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Susan Sangeeta FNLHavas Group is expanding its capabilities and footprint in the important and burgeoning Indian market by adding Sorento to its roster of agencies. Sorento will integrate the Havas Health & You business unit and be rebranded Havas Life Sorento. This strategic acquisition will allow Havas to further develop its regional presence and add to its depth and breadth in India to deliver for global clients.

Following the acquisition, the management team of Susan Josi and Sangeeta Barde—Sorento’s co-founders and managing partners—will continue to head up the team of more than 70 health-and-wellness comms professionals. Josi and Barde will report to Charles Houdoux, CEO, Havas Health & You APAC, and will work closely with local Havas India management for day-to-day operations.

Josi, with a Master’s in Pharmacy and Management, has more than 28 years of experience in the healthcare sector. Barde has more than 22 years of experience in pharma marketing and healthcare communications and trained as a microbiologist before going on to earn a Master’s in Marketing Management.


Irdeto announced that its Irdeto TraceMark™ forensic watermarking solution has passed ChinaDRM Lab’s security evaluation test.

The certification recognizes the robustness of Irdeto TraceMark™ and will enable operators in China to monetize over-the-top (OTT) offerings and build a 360-degree anti-piracy strategy around their ecosystem of content offerings.

Irdeto TraceMark™ forensic watermarking is offered together with Irdeto Rights for ChinaDRM, which is the first-ever Chinese government-approved digital rights management (DRM) solution that is fully compliant with the standards set by Hollywood studios for premium UHD and early release content.

The solution also provides operators with the ability to track down pirated content to the point of a security breach and give content owners and operators clear, actionable data to protect their high value content. By identifying where piracy leaks occur and what content is being pirated, operators can not only mitigate revenue loss, but also increase revenue potential by capitalizing on latent demand.


carolineThe Hoffman Agency, a communications consultancy, announced that Caroline Hsu has taken on the role of Asia Pacific managing director.

Hsu returns to the consultancy world after 20 years of experience in marketing, communications and branding. She recently served as chief marketing officer of Appier, a technology company that makes it easy for businesses to use artificial intelligence to grow and succeed in a cross screen world.

Before joining Appier, Hsu was head of communications for Google Taiwan and Hong Kong. Previously she led marketing communications at TomTom Asia and Dopod (now HTC), as well as brand communications at BenQ. She started her career as a journalist in the United States before joining EraOgilvy, a global PR agency now under the WPP Group.

The Hoffman Agency generated record global revenue in 2016 at US$11.3M with over 50 percent of the revenue coming from its Asia Pacific operation that includes offices in mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Singapore.

Hsu will be based in Hong Kong, succeeding Cassandra Cheong who moves back to Singapore and her consulting practice. Hoffman noted that Cheong's many achievements leading the Asia Pacific team included double-digit growth last year and retooling the firm's China team.


Havas Group announced the launch of a game-changing programmatic solution that gives clients complete visibility and control over their campaigns: Client Trading Solution (CTS).

CTS is a client facing, fully transparent control tower displaying all programmatic trading, allowing clients to track and monitor their programmatic buying in one place.

Clients can ensure the quality of their campaigns across their own objectives (visibility, fraud control, brand safety, trading practices, costs, spending, products, formats, channels, countries, etc) and the platform delivers exceptional visibility of digital workflow at every stage of the campaign – programmatic media planning, partner negotiation, adserving, campaign setup, monitoring, optimisation and reporting – within a fully independent, technology agnostic ecosystem that is open to all partners.

The innovative product was developed by Havas Group’s leading tech and math entity MFG Labs and is already being used by traders to manage campaigns for clients via one central, shared platform. Its rich product ecosystem already includes optional features such as Campaign Parameter Optimizers (powered by MFG Labs), DMP Capabilities and Inventory Quality Assessment (powered by Artemis Alliance, Havas Group’s data capacity) and Smart First-party Segments (powered by Constellation).

