Valeria Mares joins Mediahub to head up global comms planning

Mediahub is known for its creative media strategies, and it’s doubling down on communications planning to make that an even stronger competitive advantage.

The media agency, part of IPG, said Wednesday that it has hired Valeria Mares as EVP, executive director of communications planning. The new position coordinates comms planning disciplines across Mediahub’s global offices.

Mares will be based at Mediahub’s New York headquarters, reporting to global CEO John Moore, and will oversee 45 people across its insights and action teams in the US, UK and Australia.

The position was necessary as Mediahub picks up more global agency of record accounts. In the past year, the agency has become media AOR for New Balance globally and Akzo Nobel in EMEA. Plus, regional clients such as Pinterest and Morgan Stanley are expanding their remits to new markets. 

“There needed to be a connective tissue [across our offices],” Moore said. “Somebody to oversee the entire group so there was really one voice.”

For Mares, who was previously head of content at Wavemaker US and prior to that chief strategy officer at the agency, Mediahub stood out as a media agency that “really honors creative thinking.”

The majority of Mediahub’s business is currently in the US, and the agency has offices in a few cities across Latin America, Asia-Pacific and Europe.

“What really attracted me was having the opportunity to be a part of this process and shape, with the team and leadership, the global footprint of the agency,” she said.

Mares’ first priority will be to join the dots across all of the comms planning work happening in different regions to create global consistency for clients. She will work closely with Mediahub’s proprietary planning tool, Scout, which is integrated with data from Acxiom, to drive people-centric campaigns rooted in human insight.

“The marketing funnel and standardised KPIs are still ruling the industry,” she explained. “But sometimes agencies forget that this funnel is living and breathing and rooted in a broader cultural ecosystem that dramatically affects [consumer] decisions. We need to consider these nuances.”

Mares will also be focused on tying comms planning work back to ROI, an area that agencies often miss.

“My mindset is always about how can we make sure we measure and put rigor behind creativity,” she said.