Publicis Media bolsters regional leadership for commerce practice

Publicis Media has made several appointments for its regional commerce practice across APAC, EMEA and the Americas, effectively immediately.In APAC, the move will see the appointment of Samrat Sengupta in as regional practice lead. Based in Singapore, Sengupta will work closely with Publicis Media’s data sciences practice, reporting directly into Navaneeta Das, head of product and client development, Publicis Media.Prior to the move, Samrat Sengupta held country leadership roles for Rocket Internet across Asia and Africa, as well as Indonesia online marketplace Tokopedia. He also worked at e-tailer Shopee, where he helped set-up and grow digital and e-retail businesses.Meanwhile, Jonathan Lewis-Jones has been promoted to regional practice lead in EMEA, from global commerce director at Starcom. During his tenue at Starcom, Lewis-Jones helped develop commerce capabilities across the group and built commerce propositions across some of the network’s global clients such as P&G, Samsung and PUIG. Amy Lanzi joins the company as regional practice lead in the Americas from TPN, a retail marketing agency within Omnicom, where she led the New York office and was responsible for driving the agency’s business.All commerce leads will report to Ali Nehme, global practice lead, commerce, Publicis Media, and be responsible for leading and driving the commerce practice within their region for Publicis Media. This spans across all agency brands, including Starcom, Zenith, Digitas, Spark Foundry, Blue 449 and Performics.According to a statement, the new leads’ focus will be on accelerating growth for clients via new commerce solutions and continued expansion of the commerce practice and its capabilities. The move also comes following the launch of commerce as a global practice in March this year, in a bid to create a dedicated capability spanning commerce strategy; media and marketplace investment; and content and merchandising.“Having a strong data-centric view of the consumer is the essential for success in the fast evolving commerce space, so our data and commerce products have been structured to work symbiotically,” said Das.“Commerce has become a priority for our clients and they are increasingly looking to us as their partner who can bring a blend of media, sales, content, data and tech expertise to help drive decisions in this important and growing space,” Nehme said.