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.

Docomo brings in Snoek as CPO
John Snoek has been hired as Chief Product Officer at Docomo Digital, NTT Docomo’s mobile commerce business. He will join the senior leadership team and be responsible for the entire product portfolio and development of new payment products and commercial launches.

Snoek has over 25 years of experience in digital product businesses. He joins from Payvision where, as CPO, he was responsible for product, operations, and data science, as well Acapture, which was recently acquired by ING Bank. Before that, he led global marketing and product at GlobalCollect, now part of Worldline. Snoek has also been a consultant to the Dutch government on eCommerce strategy.

“It is very exciting to join the Docomo Digital team at this point in their long history in payments,” said Snoek. “I especially look forward expanding our global payments platform with payment products, value-added services, and data driven solutions and of course to build out DOCOMO Digital’s leading direct carrier-billing proposition. At the heart of everything we do and create is an unbeatable customer experience.”

Michail-Clendinnen takes up CSO gig at Ozone
The Ozone Project, a digital advertising platform formed by some of the UK’s leading publishers, has appointed Dora Michail-Clendinnen to the newly-formed role of Chief Strategy Officer. Reporting to CEO Damon Reeve, she will also fulfil the position of Company Secretary, while being responsible for developing Ozone’s strategic priorities, deepening Ozone’s relationships with key stakeholders, and raising standards of governance as the business continues to grow.

Prior to this appointment, Michail-Clendinnen was advising Ozone on its strategic direction, drawing on her experience from her time as Managing Director of Digital at The Telegraph, one of Ozone’s founder publishers. Prior to joining The Telegraph, she held senior roles at Yahoo, most recently as Senior Director for Audience & Programmatic Solutions across EMEA.

“Having played a part in the creation and early development of Ozone whilst at The Telegraph, I am very excited to be joining a business that is so clearly focused on creating a fairer and more effective digital ecosystem,” said Michail-Clendinnen. “Ozone has a clear roadmap for future growth, one that truly benefits both advertisers and publishers, and I can’t wait to join the brilliant team on this incredible journey.”

Yext elevates Rudnitsky to president
David Rudnitsky has been promoted to President and Chief Revenue Officer at search listing company Yext. He was previously responsible for Yexts enterprise sales organisation for North America.

Rudnitsky has over 35 years of technology and cloud sales experience, having successfully led enterprise sales for a number of leading disruptive tech companies. Prior to Yext, he spent 12 years at Salesforce, scaling the enterprise sales team and helping to lead the company from $51m in revenue at IPO to nearly $6bn. Prior to Salesforce, he led enterprise sales teams at Ariba, Netscape, and Oracle.

“Yext is disrupting the search category and Dave has, quite literally, written the book on technology sales disruption,” said Howard Lerman, Founder and CEO of Yext. “Im thrilled to unify our global sales organization under his incredible leadership. His background and proven track record of success make him uniquely qualified to lead us into the next phase of growth and category disruption.”

Van Santen named CCO at Uberall
Uberall, a location marketing solution, has chosen Tijs van Santen as its new Chief Customer Officer. He will help further drive Uberalls company growth through an increased focus on creating more value for its customers, from small business owners to multinational corporations.

Van Santen joins Uberall after many years building and leading go-to-market teams for technology businesses, including HP, Forrester Research, Impact and Button. At Forrester, in his role as VP of Global Sales, he led a newly created global sales operation across the US, Europe and Asia for Forresters largest and most strategic enterprise accounts. At Impact, Van Santen oversaw the transition to a pure SaaS go-to-market strategy in his capacity as CRO.

“I am thrilled to be joining Uberall at such an exciting stage of their journey,” said Van Santen. “Customer value is Uberall’s North Star, and I am committed to building a unique, seamless and complete end-to-end journey for all our customers and enable them to create the best possible ‘Near Me’ Brand Experience for their business. Uberall has an incredibly well-established core, and I look forward to building on this to drive exciting change and help the company evolve and grow, all the while making a difference for our customers, partners, employees and shareholders.”

ClickThrough welcomes Gatenby and Macintyre
Nikki Gatenby has been appointed to the Board of Director at growth marketing agency ClickThrough Marketing, while Lindsay Macintyre has been assigned the role of Head of New Business.

Gatenby will be overseeing and advising on all areas of business development, particularly in line with developing ClickThrough’s cultural strategy to enhance the service the agency provides to clients.

