Performance marketing people: Vouchercodes brings new Director of Marketing and NBCUniversal bolsters reality TV credentials with SVP of Marketing hire

Independent performance marketing agency SINE Digital, with clients including Tottenham Hotspur, Percial and Yamaha, has marked its expansion into the US with the hire of Charlotte Twining as Managing Director of its newly formed marketing agency, The 5th Wall. Twining boasts more than 15 years of industry experience and comes most recently from a role with international theatre producers, Global Creatures, as the Marketing Director for Moulin Rouge! The Musical.

Avinash Kaushik has left his Global Strategic Analytics role with Google and joined digital marketing agency Croud as its Chief Strategy Officer. Having spent 16 years with the tech giant, Kaushik’s time there saw him help launch Google Analytics and build a strategic consulting practice for Google's largest customers.

Creative agency 20ten has appointed Richard Hedges to the newly created role of Business Director for Entertainment. Hedges has over 23 years of experience in the industry and has previously worked with notable entertainment brands such as XBox, Warner Brothers, Sony PlayStation, EA Sports, Netflix and Channel 4.

Omnichannel digital communications platform Hawk has continued its European expansion, opening new offices in Spain and Belgium. The potential for a successful launch into the two new markets has been bolstered with three new hires.

The Madrid office will be led by Zdenka Prieto, who joins from Axel Springer Spain. Prieto will be supported in her role to develop Hawk’s adoption in the Spanish market by Teresa Orellana, previously advertising director at Bluemedia. The Belgian expansion, based in Brussels, will be headed up by former country manager at performance marketing company, Kwanko, Aline Gervasi.

Rapid-growth metaverse developer of branded games, experiences, and events, Dubit, has hired Regine Weiner as its new Head of Studio. Weiner joins having recently left her role as Head of Player Experience at Mediatonic, part of Epic Games, where she worked on hit games like Fall Guys. Weiner’s previous roles also include senior positions at IP owners Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and Disney.

Australian OOH ad tech startup Veridooh has appointed Steven Veytsblit as its new Chief of Staff. With big plans for growth over the next 12 months, Veytsblit will help the company negotiate its rapid expansion, joining in the wake of Veridooh’s launch into the UK market. Veytsblit joins from Australian startup Dimple where he worked as Chief Operating Officer.

Independent integrated marketing agency Cream has welcomed Harriet Salmon to the senior team as its new Client Services Director. Salmon joins following eight years as Client Services Director with branded content agency Contended Brothers where she managed a variety of large-scale accounts and projects, including Aurora Healthcare, Open University and Grayling, M&C Saatchi launch.

Global attention technology company Lumen Research has made several changes to its team as part of the company’s continued expansion. Blaise Lucey has been appointed as Senior Director of marketing, with over a decade of B2B experience across start-ups and enterprise companies, he most recently spent time as VP of Marketing with Surfside.

Alongside Lucey’s hire are two internal promotions. Tanwa Edu is now the company’s Chief Strategy Officer and Arthur Cole has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer, both primarily focused on the business’s continued expansion into the US.

OneTag has made a trio of new hires to further drive the tech company’s UK expansion. After previously holding the role of Head of Marketplace Development at Google, Tom Jenen has become the Chief Revenue Officer and with 24 years in the industry, will take the lead on OneTag’s global commercial growth. Niki Stoker, the former Chief Operating Officer at A Million Ads, has taken over as Global Senior Vice President of Demand and Lina Adelt is the new Global Marketing Director, having spent over ten years in previous roles with Influencer, A Million Ads and LoopMe.

Ozone announced a series of senior internal promotions to kickstart the digital advertising platform’s 2023. Sophie Shead has been appointed to the newly created role of Sales Operations Director, made to lead Ozone’s trading, publisher and marketplace operations teams.

Amongst the company’s commercial teams, three new roles have been created. Joel Woodage has become Head of Independent Agency Sales, Danny Geelan the Head of HoldCo Agency Sales, and Bill Dennett the Head of Regional Agency Sales, UK&I.

Finnish data integration firm Supermetrics has appointed Anssi Rusi to co-CEO alongside company founder Mikael Thuneberg. Rusi is a veteran of the tech industry and joins the company from Yousician. Prior to Yousician, Rusi was founding Chief Operating Officer at Smartly.io where he helped drive the business into profitability within two years. He joins his co-CEO to take over responsibility for the commercial side of the business in addition to finance, customer, and people operations.

