The mobile marketing industry is ever-changing, and that applies to the people as much as the technology. Movers & Shakers is our regular feature following the hottest hires in the industry, so you can keep track of who’s joined which company, and what they’re doing there.

Morrell joins The Trade Desk from Channel 4
Ad tech firm The Trade Desk has appointed Patrick Morrell to the role of director of strategic publisher and TV development. He will be based in the London office and report to Dave Castell, general manager, inventory EMEA at the company.

Morrell joins The Trade Desk following eight years at Channel 4, where, as agency investment lead, he specialised in driving revenue growth in both Linear and Connected TV, together with both agency and client partners.

Prior to his time as agency investment lead, he built up a wealth of experience in sales and trading experience at Channel 4, as well as experience across the media ecosystem, having worked both agency-side and in business development at Diageo.

As part of his role at The Trade Desk, he will be responsible for developing and strengthening relationships between The Trade Desk and its key inventory stakeholders, including broadcasters, with the overall ambition of continuing to grow the UK’s Connected TV market. Initially focused in the UK, his work aims to demonstrate the powerful fusion of programmatic buying with TV to broadcasters and agencies alike.

He said: “The Connected TV market is at an incredibly exciting point in the UK, and The Trade Desk was well known to me at Channel 4 as a front-runner in the space. I’m elated to be joining a business with such a great reputation in the industry. Connected TV is developing rapidly, both at home and further afield, and I’m keen to seize this momentum and make it one of the biggest success stories of 2020.

Garrick takes up CEO berth as Leanplum raises $27m
Multichannel customer engagement platform Leanplum has appointed Silicon Valley veteran George Garrick as president and CEO, and Sheri Huston as chief financial officer. Momchil Kyurkchiev, co-founder of Leanplum, will assume the role of chief product officer, while Russ Fradin, chairman of Dynamic Signal and a successful entrepreneur, founder, and angel investor, will join Leanplums board of directors.

The company has also raised an additional $27m as an extension of its Series D growth round. The funding was led by Norwest Venture Partners and Shasta Ventures, with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Canaan, and Launchub, and will be used to bolster Leanplums product development and go-to-market (GTM) efforts.

Having served as CEO of both IRI and A.C. Nielsen earlier in his career, Garrick has extensive expertise and experience in consumer behaviour, advertising effectiveness and media, enterprise data, and analytics. Over the past 20 years, he has been CEO of a number of venture-backed growth companies in Silicon Valley in media, e-commerce, data/analytics, software/SaaS, and mobile. These include Flycast Communications (IPO 1999); Placeware (acquired by Microsoft); Wine.com; and Tapjoy. Huston has held CFO positions at Comscore Networks and LiquiBox, and senior financial leadership roles at Rockwell Automation and IRI.

He said: “With the continued explosion of mobile apps and the role of mobile devices as the key touchpoint for brands to maximize customer loyalty and lifetime value, its imperative that brands use powerful and coordinated multichannel engagement tools to connect with their customers at all times and through all digital channels.

“Leanplum is a best-in-class solution that enables brands to engage with their customers in a relevant and personalized manner. As Leanplum continues to grow, Im excited to oversee its expansion into additional global markets and an expanding total available market, while strengthening relationships with our existing customers and partners.”

Social Chain recruits creative and sales directors
Social media and eCommerce firm Social Chain has appointed Tim Donald as a creative director, and Sam Barrett as a sales director.

As a creative director, Donald will be responsible for overseeing the creative output of Social Chain Agency, ensuring that the agency continues to consistently deliver exciting and innovative ideas. Donald has previously worked as a creative director at Something, where he supervised a complete strategic and creative brand repositioning for Johnnie Walker Gold Label, with his other previous notable clients including Nike, Sonos, GAP, Uniqlo, Baileys and Scottish Widows.

