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DWA APAC boss John Massey departs after seven years for tech firm

John MasseyJohn Massey, the Asia-Pacific MD of tech-focused media agency DWA, has left the company after a seven-year stint.

He has joined IT firm Leo Tech as managing director of consulting, based in Singapore.

Massey moved from Sydney to Singapore in 2012 to oversee the expansion of DWA’s regional business from Asia. He was also behind the launch of DWA’s Auckland, New Delhi and Bangalore offices.

He joined the company in 2007 from Haymarket, where he was publisher and sales director for the company’s titles in Australia, based in Sydney.

Massey told Mumbrella: “After seven successful years growing the business throughout Asia I felt it was time for a change. It has been a fantastic experience with the highlight definitely being the people I have worked with over the years.”

DWA has dispensed with the APAC MD role, and divided duties for the region. Pippa Hollebone now runs Southeast Asia and India, Michael Ang covers Greater China, and Australia and New Zealand is led by Kiaran Geen.

Leo Tech was founded in 2010, and is currently building a platform to help clients and agencies understand how sales, operations and marketing can come together to increase ROI through the analysis of data.

On his reasons for joining the company, Massey said: “The media business is becoming commoditised, and without a clear differentiation strategy many will struggle to survive. With the increased importance of technology I expect to see more agencies look to build out proprietary software platforms. This will be their competitive advantage, and ultimately this is what will attract new clients.”

“We are seeing changes already with people like Arvind [Sethumadhavan] at Dentsu Aegis moving into a innovation role, and Harpreet [Kaintel] at Zenith Optimedia moving into a similar role albeit with a more traditional CIO title. Both are charged with leading innovation, with the core focus on how technology can deliver results,” he said.

“The holy grail has always been for agencies to demonstrate ROI, but they are now also challenged with how they can make business decisions from data. This is not a capability that humans can deliver, this requires sophisticated algorithms that interrogate multiple data sources in real time, and identify trends and help us understand customer behaviour and needs.”

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