Havas Group is a pioneer of meta programmatic solutions. Together with MFG Labs, the company launched the industry’s very first Meta-DSP in 2014 and the Media Quality Barometer in 2015.


digitaloskaDigital Realty, a leading global provider of data center, colocation and interconnection solutions, has officially opened ‘Digital Osaka 1’, its first data center in Japan. The new facility spans approximately 93,000 square feet and provides 7.6 megawatts of IT capacity.

Digital Osaka 1's robust power architecture enables the company to support the data center and colocation requirements of global cloud providers in Osaka.

Furthermore, Digital Realty announced the acquisition of an adjacent land parcel for the development of a ‘Digital Osaka 2’ data center. Upon completion, the Osaka connected campus will support up to 27 megawatts of additional IT capacity.

Japan has become one of the most highly sought-after markets for cloud data center locations, according to a Canalys report.

Strict data sovereignty laws and high customer demand are some of the factors pushing cloud service providers to seek data centers in Japan, where personal data is increasingly required to be stored in facilities that are physically located within the country.

Digital Realty offers a full spectrum of global data center solutions. The company owns and operates 145 properties encompassing approximately 23 million square feet across 33 global metropolitan areas, enabling customers to expand from a single cabinet to a multi-megawatt facility as their needs grow, with no change in providers and no interruption in service. The company's Service Exchange interconnection platform (powered by Megaport), which launched in November 2016, facilitates direct, private and secure connections, or virtual cross connects, to multiple cloud service providers - including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure - as well as telecommunications providers and other Digital Realty customers worldwide. Customers can actively manage their virtual cross connects through MarketplacePORTAL, Digital Realty's award-winning online customer platform, and scale the bandwidth of their connections up or down as needed.


Aurecon announced several new leadership appointments to significantly strengthen its business in Asia.

Simon Hamer1. Committed to building a future-ready organisation, global engineering and infrastructure advisory company, Simon Hamer has been appointed Data Centre Leader for Asia. With decades of project management experience in handling complex projects, he serves as a quintessential example of a client-focused forward thinker whom Aurecon is proud to have as a member of their team. Based in Singapore, Simon’s new role entails advising and managing client requirements through design, construction and commissioning, risk assessments. Likewise, he reviews the operations and performance of data centres and other critical facilities. Prior to joining Aurecon, Simon was the Senior Resident Engineer at Global Switch and in charge of all the company’s onsite projects and peer reviewer of designs for the new data centres in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Phil Lazarus2. To help clients digitise their businesses across built environment, infrastructure, and energy and resources markets, the Aurecon regional office in Singapore also welcomed Phil Lazarus as Asia’s Digital Practice Leader to build a culture of digital readiness and innovation within the company. He is responsible for implementing Aurecon’s digital strategy that connects Aurecon clients’ needs, people’s capability and emergent digital technologies across Asia. As the Regional Digital Lead, Phil will harness opportunities within the region while ensuring that client and stakeholder engagement are aligned in the strategic initiatives and future-ready digital scheme of Aurecon. He is passionate about driving the value of technological solutions for today’s complex projects for the benefit of clients and stakeholders.

Alan Ho3. Aurecon has appointed Alan Ho, an experienced engineer, as Building Services Leader in Macau, one of the richest cities in the world. Macau has been transforming from a gambling centre into a lively international tourist destination for leisure and business activities, with a number of housing, urban redevelopment and heavy infrastructure projects underway. Alan’s appointment is expected to reinforce Aurecon’s local presence to collaborate more deeply and effectively on complex projects with clients in Macau as he will bring the best of Aurecon’s expertise to help make their dreams a reality. Prior to joining Aurecon, he was a Building Service Engineer at Sociedade de Jogos de Macau, where he gained extensive experience in project management and in leading casino, hotel and resort, as well as residential and commercial developments.

Paul Lombard, Aurecon Managing Director – Middle East and Asia, is convinced that the Asian market is vital to delivering sustained growth for Aurecon, as the region offers significant opportunities for project development. “It is a thriving and complex market, but we are confident that our extensive global experience, combined with the strategic leadership appointments, will enable us to capitalise on the market’s potential”, he said.


