IPG’s Mediabrands Content Studio (MBCS) has expanded its leadership team with a trio of new hires.
Nathan Coyle has been named global president of content partnerships and influencer marketing and Alissa Allen has joined as global chief strategy officer—both reporting to Alfonso Marian, MBCS’s global CEO and global chief creative officer. Heather Stanislaus has been named global chief financial officer and will report to Mediabrands’ chief financial officer, Marlene Pelage.
The hires follow the signing of Marian, who joined the agency in February, and all three are key to MBCS’s expansion in new and existing international markets.
Marian told Adweek in earlier this year that MBCS aims to broaden its presence from 12 markets to 20 key territories in a year.
As part of this expansion, the agency is bolstering its leadership team. Coyle, Allen and Stanislaus will support MBCS creative teams both locally and regionally and will support Mediabrands’ agencies, UM, Initiative and Reprise.
“I am thrilled to welcome Nathan, Alissa and Heather to MBCS at what is truly an exciting time of great growth and opportunity for our teams,” said Marian in a statement. “Each brings a diverse and impressive array of career experiences with them, and they will undoubtedly become indispensable assets to Mediabrands’ agencies and clients across the network,” he added.
Nathan Coyle
In his new role, Coyle will lead MBCS’s influencer marketing and branded content partnerships globally, and will be based in Los Angeles. He comes to MBCS from Pride Media, where he was CEO. Early in his career he worked at Saatchi & Saatchi as a strategic planner and later held roles at the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and at Refinery29. While at the publication, he launched its first influencer marketing offerings and within 12 months built it into an eight-figure business.
He was at the forefront of influencer marketing in its nascent stages. “I went in at a time where you had more and more creators—actors, writers, directors, producers, clients of CAA–who had projects they wanted to realize as original video projects for the web, but no one really knew how to get them financed and get them distributed,” he said. Coyle then built an early model for them to do this effectively.
At MBCS, Coyle will focused on forging tight relationships with publishers and media partners to learn about upcoming content opportunities. The job allows for a lot of invention, Coyle said.
Alissa Allen
Before joining MBCS as the global strategy leader, Allen was a senior vice president at Omnicom’s Integer Group. There, she led various initiatives, from retail experience design to inclusive work strategy, cultural analytics and digital transformation. She also led big-name activations including The Batman Experience @ The Comic-Con Museum, HBO’s Game of Thrones and DC Comics’ Wonder Woman 1984. Allen comes to MBCS with a global perspective and told Adweek that having lived and worked all over the world allows her to bring “a freshness, in terms of scope” to the her media, strategy and content approach.
Allen will focus on expanding MBCS’s content expansion strategy globally and will work closely with Mediabrands’ three media agencies. With her global perspective, Allen is also invested in increasing MBCS’s commitment to a diversity of content.
“One of the things that we’re really doing is promoting an inclusivity of content. And it goes well beyond diversity, it goes well beyond every nuance of diversity, equity and inclusion. That is part of the typical conversation today. But the agency is really, really focused and committed to an inclusion in our storytelling,” she said.
She is also based in MBCS’s new Los Angeles office.
Heather Stanislaus
Stanislaus comes to MBCS from Meta, where she previously served as revenue director. At Meta, she designed a $100 billion revenue and governance operations framework. Stanislaus got her start at PricewaterhouseCoopers before ascending to numerous leadership roles at WarnerMedia.
At MBCS, she will manage financial operations for MBCS both domestically and globally, as well as Mediabrands’ original content production and development company, TRAVERSE32. Stanislaus is based in New York City.
The role at MBCS was a fitting blend of Stanislaus’ background in entertainment and media at WarnerMedia, as well as her advertising industry experience gleaned at Meta, she told Adweek.
“Being able to work with creatives directly to be able to grow a creative agency is very exciting to me because I’m passionate about creativity,” Stanislaus said. “I enjoy finance as well, so it sort of married the two together.”