The Kraft Heinz Company, one of the world’s largest food & beverage company, has appointed Karina Ong as its Chief Marketing Officer for the Asia Pacific region.

Based in Singapore, she will lead the growth agenda for the brands and spearhead the long-term innovation pipeline for Kraft Heinz portfolio in the zone.

As CMO, Karina also joins the Kraft Heinz regional leadership team, reporting directly to Rodrigo Wickbold, Kraft Heinz APAC President.

Karina brings to the team close to 18 years of consumer marketing experience at the regional and global level. Prior to joining Kraft Heinz, she was with Unilever where she held several roles, the latest as Global Brand Development Director for Pond’s. Prior to Unilever, Karina was also responsible for leading key brand and marketing teams at Johnson & Johnson and Lux Asia.

RTB House, a global company that provides state-of-the-art retargeting technology for top brands worldwide, won the 2018 ‘AIconics Award’.

The annual awards, celebrating the drive, innovation and hard work in the international AI business community, was held for the 3rd time in partnership with Microsoft and Imperial College London.

RTB House was recognized for Best Application of AI for Sales & Marketing because of its deep learning technology that offers truly personalized marketing. It is an innovative branch of machine learning that closely imitates the work of the human brain in processing data and creating patterns of decision making.

From a marketer’s perspective, deep learning has made a huge impact on the entire advertising industry. It made it possible to get more reliable, richer, machine-interpretable user descriptions of customer’s buying potential without any human expertise. This technology can predict a user’s unique habits and desires for the advertising industry. It is simplifying our everyday user experience by bringing deeply targeted ads that contain not only products we are more likely to buy, but also those which we haven’t seen or products we haven’t even thought about, but which fit our shopping profile, or which may be interesting for us.

According to RTB House, deep learning algorithms make advertising activities up to 50 percent more efficient than those based on machine learning. In 2017 RTB House become one of the few companies in the world to have developed and implemented its own technology 100 percent based on deep learning, for purchasing ads in the RTB model. Recently, RTB House opened an AI Marketing Lab, which researches and develops cutting edge mar-tech solutions for both publishers and advertisers.

Lucien Harrington joins management consultancy Lynxeye as Managing Director for Asia Pacific

Lucien is an innovative entrepreneur who has built successful brands, businesses and teams across Europe, China, India and Asia Pacific for some of the most recognized global brands as well as start-up businesses.

His experience, gained across 20 years of working in over 30 countries, has given him deep insight and empathy for clients’ potential, objectives, challenges and vision. Working with Walt Disney, Fox and Time Warner allowed him to gain an appreciation for strategies required to expand existing brands and develop new brands to launch into under-penetrated markets. His time with FutureBrand Asia saw him lead the transformation of the agency to become one of the most awarded agencies during his tenure, winning global and regional awards for companies that included Alibaba’s, Ant Financial, MGM, Haitong, Swire Group, MGM and CITIC PE.

With clients that include Ikea, Volvo, Spotify, Geely, Pernod Ricard and Unilever, Lynxeye has been helping some of the world’s most innovative companies grow across Europe, North America and Asia Pacific since 1999.

Global marketing communications agency, Text100, announced the appointment of Joos Khor as its new Creative Director for Malaysia. Leading the Malaysian Creative Team, Joos is tasked to oversee the agency’s creative processes and standards, while working with the consulting team to deliver impactful and inspiring campaigns.

An advertising industry veteran with over a decade of experience, Joos joined Text100 from McCann. Throughout his career, he has worked with global brands such as NIKE, IKEA, IBM, Volkswagen and Oreo, earning several awards in recognition of his work at the Effies, Mob-Ex, Marketing Excellence and Kancil Awards, among others.

The appointment came as the agency looks to strengthen its position in the marketing communications space, with creativity at the core. Over the years, Text100 has been making good use of its inherent strengths in PR, digital and social media to provide clients with strategic brand consultancy services. In fact, the agency has just recorded significant wins at the recent Agency of the Year Awards 2018, where it took home the Gold for Brand Consultancy of the Year, Bronze for PR Agency of the Year, and three MARKies.

Text100 has also realigned its Digital Hub from a predominantly digital and technical team to a full suite of creative service consultants that include integrated designers, technology producers, web developers, and a creative copywriter.

Following Joos’ appointment, Text100 made further strategic hires and developments that include:

• Crystal Chong joining Text100 as creative copywriter
• Transitioning its own senior designer, Jason Boi, into the role of digital producer.