In her first major management appointment since assuming the Global CEO role at Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) in June, Laura Desmond announced the appointment of Andrew Swinand, 40, as the media agency network’s new President of Global Operations, effective immediately.
The newly created role is designed to fortify operations in Asia Pacific, Latin America and Europe/Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and aligns Swinand with regional CEOs Ravi Kiran (South East and South Asia), Paul Maher (China, Hong Kong and Taiwan), John Sintras (Australia), Martha Marin (Latin America) and Iain Jacob (EMEA). SMG’s North American operations will continue to report directly into Desmond.
“Andrew’s experiences, successes and global perspective ideally qualify him to assume the newly-created global role of President, Starcom MediaVest Group,” said Desmond. “He has a great talent for team-building and a powerful presence with clients, and we intend to leverage those strengths to unify our organization and strategically grow our business.”
Along with his regional management responsibilities, Swinand’s role will include the creation of new client-facing service models across the network and the expansion of the successful technology practice. Additionally, he will be charged with working alongside Desmond to align and position the network to take advantage of the digital resources that the Publicis Groupe media brands now have access to as part of the recently launched VivaKi operating model [www.vivaki.com].
“Throughout my career I have tried to focus my passion for reinvention towards fresh, client-driven solutions, and the sort of innovative agency models that are needed to deliver those solutions – a focus honed by my time serving global technology clients and Samsung,” said Swinand. “I have seen the power of the SMG network first-hand, and my job will be to provide all our leaders with the right resources and opportunities to grow their business by growing client business.”
Most recently, Swinand was at Denuo, the media future consultancy within Publicis Groupe. Prior to his role at Denuo, he was president of Starcom Worldwide, where he helped secure the Samsung business as well as build a global technology practice.