“The level of innovation in the business is inspiring and I believe we can accelerate ClickThrough’s growth trajectory by investing in the team and making ClickThrough an exciting place to work,” said Gatenby. “The future thinking within the business presents significant advantage and with Ecommerce booming, I want to ensure clients benefit from the impressive expertise of ClickThrough’s people to go further, faster, in achieving their ambitions.”

Macintyre was appointed after a thorough process to identify a Head of New Business with the capability to transform ClickThrough’s approach to new business and identifying compatible brands specifically looking to grow through marketing.

“I am excited to be joining a strong, established business looking to take the steps to grow in the next digital age,” said Macintyre. “With the domination of networks and platforms, I think there’s a real market for an independent agency than can genuinely help clients. I’m looking forward to expanding ClickThrough’s reach and developing partnerships that showcase their core ability.”

Kulkarni to become CFO at Tech Mahindra
Digital transformation company Tech Mahindra has chosen Milind Kulkarni as its Chief Financial Officer, effective 2 April 2021. He will take over from current CFO Manoj Bhat, who will be moving to become Group CFO for M&MGroup.

Kulkarni has been associated with Tech Mahindra since 2002, holding key leadership positions, including being CFO until May 2018 and in his current role as a Senior Advisor for the company. 

“It’s been a pleasure working with Manoj over the years, and I wish him all the best in his new role as the M&M Group’s Chief Financial Officer,” said CP Gurnani, MD & CEO of Tech Mahindra. “He has been instrumental in spearheading the growth of the organization and I would like to thank him for his immense contributions to the finance function. I welcome Milind Kulkarni, who has worked with the company for over 19 years in multiple leadership roles including as CFO till May 2018, in his new role.”

Huel adds social expert Bartlett to board
Steven Bartlett, ex-CEO of Social Chain, has taken a seat on the Board of Directors at meal replacement brand Huel. He has thrown his weight behind the brand with a financial investment and will provide it with his social media expertise.

The position on Huel’s Board is Bartlett’s first external appointment since stepping down as CEO of Social Chain in 2020. Bartlett launched Social Chain back in 2014 after dropping out of university and built the company toward a market valuation above €200m when it was taken public in 2019.

“I’ve been a Huel customer for the last 4 years and I fell in love with the brand, it’s mission and Julian’s vision soon after. Huel isn’t just a category leading company, it’s a rare, great British success story – one with mindboggling potential,” Bartlett commented. “I’m bringing almost 10 years of experience in leading one of the world’s most advanced social media companies and working with many of the world’s biggest consumer brands to the board. My objective is to make Huel one of the world’s most innovative, creative and culturally significant consumer brands.”

Three senior appointments made at Lycamobile
Lycamobile, a mobile virtual network operator, has recruited Brigadier Anil Tandan as Chief Technology Officer, Mikah Martin-Cruz as Group Chief Marketing and Digital Officer, and Karl Booth as Chief Commercial Officer.

Tandan will be responsible for the Lycamobile’s network infrastructure and will support the wider technology arms of the business. He brings with him 50 years of telecoms and IT expertise from a career in the army and the private sector. He spent 30 years in the Indian Army’s Corps of Signals before retiring as a Brigadier to join India’s nascent mobile industry in 1998. In 2003, Tandan was appointed CTO at Idea Cellular, where he was responsible for growing the business from a regional 2G operator to a pan-Indian 4G operators until it joined Vodafone India to form Vodafone Idea.

Martin-Cruz has more than 25 years’ experience in consumer technology, commercial marketing and digital ecommerce. He has held senior positions at several telco and technology groups including BT, where he was part of the team responsible for rolling out high speed broadband in the UK. He went on to become Sony Consumer Electronics’ MD, CMO at Samsung, and subsequently CMO for Western Europe at Microsoft. Prior to joining Lycamobile, he was Executive Director, EMEA and APAC at Logitech.

Booth joins Lycamobile with over 20 years’ telecoms experience, having worked across the B2B and B2C sectors launching new products and implementing strategies to monetise them. In his most recent position, he served as Commercial Director of Conecto. He also spent 10 years at Vodafone, where he was Head of Business Development, responsible for building its market leading wholesale business.

“I’m delighted to welcome Anil, Mikah and Karl to the Lyca family, broadening our expertise within the business at this important time in our global development,” said Navanit Narayan, Group COO of Lycamobile. “Against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is critical that we continue to develop new products and services that meet the ever-changing needs of our valued customers. I look forward to working closely with all three of them to build upon our successes to date.”

