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Australian ad agency founder Elizabeth Buchanan joins board of Sorrell’s S4 Capital

Australian expat ad veteran, Elizabeth Buchanan, is to join the board of Sir Martin Sorrell’s S4 Capital as a non-executive director.

New York-based Buchanan, who founded The White Agency in 2003 before selling it onto STW four years later, is currently a non-executive director at Vital Voices Global Partnership and until recently sat on the board of The Luke Batty Foundation.

New York-based Buchanan joins Sorrell’s S4 Capital as a non-executive director

Along with founding The White Agency, Buchanan also held senior roles at WPP AUNZ, OMD Worldwide and most recently martech startup, Rokt.

Joining Buchanan on the S4Capital board is Scott Spirit who will also be the chief growth officer based out of the group’s newly opened Singapore office.

Spirit, who also picks up 135,292 ordinary shares in S4 Capital, joins from Artificial Intelligence company, Eureka AI, where he will continue to be a board member and advisor. Previously he worked at WPP plc for 15 years, latterly as chief strategy and digital officer. Scott was also a director of Nairobi-listed WPP-Scangroup PLC.

Prior to his time at WPP, Spirit worked at Deloitte and Associated Newspapers.

S4 Capital was founded when Sir Martin Sorrell, who built WPP into the world’s biggest marketing and advertising group before stepping down in 2018, engineered a reverse take over of moribund medical tech company Derriston Capital PLC in May last year.

Following S4 Capital’s launch, the business has acquired programmatic platform Mighty Hive and Dutch production house Media Monks which saw it establish an APAC foothold in Singapore.

Sorrell said of the appointments: “I’m delighted to re-unite with Scott and to welcome him and Elizabeth to the team. I know that Scott’s proven knowledge of global markets will be invaluable as we continue to expand the business technologically and internationally.

“Elizabeth has rare global experience at the forefront of innovation in the industry and that makes her an obvious choice for a disruptive, purely digital business like S4 Capital.”

Buchanan added: “The pace of disruption is only increasing, causing a seismic shift in businesses models and go-to-market strategies. Significant competitive advantage is being found in data and smarter customer interactions.

“To thrive in this environment, clients need a new kind of partner, one that has been designed from the core to be agile, diverse and focused. Ultimately this delivers better services, faster and cheaper. S4 Capital is building this new era marketing services company and I’m thrilled to be part of it.”

Spirit concluded: “I’m looking forward to working with the teams at MediaMonks and MightyHive and building on their impressive early success. It’s a time of great change in the advertising industry and I’m excited to join a company which is so well-positioned, ambitious and optimistic about the future and the solutions we can deliver for our clients.”

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