Maxus Canada has hired former Quebecor Media sales executive Devyn Perry – a onetime assistant director whose credits include movies and TV series such as Catwoman, The Perfect Score and Smallville – as client business lead on its BMO account.
Ann Stewart, president of the four-year-old GroupM unit, said Perry was selected from four candidates, praising her energy and passion for the business. “Anybody with that kind of energy is a good fit for us,” said Stewart. “You have to have passion and love this industry, and she does.”
Prior to her stint with Quebecor, where she was a national account executive responsible for magazines and out-of-home, Perry worked with both Starcom MediaVest Group and Genesis Vizeum (now Vizeum Canada).
She began her career in film in her native Vancouver before transitioning to the marketing and advertising world as a planner and buyer with Genesis Vizeum in 2008. She spent two years with the agency before jumping to SMG, where she spent four years before joining Quebecor last August.
Stewart said Perry combines solid agency credentials with an understanding of sales that is crucial in today’s agency world. “What we do all day long is sell ideas and proposals, and the way we do that needs to change,” said Stewart.
Perry’s hires comes amid what Stewart described as a “restructuring” of the agency to position it for future growth, with a particular emphasis on hiring people with expertise in data analytics, sales, strategy, research and econometrics. “It’s completely different than traditional media planning and buying,” she said. “We still have that, but it’s secondary.”
Perry’s hire comes less than a month after Maxus announced the hire of former Rogers Media publishing executive Patrick Renard as its chief financial officer. Maxus currently employs 80 people, and has about four openings to fill in areas including strategic and client leadership, said Stewart.
The company is in the midst of a hiring spree that Stewart said is being fuelled primarily by organic growth from existing clients such as Nestlé Canada, and new business growth such as Bolton Foods Products and Valeant Pharmaceuticals – which recently entered the sexual health market with the $1-billion acquisition of Sprout Pharmaceuticals, makers of the women’s libido pill Addyi.
Maxus launched in Canada in 2011 and is the fastest-growing agency network in the country, growing 50% year over year, according to the research firm RECMA, which pegged its 2013 overall activity volume (the company’s revamped definition for billings) at $153 million.
Stewart pointed out that the recent data does not reflect the network’s 2014 win of the massive Nestlé Canada account or this year’s Valeant win, and predicted the agency could be within the top six agencies in the country in the next report.
She said clients have been attracted to Maxus by the “boutique” nature of the business and the resources and scale offered by the network’s powerful parent, GroupM.