Donald said: “Social Chain has an incredibly talented team that is always at the forefront of the endless possibilities within social media, and I’m really excited to be part of it. I’m very much looking forward to creating some truly stand-out work.”

In his role as sales director, Barrett will spearhead the growth of both Social Chain’s outbound commercial operations and the company’s footprint in London. He will be working with the broader team to help establish an effective and scalable sales and marketing strategy that captures and conveys the value of Social Chain’s varied offerings to the broader market. Prior to joining Social Chain Barrett held positions at PMYB Influencer Marketing Agency, UNILAD and Crowd Media.

Barrett said: “Im beyond thrilled to join an agency of this calibre. Social Chain’s offerings and the people behind them are absolutely first class and the scope of solutions in aggregate is beyond what is available in the market. What other agency can match what Social Chain do and also be a media owner with access to 80m people with a wealth of first party data? Its humbling and inspiring to be surrounded by the type of people that Social Chain have in-house and I feel fortunate to be counted amongst them.”

Talon Outdoor recruits Karst to head up new German division
Out of Home media company Talon Outdoor has launched a German division and appointed Winfried Karst appointed as managing director to run it. Karst is tasked with driving business in Germany, mainland Europe, and internationally from across Talon’s Plexus network, expanding Talon’s reach in mainland Europe.

During Karst’s 30-year career he spent over 12 years at Kinetic as co-founder and COO of Germany and Austria, and CEO of Switzerland. This was followed by senior management positions at Amscreen Europe, Goldbach and a 4-year involvement in the Digital Signage Federation as European vice president. Most recently, he has been CEO of SK2 Solutions, a consulting and media business focused on the area of healthcare clients and igDital Out of Home.

Karst takes up his new role immediately and will be based in Frankfurt. He will focus on working with existing and new client partners and report into the London headquarters working closely with managing partner, Adrian Skelton.

Talon Group CEO Barry Cupples said: “I am delighted to announce the appointment of Winnie as the managing director of Talon in Europe. His extensive experience of the Out of Home market across Europe and more recently his focus on digital transformation and technology-led solutions, makes him ideally placed to take Talon’s Smarter as Standard philosophy to the heart of Europe.”

Regensburger takes up CEO role at Peach
Peach, the video ad platform that connects creative work with media around the world, has appointed SevenOne Media MD, Ben Regensburger, as CEO. He will use his extensive experience across digital and linear video to continue accelerating Peach’s offer, bringing new benefits to advertisers’ and agencies’ video campaigns.

Founded in 1996, Peach is used by almost all of the world’s global advertisers to get their creative work to audiences, with every broadcaster in most major economies relying on Peach daily. Via its cloud-based software platform, Peach has revolutionised industry workflows for linear, broadcast video, replacing laborious manual tasks with automated processes, offering efficiency, visibility and security. Now Peach is bringing the same benefits to digital video to reach any screen, anywhere at any time.

Regensburger has over 30 years’ experience in the media and advertising industries, most recently as MD at SevenOne Media since July 2018. Here he led the media product and platforms team, developing and managing all advertising products for ProSieben Sat.1 across linear, addressable TV and digital video to deliver a redesigned ad product range which has contributed to strong digital ad revenue growth. He has also held senior positions at Google, DoubleClick, Lycos Europe and Procter & Gamble.

Formally starting his new position as CEO on 1 May, Regensburger will replace Simon Cox, the CEO of Peach since 2006. During his time as CEO, Cox helped grow the advertising technology company from 30 to 250 people operating in 30 countries and in every continent. Cox will remain with Peach to ensure a smooth handover to Ben and continue as a shareholder.

Regensburger said: “Peach is an incredibly impressive business with a high performance culture and the highest standard of practice in delivering advertising across platforms. It’s important for brands and agencies to feel in safe hands whilst navigating the global advertising landscape across platforms and it’s obvious why almost all of the world’s major brands and broadcasters use Peach everyday. I’m looking forward to continuing this growth and success, especially increasing the digital footprint of Peach .”