Megaport, the leader in global Software Defined Networking (SDN), announced that Belle Lajoie, a founding member of Megaport and previously Executive Vice President, Asia-Pacific at Megaport, has been appointed to the position of Chief Commercial Officer for the Company.

Lajoie has been working in the Internet industry with Megaport founder, Bevan Slattery for ten years, and has primarily focused on delivering large scale sales and operations solutions to peering, data centre, dark fibre infrastructure, and data services organisations. She has spent her career working as an integral member of leadership teams at both PIPE Networks and NEXTDC and is an expert at rapidly growing technology organisations from startup to scale.

Lajoie will be responsible for leading the Company's sales strategy globally, leading global business development, channel relationships, strategic partnerships and acquisitions, and leading digital and regional marketing strategies aligned with revenue acceleration. She will report directly to Megaport's Chief Executive Officer, Vincent English. Her previous role has been backfilled internally.


Lindsay PattisonGroupM announced the appointment of Lindsay Pattison as Chief Transformation Officer (CTO). She will lead change initiatives across GroupM and its agencies, and with other WPP companies will create tailored and flexible models that serve clients better in the extremely competitive business environment.

Pattison will lead a number of change programs to support group and agency structures, talent and leadership development, culture and diversity, as well as WPP's horizontality strategy. She remains a member of GroupM's global executive committee, reporting to Kelly Clark, global CEO of GroupM. Pattison also continues as CEO of GroupM agency Maxus and will perform both roles.

In her new role, Pattison will also focus on senior talent development to ensure GroupM and its agencies have a strong bench of diverse leaders who can help clients win in a very challenging marketing landscape. She will support WPP's horizontality strategy by helping deliver the best of GroupM to key clients, together with other WPP companies, regardless of the client's entry point to the group.

Pattison was named global CEO of Maxus in October 2014. She was previously Global Chief Strategy Officer and UK CEO for Maxus during a period in which it was the fastest-growing media agency worldwide. Her prior experience includes roles at Young and Rubicam, PHD Media and Sony Ericsson. Lindsay was named to Ad Age's 2015 class of Women to Watch and served two terms on the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council focused on the Future of Media. In 2016, she launched 'Walk the Talk,' an initiative to help senior women at Maxus to thrive and progress in their career, a program now being adopted globally by WPP.


Joseph ChuaThe digital agency Resn named Joseph Chua as its Chief Operating Officer for Asia.

The announcement comes as the agency prepares to open its regional headquarters in Shanghai next month.

Joseph Chua has spent over a decade working in China, Singapore and Southeast Asia, and has operated as regional digital head for the international agencies Leo Burnett and J.Walter Thompson. He has led numerous campaigns for clients like P&G, Unilever, Huawei and Bayer, which have won many major awards, including Cannes Lions, One Show, Spikes and FWAs. He was previously featured in the 40 Under 40 list by Campaign Asia and was voted Young Professional of the Year by the IAS.

Joseph will assume his new position when Resn Asia declares its official opening in June this year.


Dalet Digital Media Systems, a leading provider of solutions and services for media organizations, announced two new key management appointments for the Dalet Asia Pacific region: Cesar Camacho to General Manager and Rosa Pereiro to Director of Sales.


cesarBased at the Dalet Singapore office, the new appointments will serve to further strengthen Dalet’s presence and support across the region. The appointments are effective immediately.

rosaCesar Camacho will be assuming the position of general manager in the Asia-Pacific region, succeeding Raoul Cospen. In his new role, Cesar will be responsible for Dalet business and operations across the region, overseeing a team of 40-plus Dalet professionals. Having been with Dalet since 2001 and general manager of Dalet Spain since 2011, Cesar has been instrumental in the company’s growth and has been a key player in the implementation of Dalet systems in broadcast channels worldwide.

