With a continued emphasis on adding what CEO Karen Nayler called “top-level expertise,” Mindshare Canada has added two industry veterans to its senior executive team.
The new hires include Paula Carolan, who joins as managing director, client leadership, and Janet Mainprize, who arrives as director, digital analytics. Both appointments are effective immediately.
Carolan (pictured, top) joins Mindshare from OMD Canada, where she worked on several high-profile accounts including Mercedes-Benz, Pepsico Canada, Mars Canada, Wrigley and AGF as client communications director.
She will head up several key Mindshare accounts, including Mazda, and will be primarily responsible for managing all senior client relations. She will also work to ensure that disciplines including business sciences, strategic planning and analytics are fully integrated into all client campaigns.
Nayler said Carolan’s extensive industry experience was a key factor in her hire. “Not only has she got lots of cross-platform experience, but cross-industry experience, which I really like,” said Nayler. “She can bring all that learning to bear, and it’s not just in one area.
Mainprize (pictured, bottom) comes to Mindshare from Wunderman, where she was most recently VP director of strategic services and media optimization, responsible for managing online media trafficking, optimization and reporting capability for Ford of Canada.
In her new role, she will manage the digital analytics/reporting and traffic teams on the Ford business and help guide the agency’s digital operations group.
“She comes from the historic CRM, direct side of the business and it’s kind of come full circle back into the media house,” said Nayler. “We’ve started to see on the Ford business that it makes a whole lot more sense to be getting those real-time analytics very closely meshed with the media people that are taking [campaigns] to market.”
Nayler said media agencies are increasingly getting deeper into their clients’ organizations, trying to help them solve their business problems rather than simply their media problem.
From a talent perspective, said Nayler, it puts an onus on agencies to find personnel that are business-solutions oriented. Agencies are increasingly looking to hire prospective employees that have had client experience, strategic experience and planning experience, she said.
The vision for Mindshare, said Nayler, is to provide fully integrated client teams. Canada has something of an advantage in this regard, she said, because of the sophistication of clients, and the maturity and relatively small size of the market.
