Mediabrands has created a new role at the company—senior vice-president, investment director, Mediabrands—and made an internal promotion to fill the spot.
Inese Korbs, most recently VP and director of media investments at MacLaren M2 Universal, has been promoted into the position, which sits across all three of Mediabrands’ agencies: UM, M2 and Initiative.
Korbs will report directly to Peter Mears, chairman of Mediabrands in Canada, who told Marketing that the new role involves taking on responsibility for investment across broadcast and digital.
In essence, Korbs will be what Mears described as “our face and the voice to the marketplace.
“She will be responsible for marshaling all of our client dollars across the three agencies, and for instigating best practices,” he said. Korbs will also look for ways to improve internal investment processes.
The creation of this role was a reaction to shifts in the mediasphere, said Mears. “With consolidations that have been happening in the marketplace in the last few months, and as we go into this upfront season, we felt there’s a real opportunity to start looking more holistically [at all of our investment] across broadcast and digital,” he said.
Korbs said now was the right time to add this role to the company because “everyone realizes that all [media] are so integrated that it makes sense to have somebody who has the broader picture on everything that’s going on.”
She said the challenges in the role will likely stem from helping clients deal with all the change and complexity in media, including the reality of “multiple screens and putting all of that into perspective and amortizing the efficiencies that can exist between the screens.”
Commenting on whether there would be any subsequent structural changes within Mediabrands, Mears said no other changes are planned at this time.
