Innocean bolsters team with eight new hires, including new creative team and CX director

(Pictured L-R: Carolyn Cho, Adrian James, V. Wassim Kanaan, Wez Hawes, Damon Porter, Jasmin Bedir, Taylah Nilsson, Romy Briers, Ian Hartley)

Innocean Australia has bolstered its team with new executive creative director Wesley Hawes announcing his first creative appointments, plus the newly-created role of CX director, bringing total new hires to eight as the agency continues its transformation.

Hawes has appointed the high calibre and experienced digital creative team, V. Wassim Kanaan as senior art director and Damon Porter as senior copywriter.

Kanaan has worked with The Monkeys, Saatchi & Saatchi and J. Walter Thompson, as well as tutoring at the Miami Ad School in Sydney. He has created work for Optus, H&R Block, Toyota, Telstra, Cadbury and NRMA. Kanaan was voted one of the Top Creatives at D&AD in 2017 and created one of the top 10 most awarded campaigns in the 2017 Gunn Report.

Porter has 14 years’ experience as a copywriter, working with agencies including Host/Havas, The Works, VMLY&R, Leo Burnett and McCann Worldgroup. He has created campaigns for clients including Google, GIO, Canon, Energy Australia, Caltex, Lion Nathan, Procter and Gamble, Nestle and LG.

In other key appointments, Romy Briers joins INNOCEAN as CX director, a newly-created role that will focus on managing, growing and re-igniting partner relationships to help drive digital innovation and deliver effective creative solutions.

Briers has experience in digital strategy, UX, analytics, social, CRM, technical builds and design/UI, with a strong understanding of full channel media campaigns. She was previously digital marketing manager at Jaguar Land Rover, where she spent three years and prior to that was with Club Med, leading social, digital, ecommerce and CRM for the group across the Asia Pacific.

Adrian James joins as CX insights director and will work closely with Briers to further build out a suite of analytics services within the Innocean Australia offering.

James has more than 10 years’ experience in marketing and most recently worked within customer experience and insights at Jaguar Land Rover. Prior to that he was with Potentiate as a senior consultant and has also worked in the education sector.

Linked to the CX team will be Taylah Nilsson, who joins Innocean as social media manager. She was previously with Spark44, as a social media manager for Jaguar Land Rover and has a long-running background in social media and as a photographer.

The new hires join the recent appointments of Ian Hartley and Carolyn Cho as client partners.

Hawes said all the new appointments would help Innocean grow its client base and transform into a new type of agency.

Says Hawes: “All the new roles bring with them a range of client experience, plus essential digital and CX skills. This will enable our client partners to create more effective and engaging campaigns in that space. It’s another step to building the Innocean brand in Australia with a multi-channel, integrated approach as we look to broaden our client base. CEO Jas (Bedir) and I are working together to develop an agency with both creative excellence and cross-channel expertise. These super talented, and smart individuals are going to help get us there.”

Commenting on her new role, Briers said: “This is my first role on the agency side and I wanted a completely new challenge in my career. I hope to bring with me some insights from the client side, to help Innocean develop better CX and digital strategies and practices for its clients. Innocean is really pushing for innovation within the creative digital space as the agency breaks free from a more traditional past. Watch this space.”