More strategic firepower for Stanley St

AUCKLAND, Monday: Stanley St ceo Siobhan Burke has continued to add strategic firepower to the agency, hiring expat Thomas Scovell as head of strategy, and scientist Ankit Patel as head of data & analytics.

Scovell has returned from London after eight years where he worked as head of brand strategy at Campaign’s AnalogFolk (a Global Digital Agency of the Year) until 2020, and more recently as global director of strategic services at Byte.

Way back (2011) he was director of digital innovation at Clemenger BBDO Wellington.

Patel was more recently a digital analyst at MBM, for four years.

Scovell said: ,”I’m excited to be joining an agency that has a real sense of thinking different, and being inclusive at its heart.

“Understanding the audience will always be the key to unlocking insights that inspire truly great, brand building, creative ideas and that understanding requires a diversity of people, of data, and of human and technology skill sets working in collaboration.

“Oh and yeah, it’s great to be back working with that world-class head of media planning Emily Scovell.

“Being truly integrated across creativity, media, data and is something we’ve both been advocating for during our time in London, and StanleySt is set to truly unlock the power of that model.”

“Data + Insights is powerful fuel for our creatives and we won’t stop refining our offering and bringing on new talent as the world continues to evolve.”

Siobhan Burke said: “We took a close look to see how we were stacking up against the needs of CMOs and it was this focus on martech, on digital and on analytics that steered Stanley St to invest in the head of data & analytics role.

“At Stanley St our integrated offering under one roof sets us apart and now more than ever Creative and Media thinking needs to be tightly connected by evidence based insight.

“By centralising Ankit’s role, our analytics offering will be democratised across our entire agency process meaning that data will truly be at the core of everything we do, and not sitting in a media only vacuum instead we have an incredible group of diverse thinkers sitting together to solve bigger problems at speed. It’s a really exciting time for the agency”.

Ankit Patel will lead Stanley St’s analytics team to provide solutions and services that help companies understand the full impact their data can have on their business.

He said: “The digital advertising ecosystem has changed over the past few years, and continues to change every day. Rising user expectations around privacy has resulted in additional data regulations and collection limitations, and this has fundamentally changed the way we build audiences and measure conversions.

“Investment in first-party data and owned marketing channels is the future play.”

Burke: “Data + Insights is powerful fuel for our creatives and we won’t stop refining our offering and bringing on new talent as the world continues to evolve.”