-By Steve McClellan

NEW YORK Andrew Swinand has been appointed to the new post of president of global operations, Publicis Groupe's Starcom MediaVest Group, the agency network has confirmed.

Swinand will report to Laura Desmond, who was named SMG's global CEO in June. Swinand's appointment is her first major management move since assuming that post.

The newly created role is designed to fortify operations in Asia Pacific, Latin America and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and the CEOs of those regions will report to Swinand. SMG's North American operations and diversified service units will continue to report directly to Desmond.

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 group's technology practice. Additionally, he will work with 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.

Swinand, 40, was most recently at Publicis' media consultancy, Denuo, and prior to that he was president of Starcom Worldwide. While there, he was credited with securing the global Samsung business and developing proprietary accountability metrics to measure return on objective (ROO) across all client investments. A representative said there are no current plans to replace him at Denuo.

Swinand will continue to oversee the Nintendo account across Starcom Worldwide and Leo Burnett.

Commenting on the appointment, Desmond said in a statement, "Andrew's experiences, successes and global perspective ideally qualify him to assume [this] newly created global role. 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."
 
In a separate statement, Swinand said, "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. My job will be to provide all our leaders with the right resources and opportunities to grow their business by growing client business."
 
While traveling extensively, Swinand will remain based in Chicago.