M&C Saatchi appoints Cooper

M&C Saatchi Sydney has appointed Ben Cooper as group innovation director. Cooper’s recruitment to the newly-created position will greatly improve M&C Saatchi’s digital capability.Working alongside CEO Jaimes Leggett, ECD Ben Welsh and CSO Justin Graham, Cooper will head innovation across the 10 businesses that comprise the M&C Saatchi Group. In addition, he will lead social, mobile and content across the agency.Cooper comes off of a four year stint with The Monkeys as the head of digital where he created their digital department. Some of the highlights of his time there include producing a world first ‘scrapbook’ iPad App for IKEA called KLIPPBOK; building Mixionary.com, and producing a collaborative film for the “Map My Summer” experiment for YouTube.Prior to working with The Monkeys, he was partner and senior digital strategist at The Population following nearly three years as digital strategist at Host.“We’re thrilled to have Ben joining us,” Leggett said.“He is world class. Equal parts digital strategist, digital creative and technologist, Ben brings a stellar skillset to the table, which added to his experience and leadership, makes him unique to this market." said Leggett.Cooper is the latest in a string of talent bolsters by M&C Saatchi that includes the appointment of Graham as CSO from Droga5, group operations director Marc van den Berg from Ogilvy & Mather and Optus group head Chiquita King from Leo Burnett.