OMD Thailand names engagement planning director

A two-time Doctorate, he will be responsible for driving excellence and leadership initiatives for OMD’s global clients, lending his expertise to McDonald’s and P.I. Snacks as well as contributing to OMD Thailand's overall value proposition.

He will report to Booncharas Kasemsukpasit, business unit director at OMD (Thailand), who joined the agency early this month.

Mavichak (pictured) was most recently with McCann Worldgroup Thailand, where he provided solutions in strategic channel/consumer engagement, including quantitative studies on consumer behavior, across all business units.

Besides consumer insights and brand engagement, he has also built a strong client servicing record from consulting Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) at all the international feeder markets and managing pan-regional media campaign activations.

Commenting on the appointment, Paul Spencer, managing director at OMD Thailand noted that driving talent improvement is a top priority as it fundamentally underpins its promise of delivering best-in-class products.

“Neil joins a line-up of digitally aligned star performers, and together as a team, they will help us deepen our client relationships,” he added.

Mavichak, meanwhile, said, “I am really excited with the prospect of working with an amazing portfolio of clients and having the opportunity to inject an integrated communication strategy and brand engagement together with people known for sharing the same passions.”

OMD Thailand has seen several hires in the past two years. Clint Easthorpe was appointed as chief executive in January last year, from OMD Malaysia.

The agency also won several major accounts this year, including international clothing and accessories brand Mango, mobile phone brand OPPO and instant coffee brand Super Coffeemix.

At the regional level, it won Sony Electronic’s Asia-Pacific media business, in August. This followed a final three-way pitch involving Carat and the incumbent agency MEC.

Last week, OMD was picked to handle Sara Lee's regional media planning and buying business as part of a global consolidation, following the final round of pitch with MediaCom. The food and beverage giant's consolidated EMEA and Asia-Pacific duties is believed to be worth around US$190 million.

OMD Thailand was also tipped to be one of three agencies being invited to a media pitch by Beiersdorf, for three markets in the Southeast Asia region, earlier this month. The other two agencies are Carat and OMD.