Tech Social Media Copywriter, joining Faith Ilori as Junior Marketing Executive and Rowan Lee-Foyster as Junior Graphic Designer. 

The Digital Voice has also promoted Maryum Sheikh to Press and SEO Lead and Nicole Kotseva to Social Media Lead.  

Brand building, communications and analytics agency Boldspace has appointed Dan Pillay to lead its data & analytics platform BoldLens. Pillay brings 12 years’ experience across data, analytics and scaling SaaS platforms, joining from CampaignHero. He started his career agency-side at research firm Toluna, before spells with Microsoft’s shopping comparison service Ciao and CK NET in London. 

Bazaarvoice* has named Colin Bodell as Chief Technology Officer (CTO), responsible for accelerating global technological innovation in support of Bazaarvoice’s growth objectives. Bodell has more than 25 years of experience in the technology industry, most recently as Vice President of Engineering at Shopify. Prior to that, he served as CTO at Groupon, American Eagle Outfitters, and Time Inc.