Havas Media Hires North America Data Lead From Accenture

Havas Media Group hired the newest member of its executive leadership team in North America away from one of the five largest consulting firms. Mike Bregman joins Havas Media as chief data officer for North America to serve as a member of the North American executive leadership team. He will be based in New York. Bregman joins Havas with 20 years of experience leading data and analytics teams, most recently as global managing director leading customer, marketing and sales analytics within Accenture’s Applied Intelligence unit. His career has focused on building proprietary AI-driven personalization and next best experience engines, bespoke consumer-360 and attribution modeling platforms, and various real-time cross-channel reporting, planning and media optimization systems. "Mike is an exciting new addition to our team. He has spent his career building AI-driven, consumer platforms from the ground-up, across a multitude of categories and industries," Peter Mears, Global CEO at Havas Media Group, said in a statement. "His experience will further strengthen our data integration across the Mx System, delivering on our brand promise of creating more meaningful media experiences for consumers." At Accenture, Bregman was responsible for evolving the unit’s offerings and innovative go-to-market strategy across 20 regions, as well as developing a community of over a thousand data scientists. Prior to Accenture, he held senior roles at agencies including Dentsu and MediaCom. Pouring fuel on the fire "Havas Media Group is among the best positioned in the market to continue to evolve and enhance its data, analytics, and mar tech offerings," Bregman told Adweek. "With recent investments in new planning, targeting, measurement, and optimization capabilities, the agency is seeing incredible demand from clients and unlocking the true potential of their media investments. There is a tremendous opportunity to apply this momentum and pour fuel on the fire to push our clients tech-stacks, data science tool kits and growth ambitions even further." Bregman's hire reflects the media agency's focus on investing in more dedicated data and technology talent across the business—particularly in specialty practices such as its expanding HMG Health practice that continues to be a source of growth for the agency and he said his focus will be to continue growing the agency's s talent base of specialists across data science, digital analytics, engineering, and mar tech, while strengthening the group's product and deliverables across these highly in-demand areas. Havas' Converged Platform positions the agency well to translate individual data points into audience targeting insights informing creative optimization and media channel planning, Bregman said while expressing excitement about continuing to work on developing AI technology in his new position. "We are working actively and investing to future proof our converged platform for the modern data scientists," he said, "but the future is really a mix of human and machine—embedding strong quantitative optimization recommendation alongside the strategic guidance and in-market realities of media buying—creating an integrated planning tool kit that is truly cutting-edge." Other recent leadership appointments across Havas Media Group North America include Meghan Grant, recently named chief strategy officer, and Amy Ginsberg, as chief investment officer. Havas Is Launching a Worldwide Creative Production Studio