Brainly appoints Won to senior sales role
Online learning community Brainly has appointed William Won as senior director of sales operations. Won will be responsible for scaling and managing operations, driving direct and programmatic revenue growth, optimizing advertising inventory on the platform, and developing and managing the companys Educational Product Marketplace.

Students use Brainly to strengthen their skills across core subjects such as maths, history, science, and social studies. The peer-to-peer platform allows them to connect with their peers, subject matter experts, and professional educators to discuss their subjects and seek answers to tricky questions.

“As our knowledge sharing community surpasses 150m users worldwide and 15m in the US alone, it is more important than ever to ensure that current and prospective commercial partners are able to reach students, teachers, parents and experts through the most innovative and impactful channels,” said Brainly CEO, Micha? Borkowski. “William brings a strong understanding of advertising strategy that will transform the opportunities and options available for our partners through our Educational Product Marketplace.”

Won joins Brainly from Vox Media, where he served as director of revenue and business development, with a strong focus on driving growth in new and emerging businesses, such as Voxs Concert marketplace, a one-stop publisher-led advertising solution. Prior to that, he held positions in revenue strategy and audience data monetization at leading business magazines and media companies including Fast Company and Hearst Digital Media.

Selligent names Kripapuri as CEO
Omnichannel marketing and experience cloud platform Selligent has named Karthik Kripapuri as its CEO. He will focus on scaling the business and operationalizing the company’s strategy. He succeeds John Hernandez, who led the development of Selligent’s strategy during his tenure, and who will advise Karthik and the board to ensure a seamless transition.

“Karthik is a proven leader who brings deep experience in corporate strategy and business transformation, along with comprehensive knowledge of Selligent clients and operations,” said Rich Lawson, chairman of the board of Selligent. “The board is confident that Karthik is the right person to lead Selligent in this next phase of growth, and we are excited to continue to work alongside him. In addition, we thank John for the great contributions he has made to our success.”

Kripapuri has been with Selligent for two years as chief customer officer. During this time, he has built strong, personal relationships with the senior leadership and with Selligent’s clients. Prior to joining Selligent, he spent 15 years at Dimension Data, a global systems integrator and managed services provider for hybrid IT.

During his time at Dimension Data, Kripapuri served various leadership roles across business transformation, integrations and services. His most recent position there was vice president, Americas system integration services, where he was responsible for development and execution of the company’s System Integration strategy, and oversaw the Consulting & Professional Services and Managed Services portfolios. Previously, he was consulting manager at Bearing Point, and served as a principal consultant at leading contact centre technology firms, including Cisco, VistaIT (acquired by Avaya) and GeoTel (acquired by Cisco).

Li takes up growth role at Teespring
Social commerce platform Teespring has appointed Frost Li to the role of executive growth advisor. She will support Teespring in strategically positioning the business through its latest period of growth.

Li comes with an impressive resume, having played an integral role at some of the fastest-growing companies in Silicon Valley, including Twitter, Pinterest, Lyft and Wish. Her skill set lies in the use and in-depth analysis of data and machine learning tools to inform highly-educated strategies across acquisition, activation, retention, and resurrection.

During her time at Wish, the platform grew to become the number one shopping app in more than 40 countries, gaining over 500m users. Her work with Pinterest saw her focus not only on retention, but on the use of machine learning-driven automation to ensure the effectiveness of manual marketing cycles. She also founded HackerMeter – later acquired by Pinterest – which analyzed programmers’ code to match them with roles to which they were best suited.

Over the past two years, Teespring has launched partnerships with Youtube, Instagram and Twitch, and in 2019 alone, acquired over 110,000 new content creators on its platform.

Li said: “I am passionate about working with leading tech companies to support them in recognising the potential of what they have at their disposal, using information in an informed and intelligent way. Data and machine-learning tools are absolutely invaluable and it is clear that Teespring’s growth to date will continue on a strong trajectory with the guidance these tools offer.”

