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.

Sutherland moves from Fetch to head up Carat UK
Jo Sutherland is switching roles within Dentsu Aegis Network, moving from MD at mobile-first agency Fetch to become CEO of Carat UK. She replaces Rick Hirst, who is moving on to a new global role within Dentsu Aegis Network. In her new role, Sutherland will report to Matthew Platts who was recently promoted to CEO of Media Brands, Dentsu Aegis Network UK & Ireland.

She has been with Dentsu Aegis Network since 1999. In addition to her role at Fetch, she has also served as COO at media agency Vizeum. At Fetch, she doubled the agencys revenues over the two years of her tenure. She introduced new digital capabilities to the agencys offering, subsequently attracting significant mobile-centric business from UK advertisers, including The Telegraph Media Group ING Bank’s Yolt.

“Jo brings a dynamic mobile-first philosophy to the heart of the business,” said Stef Calcraft, executive chairman, Dentsu Aegis Network UK & Ireland. “She is a progressive leader with a collaborative style that inspires more innovative ideas and solutions for our clients, our people and our media partners. Jo has played a pivotal role in transforming Fetch into the thriving business that it is today and I look forward to her leading Carat through its next phase of growth. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Rick for his dedication to Carat over the past two years. I am delighted that he remains within the group and wish him all the best in his exciting new role.”

Morgan takes up GM role at OpenMarket
Jonathan Morgan has been appointed to the role of general manager at mobile messaging firm, OpenMarket. OpenMarket, an Amdocs company, enables enterprises to reach mobile users across the world, sending over 2bn business-to-consumer mobile messages each month.

Morgan has almost 20 years’ experience in commercial, engineering and operational leadership roles at OpenMarket, and prior to that, worked at Proxama and Hypertag.

In his new role, he will be responsible for driving the company’s global strategy and helping enterprises transform their operations in order to improve customer experiences through SMS, based on the principle of what the company calls ‘empathetic interactions’ – delivering text messages at the right time and in the right place.

Morgan said: “In the customer age, it’s not enough to say a business is consumer-centric, it must adopt a new mind set and approach which is entirely customer first. At OpenMarket, we believe the future of customer experience is around empathy. Those companies that capitalise on empathetic interactions, at those moments that matter, will drive the best loyalty among their consumers.”

ConsumerAcquisition.com hires Disney animator
Filmmaker and animator Mike Merell has joined ConsumerAcquisition.com as creative director.  Merell brings over 25 years of visual design experience, spanning both computer animation and live action, in the entertainment industry. With over 15 years at the Walt Disney Co., he worked as a CGI character animator and supervisor, and in development on such films as Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Atlantis, and Chicken Little.

At Disney Feature Animation he helped transitioned Disney’s 2D iconic characters, such as Ariel and Donald Duck, into the 3D world of animation for the theme park film Mickey’s Philharmagic. Later at DisneyToons Studios, he provided animation on Planes, Planes 2, and co-supervised animation on Tinkerbell’s ‘The Pirate Fairy’.

Merell was an animator at Starz/Arc on Gnomeo and Juliet and has also supervised animation at Warner Brothers, and animated on live action films for ILM and the Orphanage. More recently at Mattel he was in development for a future franchise and following that he was at The Third Floor Inc., where he provided pre-visualization for major studio films yet to be released by Disney, Marvel, Fox, Sony, and Prime.

At Consumer Acquisition, Merell will oversee the company’s professional in-house design team and its Creative Marketplace, which delivers creative videos and images to Facebook and Google advertisers. The company offers managed services for Facebook user acquisition, a creative marketplace that delivers a high-volume of fresh creative concepts for Facebook and Google UAC ads, and a self-service campaign management platform for Facebook. It has created over 300,000 videos and acquired over 150m app installs and leads for Glu Mobile, Ford, Lucktastic and Yelp, among others.

“Mike’s breadth of animation and filmmaking experience at top entertainment studios, including Walt Disney Feature Animation and Warner Bros., will be invaluable as he joins as creative director to lead our in-house design studio,” said Consumer Acquisition CEO, Brian Bowman. “He will be instrumental in driving the creative innovation of our design services team and we’re thrilled to have him on board.”