Promotions and new hires at Havas Digital Media in Malaysia

Ang Shao Ting, one of the agency’s pioneer staff back in 2008, has been promoted to digital account director and assumes responsibility for all account management operations, agency-wide.

Hossine Kouider, who joined from Innity Solutions in April 2010 as business development manager takes on the additional responsibility of leading account management on selected clients.

The agency also announced new hires in Mabel Ewe as digital account manager, and digital planners Astrid Baptist and Jayne Gomes.

Ewe joins from XM-JWT where she played a key role on the agency’s anchor account, Malaysia Airlines.

Baptist joins from Mindshare where she spent three years on Maxis. Gomes, also from Mindshare, will focus on some of the agency’s core clients.

Dinesh Sandhu, country director at Media Contacts Malaysia, said the agency had 100 per cent staff retention in 2010, and a new business win record of 95 per cent. “As we move into 2011, we need to build on that with top talent driving our growth,” he said.

Sandhu said that Ang has demonstrated a tremendous drive to succeed and a keen sense of leadership in the last year, while Kouider’s role at Media Contacts has been enlarged as he has proven his mettle in account management as well.

Commenting on the new hires, Sandhu described Baptist as a proven talent, “having won internal awards and sweeping the MSA’s in recent years in some of the toughest categories – Radio and Outdoor. Gomes bring to the team a flair for the unusual, she has great inter-personal skills. (And) Ewe brings to the agency the digital project management firepower that is vital to our growth in 2011.”