CreatorIQ hires three to support expansion into France and Germany
Influencer marketing platform CreatorIQ has expanded its business into France and Germany following last year’s $12m investment from TVC Capital and Unilever Ventures last year, and announced a number of new hires in these territories.

Nicolas Audry joins as sales director, France, with extensive experience working across the EMEA region for SaaS companies, the last five years of which has been spent supporting major retail and eCommerce businesses with digital transformation

Dr.Matthias Göllner, joins as sales director, DACH and will lead CreatorIQ’s business in the DACH region. Working for companies such as Hootsuite, he has gained extensive experience in the social media and influencer marketing space and has collaborated with major brands to build social media as an integral part of their digital marketing and customer experience strategy.

Gary Squires joins as sales director, UK with over 13 years’ experience working for leading digital marketing technologies such as Khoros, Social Bakers and Cision. And Natalie Crippen takes on a new role as manager, customer success EMEA, after launching CreatorIQ’s UK office in 2019.

“Following the investment received last year, expanding our offering into Europe was a key part of our global growth strategy,” said CreatorIQ managing director, EMEA, Kam Zulawski. “We have a market-leading, competitive proposition, that enables brands to track and drive their relationships with influencers and engage with customers. The new hires ensure that CreatorIQ continues to have the perfect combination of innovative technology and forward-thinking people to support our rapid growth.”

Tech veteran takes up chief evangelist role at Americaneagle.com
Tech veteran Alain “Lino” Tadros has joined digital agency Americaneagle.com as chief evangelist. With over 30 years’ experience in the tech industry Tadros is the current president and CEO of Events XD Corporation, a mobile event app, and a solution architect at Solliance, an artificial intelligence, machine learning, and Internet of Things consulting firms in the Microsoft Azure cloud space.

He was President & CEO of Falafel Software for 15 years and has been awarded Microsoft MVP status 15 times and the Progress Telerik MVP Developer Expert designation 14 times. His expertise lies in AI, machine learning, IoT, .NET, Azure, MVC, Google Cloud, Xamarin, Sitefinity, TestComplete and Web Services.

He said: “Im excited to join the Americaneagle.com team because of the great people and the great company theyve created. Im passionate about technology and the values and vision of Americaneagle.com align with my own. Helping clients leverage technology to increase their business growth is our mission, and I cant wait to get started.”

Expert System hires Mayo as CEO
Walt Mayo has been appointed group chief executive officer of Expert System, which specialises in artificial intelligence applied to text . He joins the firm with more than 20 years’ sales, marketing and channel development leadership experience. working with high-growth technology and scale-up businesses across the globe. He will be instrumental in expanding Expert System’s expansion in the US as well as responsible for driving a new phase of growth globally.

Prior to joining Expert System, Mayo led the growth of Endeavor, an impact capital organization focused on scale-up businesses, more than tripling its global market reach and developing major new sources of revenue.

Endeavor’s global network includes investors and entrepreneurs in more than 30 countries around the world and in virtually every business sector.
Mayo previously worked at Dell across a range of sales, marketing, software, and channel management roles and in accelerating the company’s international growth as general manager for Southern Europe, Australia, Japan and Asia. He began his career after graduating from Harvard University as a Foreign Service Office and served in US diplomatic missions, the White House and the US Congress. He has an MBA from the University of Virginia and lives in the Boston area.

He said: “I am excited to join Expert System and deliver on the group’s commitment to give our customers even more ability to realize value while building our next phase of growth. Thanks to our practical and explainable AI that ensures a clear and strong return on investment, we will reinforce recurring revenue and further focus on building out the scalability of our platform. By providing a full range of on-premise, private and public cloud offerings, we will expand our marketing and sales capacity starting from the US to become the global layer of choice across a range of advanced Natural Language Understanding and Processing use cases.”