David Halter becomes CHE Proximity’s national chief strategy officer
Clemenger Group’s full-service agency CHE Proximity has promoted its Sydney managing director, David Halter, to the role of national chief strategy officer, Mumbrella can reveal.
Halter, who joined CHE Proximity from Clemenger BBDO Sydney in 2016, will now lead strategy across the agency as well as retain his managing director title.
Halter will now be the managing director and national chief strategy officer
“We’ve moved to a model where CHE Proximity is run at a national level and we’ve been nationalising all our departments and planning is the next frontier. What it means for our clients is that they can get breadth of planning capability but also depth of specialisation,” Halter told Mumbrella.
The chief strategy officer and managing director said the national structure means the agency is able to share talent to ensure clients have access to the best person for the task.
“We have a very flat structure here at CHE Proximity, my role is not to tell those guys and girls how to be better planners or better strategically, my role is more about connection and conducting it to make sure the right brains are in the right room at the right time for all our clients.”
Despite this, Halter said the national structure wouldn’t mean the managing director roles in both Sydney and Melbourne change.
“In each office we have client partners and group account directors who own that relationship of the client on the ground, so the plan is to keep that account management function still at a local level because they have to be in the hallways and in the clients business to understand it,” he added.
CHE Proximity has six key strategy offerings which Halter will oversee including brand, experience, data, influence, technology and media.
Taking on a chief strategy officer role as well as being the managing director of the Sydney operation means Halter must ensure every arm of the business is just as successful as the other, he said.
“The key thing for us to maintaining that breadth is making sure we have got an awesome bench.
“You have got to invest in your bench so we talk about having really strong bench strength and we will go to the best people, in the best agencies, in the best parts of the world or even sometimes in the best consultancies or the best clients and make sure our bench strength is really strong, and that is across the board so that’s planning bench, creative bench, account management bench and we almost have got to have a business where if all the agency leaders weren’t in a room, we can trust those people 100% that the quality and the standards we expect will be maintained.”
Halter joined CHE Proximity from his previous role as the digital planning director at Clemenger BBDO Sydney.
Throughout his career he has also been a senior planner at Ogilvy & Mather and a planner at independent agency Loud.
Abigail Dawson was Mumbrella's senior content journalist covering event content. She left Mumbrella to move into an agency role in 2020.
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One of the smartest marketing minds in the country. Well deserved.
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One of the smartest and nicest people in the industry. Congrats David!
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Brilliant news and so well deserved – it’s nice seeing great things achieved by great people.
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