Havas Media Network (HMN) has named Louise Simkin as the new Canadian president for the agency with a mandate to continue its transformative, client-centric investment in the Canadian marketplace. Simkin is filling the gap left by the departure of Noah Vardon earlier this year when he was promoted to be the agency’s chief client officer for North America. She will report to North America CEO Greg James and will split her time between Vancouver and Toronto.

Simkin was most recently partner and chief strategy officer for Noise Digital, the performance marketing, technology and analytics agency acquired by Havas Media Network in spring 2023. At Noise Digital, she led the data consulting, strategy, and media planning practices; she also steered the agency’s business development.

Simkin says, “What Noise and I brought to the Havas Network, is solid expertise and data-driven performance marketing and marketing technology as well as advanced analytics. I’m very excited to be taking a more active role on the Havas side. I think Havas Canada has had significant growth over the last five years, but I think there’s even greater opportunity to grow that further over the next five years. My goal is to achieve some ambitious year-on-year growth and make Havas Media Canada one of the top three agencies in the country.”

With more than 18 years of marketing experience, Simkin brings expertise in marketing data, CRM, predictive analytics and communications planning to her new role. She has led data strategies for brands such as Air New Zealand, Westpac, Whirlpool, Destination British Columbia, the Jim Pattison Group, and Vodafone. Prior to Noise Digital, Simkin held senior positions with agencies and brands in New Zealand.

Noise Digital has been instrumental in Havas Media’s growth and momentum across Canada, adding new clients to the portfolio including Destination Vancouver, Vancity and The Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation. The result is that for the first time in its history, Havas Media Canada is ranked among the top five agencies in Canada.

Simkin says, “For us, performance marketing is about making money. It’s not about spending money. Historically, media has been a cost centre. We want to turn our clients into profit centres, where the money that they’re spending in market is actually giving back a measurable return to revenue. A lot of the work we’re doing around advanced measurement and advanced analytics is connecting the performance media to revenue goals for our clients.”

Most recently, Noise Digital collaborated with Google Cloud and Destination Canada to launch a landmark national platform for tourism data, advanced analytics, and thought leadership with the Canadian Tourism Data Collective. This joint venture between Destination Canada, Statistics Canada and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, is engineered to redefine the operation of the tourism sector by focusing on centralized data assets, unifying data intelligence, monitoring data quality and operational efficiencies.

The Havas Media Network has Canadian offices in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. HMN is part of the Havas group, owned by Vivendi, one of the largest global integrated content, media, and communications groups.