Adverty makes changes to leadership
Tobias Knutsson has been promoted to Chief Executive Officer at in-game advertising platform Adverty, while Thorbjörn Warin has been appointed Chief Supply Officer, allowing Founder Niklas Bakos to focus on product strategy and development.

Knutsson is currently Chief Commercial Officer at Adverty, having previously been CCO at DadAds and CEO at Strossle. As a result of his promotion, Bakos will now be able to focus on key areas within product strategy and development, as the company readies itself for further acceleration and expansion globally.

“Adverty is taking the next step in its journey towards unlocking previously unreachable audiences and comprehensive monetization streams,” Knutsson commented. “I am beyond excited and can’t wait for this next stage on our journey and taking the reins as CEO.”

Warin was previously VP of Publishing EMEA at AdColony, where he worked closely with game publishers in the region. He has also served as CMO at Grand Cru and Head of Marketing at Wooga. He will also benefit from the addition of Olga Kazanski to his team as Director of Business Development.

“I am excited to bring Adverty’s unique, seamless and unobtrusive ad offering to more game developers across the globe and help both smaller and larger publishers maximize their ad monetisation,” said Warin. “Gaming is slowly becoming the next big thing for brands – Verizon is set to create a virtual Super Bowl stadium in Fortnite this year – and game developers have used traditional ad solutions for years already. Now we just need to connect the dots and introduce them to the new way of monetizing through brand advertising.”

Phipps takes editing lead at Waste
Independent creative agency Waste has recruited Brett Phipps as its Senior Editor. He will build a newsroom function in order to help clients better understand and react to conversations about their brands online, with an initial focus on the Supercell account. The new function will enable brands to spot and act on real-time opportunities to join the conversations that matter to their target audiences.

Phipps joins from We Are Social, where he spent nearly three years as Senior Editor, leading the social media editorial vision for two of Activision’s biggest gaming franchises, Call of Duty and Destiny, across 12 international markets. He was previously the Games and SEO Editor at Trusted Reviews and has also held positions at The Independent and Pro-G Media.

“I’m incredibly excited to be joining Waste, a company with a fantastic client list with a huge passion for gaming. The work the team has delivered over the past year has been nothing short of inspiring, and something I knew I had to be involved with,” said Phipps.

“I hope that my experience within the games industry, coupled with my passion for community building and social listening, will be an asset to the team. I cannot wait to get started.”

TMWI selects Morgan as MD
Matt Morgan has joined marketing agency TMWI as Managing Director. He will lead client services and planning and strategy whilst growing the agency’s team and client base and focusing on product and capabilities development.

Morgan has over 20 years’ experience in media, across agencies, broadcast and ad technology. Previously Managing Partner, Head of Product, at Dentsu Aegis Network, he was also Managing Partner, Digital at IPG and worked at Blis. He has worked across global brand accounts including Amex, Apple, Sony, Johnson & Johnson, The Economist, and Spotify.

“I am excited to see what TMWI’s agile team can deliver,” commented Morgan. “Its track record of delivering impactful results in a fast-moving landscape, and across sectors, is incredibly inspiring. With this team, so passionate about media, working alongside me, I know we will achieve great things and exceed our targets.”

In addition to Morgan’s appointment, Jordan Muckley has joined TMWI as Social Media Lead, Nazanin Faghihi takes on the role of Senior Paid Media Executive, Cherish Goodwin arrives as Content Lead, and Josh Burlison has been named Paid Search Executive.

Ernst named CEO of Tubular
Tubular Labs, a social video analytics provider, has chosen Scott Ernst as its new Chief Executive Officer, effective 16 February 2021.

Ernst has a proven track record of scaling marketing insights businesses globally. He most recently served as CEO of Macromill, for which he was recruited by Bain Capital to focus the business around global and digital solutions. He was also a founding management team member at Compete, where he drove the go-to-market strategy resulting in the acquisition by WPP’s Kantar. He would then, in turn, help transform compete into what is now Millward Brown Digital.

“I’m impressed by Tubular’s ascent since its founding in 2012, and I believe the company has all the elements required to be a global measurement authority,” said Ernst. “Tubular provides the only enterprise SaaS platform of addressing the pain points of media companies and advertisers who seek to confidently transact in the digital video marketplace,” added Ernst. “Brands in particular need to understand the reach and audience quality of what they’re buying. I believe Tubular’s audience ratings product is the catalyst for brands to increase digital video investments.”