Ogilvy & Mather has named a new planning director for the Asia-Pacific region: Mark Sinnock, former chief strategic officer of the London office of Fallon who most recently held a top marketing role at the ASDA stores chain in the U.K.
Sinnock becomes Ogilvy's second regional planning director hire in as many months. In July, the WPP Group shop named Russell Davies head of planning for Europe, the Middle East and Africa [1], replacing John Shaw.
From May 2009 until June, Sinnock was marketing director for strategy, insight and advertising at ASDA in Leeds. Before that, he spent more than four years at Fallon London, where he also was a partner. During that period, the Publicis Groupe agency grew from 60 to 200 staffers and created award-winning work for the likes of Cadbury ("Gorilla") and Sony Bravia ("Color Like No Other").
Earlier in his career, Sinnock was a planning partner at Omnicom Group's TBWA in London, where he worked on Sony PlayStation. At Ogilvy, he replaces Paul Matheson, who is leaving the agency next month after six years. He had held the regional planning role since 2006.
Matheson was based in Tokyo but Sinnock will work out of Singapore. The new planning leader will start Sept. 20 and report to Tim Isaac and Paul Heath, chairman and CEO, respectively, for the region. Sinnock also will report to worldwide planning director Colin Mitchell, who's based in New York.
Ogilvy has a sizeable operation in the Asia-Pacific region, with some 29 offices in 22 countries and clients such as Unilever (Pond's, Dove), Yum (Pizza Hut), Lenovo and Kimberly-Clark (Huggies, Kotex). Sinnock also will work on global business as one of the top planners in the network. As Mitchell put it, "it's a multi-cornered world. It's not just, 'New York is the hub.'"
Mitchell described Sinnock as a non-traditional planner who brings a fresh style and new voice to the agency. "He really understands business issues and the new marketing," Mitchell said. "He thinks of creativity as inventing new ideas and innovative ways of doing business."
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[1] http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/e3i7deb554f2e0e8b2f2d0325e6a73b432b