To spearhead its growth across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), DoubleVerify has made four commercial hires, all as Enterprise Sales Directors across the company’s EMEA regions. Brandon Whitelock, previously of LoopMe and Amplify, will take over as Enterprise Sales Director of Northern Europe. Steve Sargent has also joined DV and brought with him 14 years of industry experience with global brands like Tik Tok and Twitter.

Jonathan Lucas is the most recent addition to DV’s London team after 12 years of experience in AdTech sales where he will be strengthening DV’s recently reaffirmed partnership with GroupM. Finally, Taha Crorie rounds out the four new Enterprise Sales Directors having left their previous position with ad platform, Dianomi.

Greg Reilly has joined dentsu as President of dentsu Health to drive the growth of health marketing services across the organisation. Reilly, whose career in health spans 20 years, was behind the launch of dentsu health in 2021, as EVP, Global Clients. Prior to joining dentsu he was EVP of CS and Industry Sales at Outcome Health and previously was Chief Client Officer at Publicis Health Media.

As reported in our sister title Campaign, Specsavers has promoted Neil Hollins to UK and Ireland board trading director, and restructured its marketing team. Hollins joined Specsavers in 2018 and was trading director of its Northern European Board after a stint as Chief Marketing Officer at Dixons Carphone. The brand’s marketing and e-commerce director for UK, Ireland and Spain, Chris Carter, has moved to a group strategy role, with current head of marketing activation Victoria Clarke becoming marketing services director.

Voice assistant adtech firm Say It Now has welcomed Zoe Bruton as Sales Director, alongside announcing plans to expand into actionable TV advertising. Bruton will support the firm’s next phase of strategic growth across the UK and US. She joins from A Million Ads, where she led global audio campaigns and long-term strategic planning for international agencies including Publicis Group, IPG and Omnicom.

Olga Puzanova has joined NBCUniversal as SVP of Marketing at reality TV station Hayu. Puzanova was previously Head of Marketing at Spotify, and prior to that was Chief Marketing Officer at digital football platform Dugout.

Abhinav Upadhyay has joined CollegeDekho as its Chief Marketing Officer. Upadhyay joins having previously worked at Leverage Edu, where he was chief marketing officer. Across his 18 year career, he has worked with big brands including Western Union, ITC and Thomas Cook India.

Amidst a period of rapid growth, digital entertainment and media platform Azerion has made a series of new hires following its recent client acquisitions of Hybrid Theory and Radionomy. Among the appointments are Nicola Webb to UK Sales Director and ​Eva Starosolsky to Senior Research Executive. Additionally, Lucy Zakrzewska has been appointed to the Head of Sustainability - Supply Side and Megan Cross to the Head of Sustainability - Demand side. Among the changes are also several new account directors, managers and executives.

As reported in our sister title Campaign, design, digital and content agency Garage Worldwide has appointed Sanjay Deshmukh its new CEO. The former managing partner of One Geography Consulting has over 25 years experience in brand and business growth strategies.

Creative problem solving agency Sideways has announced Aditi Patwardhan as its new Chief Strategy Officer. Moving away from her position as Chief Strategy Officer with FCB Interface, Patwardhan will head the creative, tech and industrial design teams.

Criteo S.A. has announced two new appointments to help expand their commerce media ambitions. Marc Fishcli has joined as Executive Managing Director and brings with him more than 20 years of retail and CPG experience, most recently as Chief Client Officer for Dunnhumnby. Nicole Kivel has also joined the commerce media company, returning to the business after leaving in 2021 to join BazaarVoice. She becomes the Managing Director of Enterprise for Criteo’s Northern Europe division and will use her ten years of advisory experience to oversee the company’s commercial organisation for large enterprise clients.

VMLY&R’s former Head of Retail, Tom Moore, has been promoted to the newly created position of Head of Commerce UK. The promotion comes as the agency continues to power up its commerce strength in the UK and will see Moore with working across the agency’s full client portfolio to help brands unlock new growth opportunities through commerce.

Digital agency Perfect Storm continues its strong start to 2023 with the hire of Naomi Bitcliffe as Client Director. Bitcliffe brings with her over ten years of experience working within the FMCG sector for both national and global brands such as Yorkshire Tea and Whole Earth. Most recently, she was working with advertising service Finn as a Group Account Director.

UK-based discount code site VoucherCodes has hired Armelle Guillet as its new Director of Marketing. Guillet brings with her almost two decades of experience in the marketing sector, most recently with NotOnTheHighStreet.com as its VP of Growth Marketing.

IPG has appointed Jeriad Zoghby as Chief Commerce Strategy Officer. Zoghby will oversee the commerce strategy for the holding company. He joins from Accenture, where he was Global Lead for Omnichannel Commerce.