Rosa Pereiro has been promoted to director of sales, APAC from her role as regional sales manager. Rosa will be responsible for driving key customer deals, managing accounts and leading business development efforts across all territories in the Asia-Pacific region. Working closely with Cesar, she will develop strategies for expanding Dalet media and entertainment relationships and strengthening existing ones, helping Dalet to increase sales and penetrate new markets and accounts throughout the region.


ChristianHavas Asia Pacific announces the appointment of Christian Pattman as Global Executive Client Director and Elissa MacDonald as Global Business Director for the newly acquired GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) business.

In his new role, Christian will lead the overall GSK business in the region, while Elissa will be responsible for key brands globally and regionally. Both will operate out of the Singapore hub, one of Havas’ three GSK global hubs along with London and New York. Christian will jointly report into Mike Amour, CEO of Havas Group in APAC and Chris Slough, Global Business Partner of GSK at Havas while Elissa will report into Christian.

Christian was most recently the Director of Healthcare for Havas APAC, based out of its Sydney office, and prior to that was in Havas Healthcare’s New York HQ. In the course of his career, he has worked on and launched global brands for numerous multinational companies such as Unilever, Nestle, Braun, Pfizer, Pernod Ricard, Sanofi Aventis, GSK, Reckitt Benckiser and Gillette.

ElissaElissa joins Havas after a stint of 3.5 years at Ogilvy & Mather, where she led the local, Southeast Asia and Asia Pacific business for IBM Digital and Performance Marketing. Prior to her work within an agency, Elissa worked client side with Hewlett-Packard for 8 years focused on all things digital.


Havas was appointed GSK’s global digital and content partner in 2016, with a remit to manage end-to-end digital marketing, following a consolidation of agency roster by the company for its consumer healthcare business in July last year. In APAC, the agency will manage with 10 flagship brands of GSK across oral health, pain relief and respiratory categories.


Khairul SyaharCtrlShift hired Khairul Syahar Khalid as Senior Director of Business Development in Malaysia. He will take a leadership role to deliver CtrlShift’s solution-oriented model to Malaysian and regional CMOs, offering strategic digital advertising, marketing consultation and ad tech advisory.

Syahar is a Malaysian marketing and advertising veteran with over 16 years of experience in the industry. He is a digital expert, having led and managed the digital transformation of Malaysian Airlines as well as accelerated the digital transformation of Nestle Malaysia. Syahar sits on the Malaysian Advertisers Association (MAA) council and on the Malaysian Audit Bureau of Circulation board.

Syahar’s hire is in line with CtrlShift’s strategy to build a high calibre senior team to provide expert, quality and trusted counsel to executive level decision-makers within client organisations.

CtrlShift provides solutions which focus on connecting brands with their relevant audiences through its managed services and through its proprietary smart media-investment and trading platform, The Hub. The company offers its solution-focused model across all its other Southeast Asian operations in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines.


Fiji’s National Airline, Fiji Airways has announced the appointment of industry veteran, Marc Cavaliere, as Chief Marketing Officer.

Mr. Cavaliere joins the airline’s executive leadership team, reporting directly to the CEO, and will be responsible for the new, dedicated global airline alliances and partnerships function, as well as all sales channels, marketing activities, and related commercial functions.

Mr. Cavaliere’s professional background includes thirty-seven years of airline industry experience, with extensive international assignments, leading airlines in various regions of the world including the United States.

His key areas of expertise include commercial strategy, marketing, sales management, e-commerce, distribution and collaborative tourism development. With a strong background in airline global alliances, strategic partnerships and virtual network optimization, with a focus on expanding partner-carrier networks and maximizing revenue opportunities, Mr. Cavaliere enters the Fijian National Carriers ranks at an opportune time, when it has signed and extended several airline partnerships, and continues to expand its network.

He has served as board member of the Star Alliance Airline Management Board for five years, and as Chairman for two years. He recently completed a 12-month project with Crystal Luxury Air (sister company to Crystal Cruises) developing their luxury private jet tours program.

