Performance Marketing People: Musk steps down as Twitter CEO and Snap announces new EMEA Senior Marketing Director

Linda Yaccarino, previously Head of Advertising at NBC Universal has been named the new CEO of Twitter after Tesla founder Elon Musk has announced he is stepping down from the role. Musk plans to remain with Twitter as its Chief Technical Officer.

Persistent Systems has named Gurvinder Sahni as its new Chief Marketing Officer. Sahni joins Persistent with over two decades of experience in global enterprise marketing transformation. He joins after 20 years at Wipro., spanning various leadership roles, including Chief of Staff for the Chairman’s office, Strategic Advisor to the Chief Growth Officer and Chief Marketing Officer.

As reported by our sister publication Campaign, Snap has appointed Kate Bird, current Global Vice President of Consumer Revenue at Condé Nast, as its new Senior Marketing Director for EMEA. She will commence the role on 19 June. Prior to working at Condé Nast, Bird was Chief Marketing Officer and General Manager for The Sun for roughly three years. She has also held various marketing roles at News UK, The Times and The Wall Street Journal.

UK-based open rapid EV charger network, InstaVolt, has appointed Ben Smith as Marketing Director, growing its senior leadership team with the new role. Following stints at Navico, Garmin and most recently launching two brands into the UK market for RoyaleGroup, Smith brings specific expertise in multichannel marketing and comms within both the B2C and B2B sectors.

UNiDAYS, a leader in student identity and marketplace, has announced a significant transition in its leadership team. Jon Hawley, previously Chief Identity Officer, will be stepping into the role of Chief Executive Officer, succeeding Josh Rathour who will move to an advisory role with the company as a Board member.

Multilocal, a media supply-side programmatic platform, has appointed Justin Lim as its new General Manager for its operations, with Ryan Nash also joining the team as Sales Director. Lim's career includes roles launching ad sales divisions across the Asia Pacific region for companies like DAZN and Unruly, while Nash has a wealth of expertise in digital strategy gained from previous roles as Sales Director at MiQ, AdColony, and Pocketmath.

Scibids, a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI) for digital marketing, has hired Matthew Bushby as Head of Customer Success. Prior to Scibids, Bushby was Head of Programmatic at Zenith UK where he led the team, wider agency and clients on programmatic strategy and activation. Before that, he worked as the Director of Programmatic at MediaCom and specialised in programmatic optimisation at MediaMath.

Software publisher Azerion has announced the appointment of three new hires to its team in London to strengthen the company’s international presence. Lucy Whichello joins as Account Director, Marco Evans as Digital Account Manager, and Sophie Marsh-Baldry comes on board as Programmatic Account Manager.

Whichello joins the company from TripleLift where she worked as Sales Manager. Prior to that she worked at MediaCom UK as a Digital Account Director. Before joining Azerion, Marsh-Baldry ran the programmatic campaign set up and managed the programmatic delivery for a number of clients at Unrul. Evans joins from Future Publishing.

Liberty Marketing has launched the UK's first financial-services only performance based marketing agency, Balance. The agency is being headed up by Alex Murphy, who possesses over 20 years of financial services marketing experience with brands such as Admiral, The Royal Mint, and GoCompare. Murphy is joining forces with Co-Founder Gareth Morgan, CEO of the wider Liberty Marketing Group and another veteran marketer who has worked alongside dozens of finance clients such as Admiral, Target, Aviva, and MotoNovo.

End-to-end consumer solutions platform ADK Global has promoted Neville Medhora to the newly created role of Chief Transformation Officer. Medhora was previously the head of ADK Rage Communications' India and EMEA division. Fresh off the acquisition of Rage Communications (now renamed ADK Rage) last year, Medhora's appointment is a sign of ADK’s integration efforts.

As reported by our sister publication Campaign, Havas Media Group has made a series of internal promotions across its India leadership team. Roopali Sharma and Harbir Singh, current Managing Partners of North 1 and North 2 respectively, have both been promoted to President of their regions. Saurabh Jain will take up the mantle of President of South, having been Managing Partner – South and Manish Sharma, previously Executive VP and Head – Mumbai, has been elevated to Managing Partner – West. Sanchita Roy, previously Head of Strategy, has been promoted to Chief Strategy Officer and Rohan Chincholi is now Managing Partner – Digital Services.