Publicis Mojo CFO Stephen Meares moves to Mediacom as commercial director
Meares
The chief financial officer of creative agency Publicis Mojo Stephen Meares has joined media agency Mediacom.
The announcement comes just a week after the departure of Meares’ predecessor David Reid, along with CEO Mark Pejic.
Mediacom’s APAC boss Mark Heap, who is acting CEO in Australia until a replacement for Pejic can be recruited, said in a statement: “We are very pleased to welcome Stephen into the MediaCom family and are looking forward to benefiting from his extensive knowledge and experience.
Meares has been CFO of Publicis Mojo since 2010 and will start tomorrow. He said: “MediaCom is an iconic agency and I am really looking forward to assisting the team and bringing a fresh perspective to the commercial side of the business.”
MediaCom has also hired Animal Logic’s Dean Rawnsley in the role of commercial manager. Rawnsley started his career at GPY&R, and more recently working at Dentsu and Publicis.
Mediacom, Australia’s second largest media agency, is also searching for a Sydney MD and general manager. As well as Pejic and Reid, Sydney MD Geoff Clarke resigned after nine years with the agency, GM Katy Websdell, who led the Westpac account, moved to sister agency Maxus as Sydney MD and head of insights David Templeman left for a research company.
Last year it emerged that Mediacom had submitted inflated claims to some clients on the TV audiences its campaigns had delivered. As a result, a dozen staff left and clients Foxtel and IAG shifted their accounts to sister agency Mindshare.
GroupM and Mediacom have consistently maintained that the departures were unrelated to the recent controversy. Mumbrella does not allege that any of the executives who have since left the media agency were involved in wrongdoing or were aware of misreporting on TV audiences.
Nic Christensen
Congratulations – great move Stephen.
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