Prior to this, Mr. Cavaliere held senior management positions with South African Airways, Spirit Airlines, American Airlines and Pan Am. He is a graduate of the business school at Newport University in the United States.


VMware, Inc. announced an expanded partnership with Google to accelerate the adoption of Chromebooks.

Enhancing existing application accessibility of the devices, VMware Workspace ONE™ will enable one-click secure authentication and management of applications -- cloud, web and virtual -- for organizations deploying Chromebooks. Workspace ONE is a platform that unifies endpoint management for IT and delivers a unified access experience for end users to help organizations evolve away from silo-ed application and device management strategies to better embrace digital transformation.

Chrome OS provides multiple layers of protection including security modules, like TPM chips specialized for encryption, verified boot to check for compromises, sandboxing for containing threats and full disk encryption for data protection. Together with Workspace ONE on Chromebooks, IT administrators benefit from additional security capabilities to help deploy, configure and secure, web and SaaS applications.

VMware is also collaborating on advancements to unify native Android applications. Windows applications can also be delivered through VMware Horizon 7 and VMware Horizon Cloud virtual applications and desktops, that can be quickly accessed through dynamic contextual decision-making, secured in the data center and provisioned through Workspace ONE. And end users will enjoy simple single sign-on (SSO) to a digital workspace that includes a catalogue of all the business and productivity applications they need, while IT benefits from improved data security and centralized management and delivery of applications.

Workspace ONE with VMware AirWatch and Horizon support for Chromebook is available immediately.


Hill+Knowlton Strategies (H+K) has been named by Huawei Malaysia as its public relations agency, to lead the local communications strategy and execution for its Consumer Business Group (CBG) in Malaysia.

H+K is a global public relations company that provides senior counsel, insightful research and strategic communications planning with a worldwide presence, and is recognised as one of the global leaders in this field.

2017 thus far has been a year of tremendous growth for Huawei Consumer Business Group (Malaysia) on the back of strong reception for its latest mobile devices including the Huawei P10 and P10 Plus released earlier this year. Malaysia will continue to be a strong market for Huawei as the country continues to make strides in connectivity and ICT proliferation; progress noted in the Huawei Global Connectivity Index 2017 with Malaysia claiming the position of top-mover by rising five positions in the ranks.

Hill+Knowlton Strategies will be responsible for all strategic communications counsel, planning and media relations, complementing Huawei Malaysia’s overall marketing and branding strategy.


resn

Resn Asia
announced the promotion of Ted Meng from General Manager China to Chief Executive Officer for Asia.


This promotion heralds a new chapter for the digital agency to better serve its agency partners and clients as it expands aggressively in China and Asia Pacific. Ted has worked in the digital industry for 10 years, leading high-performing start-ups in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, and he has been instrumental in establishing the Ren Asia’s China operations.


appnex11. AppNexus announced the launch of multimedia “superauctions,” technology that enables multiple media types to participate in a single unified auction to drive increased demand for each advertising placement and improve monetization. The advertiser willing to pay the most wins and the winning creative is served.

BannerStream, a new video format developed by AppNexus, works with superauction technology to allow publishers to integrate a seamless video advertising experience within display ad units, as it is flexible and transparent to benefit everyone—publishers, advertisers, and consumers. It helps publishers by using HTML5 video and VPAID 2.0 rather than Flash, which improves browser stability and reduces latency. It can also run in large, medium, or small player formats across a variety of aspect ratios. For advertisers, the video player only plays content when the unit is in view, resulting in high video viewability rates. AppNexus also signals the video format type—instream, outstream, or BannerStream— in the bid request for full transparency to buyers. BannerStream is user and consumer friendly, as it plays cross platform with autoplay sound off, with an option to view in full screen for a cinematic experience. Like outstream video, BannerStream does not require the publisher to have existing video content on page, but instead leverages AppNexus’ video player technology. It can be used on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices; on mobile it is rendered in-line to provide a more native look and feel.

