SYDNEY: Hyundai and Kia's global in-house creative agency Innocean has announced that it will follow the lead of its Indian, Korean and Chinese offices and begin to work on other clients.
The agency has been working with two new clients in Australia, and has bolstered its staff with the hire of Kathy O’Connor as planning director and the promotion of Simon Hornery to group business director for Kia.
Innocean chief operating officer Michael Atkins said: "Similar to other Innocean companies in the global network of over 12 countries, Innocean in Australia is now starting to work with a number of other new clients in an ever increasing range of diverse industries.
"Since starting out in late 2008, we have built Innocean into a well established, marketing services agency. We have focused on being very agile and collaborative, providing strategy, creative, design, digital, studio, events, sponsorship and other marketing services to all our clients."
Atkins told AdNews: "Like any global agency there is interaction and collaboration between Innocean agencies [around the world]."
O’Connor was previously regional planning director at Ogilvy Asia where she was worked on brands such as DHL, Amex, Yahoo! and Ford. She replaces Saul Betmead who has relocated to Innocean Europe.
Hornery joined Innocean four months ago as business director on Kia.
Launched locally in late 2008, Innocean assumed creative duties on the Kia and Hyundai brands from Kia's retained agency Brave and Hyundai's agencies Singleton Ogilvy & Mather and Ideaworks in 2009.
Media is handled by Initiative.
Hyundai's head of marketing Oliver Mann recently told AdNews [Newsmaker, 26 February 2010, page 7] that a record marketing budget was in place for the company in 2010, as it prepares to try and better 2009's 39.2% increase in sales on a market that was down 7.4%.
As part of its plan, Mann said digital would play an increasingly important role in its communications, together with television.
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