Execs & Accounts for August 24, 2005
Sharpe Partners hires and promotes; Smarter.com names VP of communications; and WPNI picks mobile marketing partner.
Interactive marketing firm Sharpe Partners has promoted two people internally and added three new hires as a result of agency growth. David Kegel, associate creative director since January 2004, now takes the helm as the agency’s creative director. Luke Monaco was promoted to associate technical director after serving three years as the firm’s senior producer.
The new hires include Susanna Tully as management supervisor, responsible for leading the agency’s account management team. She joins the firm from R/GA, where she worked on SC Johnson, Aveda and IBM. Catherine Lim joins as director of project management, coming from Grey Interactive, where she worked on brands such as M&M/Mars. In addition, Meghan O’Rourke joins the firm as associate media director, coming to the firm from Eastman Kodak.
Tacoda has partnered with Burst Media and Akamai to beef up the infrastructure of its behavioral targeting network. Burst is providing ad serving and inventory management technology, and Akamai is providing its EdgeSuite network optimization tools. Tacoda attributes the need for such enhancements to continued growth of its network.
Alan Wallace has joined comparison shopping engine Smarter.com as VP of corporate communications. Wallace has served in similar roles for Panda Software and Live365; and founded online marketing firm iAgency. Smarter.com is part of MeziMedia, a company founded by Overture alumni that also encompasses Coupon Mountain and MoreRebates.com.
Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive (WPNI) has tapped Proteus to build and deploy new mobile products integrated with WPNI’s online properties. Projects include integrating SMS messaging throughout washingtonpost.com’s popular Entertainment Guide, and launching a mobile photo contest.
The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has added 27 new members in the last few months. New members include Dwango Wireless, Virtu Mobile, Lucent Technologies, USATODAY.com and Yahoo Rouben Haroutoonian, executive VP of Dwango Wireless, and Joe Barone, president of Virtu Mobile were named to the MMA board of directors.
IndustryBrains has won an exclusive contract with Investor’s Business Daily to provide contextual pay-per-click advertising on its Web site. The agreement is expected to take effect on September 1. IBD inventory will be sold in IndustryBrains’ finance vertical, along with sites like Bankrate.com, The Motley Fool, Forbes.com, USATODAY.com’s Money section, and BusinessWeek Online’s Investing section.
TIG Global, an interactive marketing company for hospitality, is using Omniture’s SiteCatalyst Suite to provide clients from major branded and independent hotels in North America, Europe, Asia and the Caribbean with real-time access to online customer trends. TIG Global clients will be able to monitor the popularity of hotel sites between geographic locations, determine what class of rooms is being booked, and track correlations between booking levels and calendar-related factors such as seasons, days of the week or time of day.