2. Furthermore, AppNexus announced the launch of Prebid Server, a server-side header bidding solution, available free to all publishers that meet AppNexus’ quality guidelines. Prebid Server is a transparent, open-source technology that addresses the limitations of traditional header bidding and offers publishers the choice of drawing unique demand from AppNexus and Facebook, and shortly, Index Exchange and PubMatic.

As in traditional header bidding, server-side wrappers integrate with Supply Side Platforms (SSPs), which act as demand sources and bid on publisher inventory. The process, however, takes place in the technology provider’s server cloud as opposed to the publisher’s header, creating better on-page user experience and allowing publishers to scale their demand partners without incurring latency, a deficiency of traditional header bidding.

By design, Prebid Server works in conjunction with prebid.js, the industry’s most widely-adopted, open header bidding wrapper. A combination of the two capabilities allows publishers to select which demand partners to call directly through their header bidding wrapper, while calling other partners through Prebid Server, minimizing browser calls and increasing bid density, while managing latency and optimizing revenue.

Prebid Server is the latest technology offering in the community-supported Prebid.org, and is available to ad tech companies who will act as demand partners and to all publishers who meet the quality requirements, regardless of whether they participate directly on the AppNexus exchange. The solution’s code is open-source, giving publishers and partners the ability to review auction dynamics for fee transparency and bias, and contributing to ad tech ecosystem founded on trust and accountability.

3. Last but not least, AppNexus announce its technology partnership with Axel Springer, Europe’s leading digital publisher. As part of the partnership, Axel Springer plans to progressively adopt AppNexus’ enterprise technology products, including the AppNexus ad server, across its global brand portfolio.

Starting in 2018, Axel Springer brands BILD.de, welt.de, bz-berlin.de, meinestadt.de, finanzen.net, and businessinsider.de, among others, shall migrate to AppNexus’ enterprise technology suite. In the future, it is planned that international Axel Springer brands will also adopt AppNexus technology.AppNexus’ advertising technology encompasses all digital channels (desktop, mobile), formats (display, video, native), and application purposes (guaranteed and
programmatic). Its technology platform is open and programmable, which affords customers the ability to build and innovate on top of its Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and enables Axel Springer brands to connect their inventories and systems to each other, as well as link to external customer processes.


anneOgilvy & Mather announced the appointment of Anne Ridwan as its new CEO, effective June 2017.

Until recently, Anne was the Chief Executive Officer of Publicis One Indonesia. She was also previously the CEO of Leo Burnett Indonesia from 2012.

Anne will be working closely with Ogilvy Indonesia’s executive committee to further accelerate the agency’s growth. In particular, she will be leading the continued development of Ogilvy Indonesia’s services and capabilities for a host of international and Indonesian clients. This already includes various social media, digital content, performance marketing, influence and production services, plus key creative and strategic brand development services. Anne has experience leading multi-disciplined agencies. Plus, she has an in-depth understanding of brand building for various major blue chip clients such as British American Tobacco, Coca-Cola and Unilever.


Bloomberg Media and Twitter announced their partnership to create the firstever 24/7 breaking news network that will be global, live, social and streaming.

Bloomberg Media is the consumer-facing media organization of Bloomberg LP, the world’s leading multi-platform media company for business and finance.

The new live streaming news network will combine the vast global editorial and newsgathering capabilities of Bloomberg with the digital power of Twitter, one of the world’s fastest and primary news distribution channels. Bloomberg will collaborate with Twitter to provide an unprecedented live experience for video news consumers around the world.

The new network in-development has been just unveiled at Bloomberg Media’s NewFront presentation, following a live interview with Michael R. Bloomberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Launching in Fall 2017, it will feature an extraordinary mix of user-generated breaking news video from citizens, curated and verified by Bloomberg editors, along with live video and reporting from Bloomberg journalists around the world. Combining the speed and immediacy of Twitter with the editorial rigor of Bloomberg, the network will be interactive, rich with social content and consumable on any device.