New CEO among executive promotions at MediaCom Canada
Along with new leadership roles for Jodi Peacock, Lisa Kahn and Kieran Miles, MediaCom Canada started its spring by promoting Urania Agas (pictured, above) from president to CEO, taking over the job from Kevin Johnson, who was elevated to lead GroupM Canada the year prior. In August, it was announced that Agas would retain her CEO role when the merger to create EssenceMediacom is completed next year.
This year, MediaCom also hired a new director of business development and won the assignment for Northland Properties, parent company of Denny’s and Moxie’s.
Mindshare retains Rogers duties after Theo is dissolved
Theo became one of the casualties of upheaval at Rogers the year prior when the dedicated agency was dissolved in March.
WPP established Theo in 2020, pulling talent from John St., Taxi and Mindshare to service all lines of Rogers’ business. After it was disbanded, work for the Fido brand remained with Taxi (which held the account before Theo was created), while Mindshare held on to the company’s media duties. The rest of Rogers’ creative duties were given to Sid Lee without a review.
Breaking up Theo appeared to be one of the many aftershocks that radiated out from the conclusion of a public feud between the Rogers family for control of the company in late 2021. In January, Simone Lumsden – who was Rogers’ CMO when WPP pitched the business and created Theo – became the latest executive to leave the company. was hiring former Videotron and Quebecor CEO Robert Dépatie as president and COO of home and business in December. Following that, Myrianne Collin was promoted to fill the CMO position. Collin previously held the top marketing roles at Videotron during Dépatie’s tenure, a time during which the brand also worked with Sid Lee as its agency.
Zenith names new execs to lead focus on first-party data
Publicis Media’s Zenith put new leadership in place to help it evolving its 20-year-old positioning as “The ROI Agency” into “Reimagine ROI.” To lead this new approach, the agency hired Nikki Stone as EVP and managing director, along with Clare Street as SVP of digital and data. This was also the first time Zenith has had dedicated leadership in Canada since president Kristine Lyrette left the agency in 2020.
The renewed focus was meant to emphasize that return on investment is not the only metric of success. It also includes “return on insight” (using research and first-party data to identify new sources of growth), “return on imagination” (using creativity to build brand experiences to drive engagement and brand familiarity) and “return on innovation” (using innovation to “cut through category clutter” and achieve business outcomes).
Mindshare Canada hires Lesley Conway as CEO
In May, Mindshare tapped Lesley Conway to take over leadership of its Canadian operations and 200-person team.
Conway spent the previous four years as president of programmatic company Hatch64, but also has more than 25 years of experience working in senior roles at the likes of Bell and Astral, in addition to running her own consulting agency.
In addition to retaining its Theo duties, Mindshare also won the media work for General Mills Canada this year.
WestJet picks Touche! as media AOR
This year was somewhat quiet on the media review front, at least when you compare it to the bevy of activity in the previous two years. The big reviews that did happen tended to be global ones.
There were, however, a few Canadian exceptions to that. There was General Mills (mentioned above), but also WestJet, which announced the results of its six-month review process in January. The airline picked Omnicom’s Touche! to take over AOR duties from Media Experts. The agency credited its growing data capabilities for the win, something the airline’s head of performance marketing told MiC would be vital in helping it meet the needs of guests and make its media dollars work harder as it continued to navigate out of the pandemic.
