Indiantelevision.com Team

(26 June 2006 6:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Group M's Mediaedge:cia has tapped industry leader Bob DeSena as managing partner, director of active engagement.

Reporting to MEC Global chairman Charles Courtier, DeSena will oversee the company’s analytics, insights, ROI and communications planning offer across North America, heading up MEC MediaLab, Ohal, Consumer Insights and Communications Planning.

DeSena joins MEC with more than 20 years of management and strategic planning experience, having held senior management and marketing positions with both client and advertising agency organisations. Most recently, he was CEO of Engagement Marketing Group, which he founded to focus exclusively on developing new ways to create and measure consumer engagement across all connection points.

Prior to this, DeSena was managing director for Mars Direct. In this role, he was responsible for brand sales in all direct to consumer channels and for the call center and fulfillment operations. He also initiated the development of Mars’ first consumer relationship marketing (CRM) process model and corporate marketing database.

Formerly, he was senior vice president of marketing services for Time Life, Inc. where he created the first marketing services division, overseeing all marketing functions for the book, music and video divisions, including marketing research, creative, production, media planning and buying, outbound telemarketing and customer service.

"We believe that marketing is undergoing a fundamental shift. We call it Active Engagement. The empowered consumer continues to re-define media. Bob’s proven track record as an industry pioneer in engagement and his experience combining brand marketing, direct marketing and digital platforms, make him the perfect fit to integrate and develop our Active Engagement offering. We are delighted to welcome Bob to MEC," said Courtier.

"As media continue to evolve simply reaching the consumer is no longer adequate. Mediaedge:cia’s leading position of Active Engagement recognizes this. It enables marketers to identify and influence audiences across all contact points and talks to consumers with relevance, while providing measurable results," added DeSena.