LBi London

Alan Davies joins LBi’s group exec as Chief Strategy Officer

Posted by Laura JB May 25th, 2009

Alan Davies, Group Strategy Director at LBi International AB (LBi), is to now join the Executive management team as Chief Strategy Officer.

He will be responsible for the execution of LBi’s global strategy and service offering.  Alongside the CEO, Alan will ensure that LBi’s growth in services, geographic coverage and organizational design is structured to deliver maximum value to clients.  A key part of this strategy will be the development and delivery of proprietary tools and IP that help drive accountable ROI and intelligent decision making across all channels.  The commercial expansion of LBi’s data platform into all key client engagements will provide an increasingly differentiated service that will help to cement LBi’s long-term strategic partnership with its clients. 

“I am very excited to be taking on this challenge.  We are now entering the next era of digital where the relationships that companies and brands have with their customers is fundamentally changing.  The agencies that support that change must themselves adapt.  With the strength of talent and service and the tools that we have developed at LBi, we are in a unique position to offer our clients the support necessary to com-pete in this new environment. I have had the pleasure of working alongside the cur-rent management for many years and now, as part of the leadership team, I look for-ward to helping drive the business forward“ says Alan.

Alan has been at the forefront of the Digital Industry for over 10 years as a consultant, a manager and a salesman. He has worked for LBi for over 8 years with most of their significant clients.  His background in corporate strategy has additionally given him the strong commercial and operational skills required to ensure LBi’s continued strategic success. 

Luke Taylor, CEO, comments, “It is important that our services strategy is informed by a deep understanding of clients and their needs.  Alan has been at the forefront of our most important strategic client relationships for many years and with his consulting insight is uniquely positioned to drive forward our services to support large, international brands.

Having worked alongside all of our international offices and enjoying their deep respect, Alan is ideally placed to both mentor and embed a greater degree of sophistication around the use of IP and data in the transformation of our strategic services.  Specifically, our data platform has the ability to transform the nature of our engagement with clients and Alan will be key in driving this forward throughout the organization.”

Tags: global, hires, LBi Group, Staff, strategy

0 comments Share

She Says celebrates birthday

Posted by Laura JB April 27th, 2009

She Says, the community supporting and mentoring females in the digital industry is celebrating it’s third birthday this week.

The She Says membership has grown to 1,500 women globally and was set up by Laura Jordan Bambach, Executive Creative Director of LBi and Alessandra Lariu from McCann NYC to encourage more women to take up digital creative careers, priovide visability for senior digital women and to generally have a laugh over wine and cheese.

The event will take place on Thursday 30th April at the Ruby Blue Bar in Leicester Square and to help She Says celebrate, men are encouraged to come along.  You can find details at shesay.org.uk.

The event is being sponsored by Getty Images, a She Says partner, Purple and LBi event sponsors.  Guest speakers are Jo Hagger, MD of Glue London and Eliza Williams, a leading journalist from Creative Review, and Amelia Torode, Managing Partner and Head of Strategy and Innovation for VCCP. The ladies will be battling it out in a “Whose line is it anyway?” debate, fighting out industry topics such as can digital agencies really do creative? Can traditional agencies do digital well and what does it mean to be a lead creative agency?

Now running in London, Vienna, NYC, LA and San Francisco, She Says runs free monthly events, and a mentoring scheme “Who’s Your Momma”. Each month’s event has a different theme relevant to the digital, creative and advertising industries.

www.shesays.org.uk

Tags: event, She Says, Women only digital community

0 comments Share

LBi strengthens and expands planning offering

Posted by Laura JB March 30th, 2009

Jake Dyer and Ed Beard have joined LBi to take customer brand engagement to another level.

Under Maureen Cuddihy, Head of Planning, both come with a stella pedigree. Jake takes the role at LBi as Planning Partner after comeing from agency.com as Head of Strategy and Planning and part of the management team. At agency, Jake created award-winning work for brands like BA and IKEA, including award winning digitally led integrated activity. Prior to Agency.com, Jake worked for Tequila and TBWAGGT as a Planning Director and CRM expert.

Ed takes the role of Senior Planner after coming from Digitas, where he worked on both B2B and B2C for clients like HP, Shell and Lloyds. While at Digitas, Ed created award winning work for HP. Ed started his career as a BBC journalist and brings his journalistic experience into the world of creating ‘earned’ media engagements for LBi’s clients.

Caroline McGuckian, LBi’s Global Media Director says, “These hires reflect LBi’s continued focus on strategic digital thinking throughout a consumer’s journey with a brand and evidence our commitment to providing clients with the best talent available to work with them in today’s ever changing landscape”

Tags: Consulting, hires, People, planning, Staff, strategy, UK

0 comments Share

LBi opens Cannes

Posted by Laura JB March 27th, 2009

LBi’s Chief Creative Chris Clarke will kick off the Cannes Lions International Festival Seminar programme this year. ‘The Death of the Creative Director’ is scheduled for 10am on Sunday 21st June in the Debussy Theatre in Cannes. He will be speaking about how social marketing changes the creative skill set, and kills old notions of the role of Creative Director.

Clarke feels that marketing has changed forever.

It has moved from locally focused broadcast to global conversations, bringing with a need for more complex multilayered forms of marketing. When shouting is replaced with listening, the old egos don’t seem to make sense anymore. The consumer has taken control and now agencies must reach those consumers through their networks with clever tools, content and services which make a difference and improve people’s lives. Doing this effectively calls for collaboration, open-mindedness and a feel for technology. The traditional Creative Director is ill at ease in this new environment and we see many of them retreating into a deeply conservative mindset and a position of denial.

In his speech, Chris will explore some of these issues hoping to goad the industry into a more meaningful response to the new realities of marketing than we currently see in the advertising industry.

LBi is also proud to announce that Jonas Linell from LBi Denmark is on the Cyber Lions jury and that Laura Jordan-Bambach from LBi UK will be speaking at 10am on Thursday 25th at the Creative Social event.

Tags: Cannes, Chris Clarke, Creative Director, event, LBi Group, Lorenzo Wood, UK

0 comments Share