PHD appoints new GM of Digital

PHD evolved its structure earlier this year with a number of new roles and the addition of James Davidson and Abby Parkin to its senior leadership team. This month, to meet evolving client needs, PHD is further increasing its senior technology expertise with the creation of a Chief Technology Officer role. In addition, following Christophe Spencer’s upcoming departure, PHD is pleased to promote Ivan Atkins to General Manager Digital to oversee product development and digital partner responsibilities.

“We are increasingly involved in consulting projects across technology, data and measurement. We think it’s a natural evolution for a modern media agency and having more senior resource in these areas working alongside our strategy team is a real competitive advantage for us,” says Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Simon Bird. 

“Simply using data in marketing is relatively easy but if you are looking for a competitive advantage from data, you need to combine creative thinking with the deep technical expertise that people like Ivan have,” adds Bird.

Atkins has been at the agency for 10 years and has played an enormous role in the success of PHD digital excellence. He helped build PHD’s digital planning and buying product within PHD IQ and has been at the forefront of the development of specialist disciplines including SEO, SEM and programmatic buying. More recently he has overseen development of market-leading solutions across business intelligence, including guiding PHD to become NZ’s first Salesforce Datorama Implementation Partner; process design, campaign automation and helping clients with first party data setup, security and storage. 

“I’m really proud of the specialist work PHD does, be it complex data visualisation projects, or automation work leveraging client CRM systems. The agency is filled with incredibly talented people many of whom have worked together for a long time. This helped a lot during lockdown working but we find it is even more beneficial for functional cross-discipline working which is increasingly needed to get the best out of marketing technology. I’m looking forward to helping maintain the momentum PHD has and continuing to build innovative new products for us and our clients,” says Atkins.

CEO Nikki Grafton says, “I’m hugely grateful to Christophe for his contribution over the last decade and he has played a big part in building one of NZ’s largest agency specialist teams. In the same breath I am also excited about continuing to evolve our business. Ivan is a core part of the senior team at PHD, his technical skills are second to none and clients really value the expertise he brings, we are thrilled to be able to promote him and promoting from within is a clear demonstration of the depth of expertise within the team.”

Read more: The Great Reopening: Abby Parkin and James Davidson of PHD

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