TBWA names regional head of customer acquisition

TBWA has appointed Lars Bjørge, formerly chief digital officer for fellow Omnicom agency PHD in Greater China, as executive vice president and head of customer acquisition for Asia.

The role is a new one at the agency. Bjørge will be moving not only from the media world to a creative agency, but from Shanghai to Singapore. He will report to Asia president Ian Pearman, who came from AMVBBDO in London to take over the regional reins when Philip Brett moved to a global role in August.

"TBWA’s ambition is to disrupt existing agency practices for the benefit of our clients, and to achieve this we must attract best-in-class talent who will elevate our overall digital IQ, deepen our capabilities, and keep us in the top spot when it comes to developing the next generation of communications," Pearman said.

Bjørge will be tasked with building a "centre of excellence in data-centric performance marketing" that integrates with the agency's creative practice and rolls out across the APAC network.

Bjørge joined PHD in China in 2011 as digital strategy director and was promoted to head of digital strategy in 2012. He has also held roles with Proximity BBDO and Tribal DDB in Norway, as well as OgilvyOne Shanghai, during his 20+ year career. He was listed in Campaign's China Digital A-List 2017.

TBWA’s "can-do culture" and "ethos around disruption" make it an ideal place to build a new and more effective agency model, Bjørge said.

With PHD, Bjørge doubled the size of his senior digital team and boosted the agencies capabilities in
ecommerce, search, programmatic, social, mobile and measurement analytics.