Top planning and production talent join Saatchi’s

Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand has a top new line-up of planning and production talent at the Auckland agency. Peeyoosh Chandra (centre), hired from DDB Sydney, will take up a role as digital planning director, Tamsin McDonnell (right) comes from Naked, NZ as a senior brand strategist and Jane Oak (Left) as the agency’s head of content from BMB London.

Chandra (PC) joins the team fresh from DDB Sydney where he led strategyon Telstra and Tourism Australia as well as developing the agency’ssocial media marketing unit.  His previous roles include executivedirector and general manager interactive at Ogilvy Auckland.

Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Nicky Bell says the appointments bring afresh injection of strategic planning, digital and social mediacapability to the agency: “PC is quite simply one of the best digital strategists in Australasia,” says Bell.

“For Telstra, he developed a new youth brand platform based on socialmedia, and a world class business marketing programme on YouTube, nowused by Google as a global case study. He also led social mediastrategy for Tourism Australia, growing their Facebook community from150,000 members to 400,000 in just twelve months.”

Tamsin’s CV is equally impressive with her considerable experience as a’hybrid’ communications and channel planner. Her previous role ascommunications director at Naked New Zealand saw her responsible fordeveloping innovative communications strategies for Coca-Cola’s entirebrand portfolio in the New Zealand market.

“Our goal is to provide strategic thinking that will inspire ourcreative teams of all disciplines to execute ideas that areirresistible to New Zealanders. PC and Tamsin bring new experience,perspectives and energy to the agency. We’re really excited to get themstarted,” says Murray Streets, director of strategic planning.

Saatchi’s is also welcoming Jane Oak to take the reins as head ofcontent. Oak has considerable experience in both the New Zealand and UKmarkets, including TBWA London and setting up the department at BMBLondon.

Saatchi & Saatchi NZ ECD Dylan Harrison said it’s great to havesomeone of Oak’s calibre heading up content at the agency: “Jane’s atop-notch producer; her experience is vast and varied through managingproduction for Lion Breweries, Goodman Fielder, Glassons and Panasonicto name a few. She’s got the right mix of vision and expertise to makeworld-changing ideas happen. And most importantly, she has a realappetite for generating irresistible content for every screen.”