Dentsu appoints trio to beef up global data leadership

Dentsu has bolstered its senior data and technology leadership team with three key global appointments aimed at driving data-driven innovation and sustainable growth for clients.

First up, Merkle global head of analytics and technology Shirli Zelcer has been promoted to chief data and technology officer, sitting on Dentsu’s group management team.

She brings over 20 years of experience in analytics and insights, business advisory and organisational design, AI and data science, and cloud and marketing technologies.

At Merkle, Zelcer led a global division of over 5,600 practitioners across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC.

In her new role, she will be in charge of drawing up the vision, roadmap, development and commercial impact of Dentsu’s data and tech strategy across the three core practice areas of media, customer experience marketing and creative, working closely with practice leads and Dentsu president of global practices Jean Lin.

She will lead a newly formed team brought together from these practice areas to drive consistency and interoperability and, ultimately, to deliver growth to Dentsu’s clients through more unified capabilities.

In addition, Publicis senior global executive Steve Simpson has been appointed president, data, audiences and technology while Dentsu Solutions global chief product and technology officer Shiva Vannavada has been promoted to president, data and technology solutions.

Simpson will join the global media practice leadership team to support the development of a media practice community designed to deliver excellence in its offering to clients, driving client growth and transformation.

In this newly created role, he will be responsible for the strategic planning and delivery of a globally-scaled, data-driven and technology-enabled audience platform that boosts growth for clients.

Simpson will lead a global team of experts from across data management, identity, personalisation, media activation and dynamic creative production, and partner with Dentsu’s global products and platforms team to integrate and scale the platform across Dentsu’s global practices.

He will also be accountable for evolving Dentsu’s global media delivery platform. Enabled by programmatic media delivery, enriched with first, second and third party data, it will tap into Dentsu’s Merkury products suite with the aim of driving client competitiveness.

Finally, Vannavada’s expanded responsibilities will include driving cross-practice and product collaboration, nurturing Dentsu’s AI Connective community and leading his team to contribute to tech-enabled solutions and strategy.

He will focus on creating synergies across product and platforms, AI innovation, analytics and across Dentsu Global Services, which will report into Zelcer’s data and technology structure and, in turn, she will report into Michael Komasinski, CEO, Dentsu Americas & Dentsu global president of data and technology.

The leadership of the broader data and tech organisation at Dentsu also includes head of product Matt Seeley, analytics lead Sunil Rao and platform lead Peter Rogers.

Dentsu president and global CEO Hiroshi Igarashi said: “Innovation across data and technology are two of Dentsu’s most critical points of differentiation, having led the market for many years in the development, adoption and application of proprietary platforms which give our clients the edge.

“We are very proud to appoint Shirli, Steve and Shiva into these new strategic roles which bring together our efforts across the organisation, honing our capabilities and ensuring that Dentsu and our clients remain at the forefront of innovation.”