Sony Australia has appointed Simon Hovell head of brand marketing and handed Naked Communications an enlarged role on its agency roster.
Naked has been made lead agency by Hovell, who was previously brand marketing manager. He replaces group manager of brand marketing Vanessa Hamilton, who departed the company earlier in the year.
Naked previously handled experiential and activations work for Sony, in partnership with fellow Photon Group agency C4 Communications.
Sony has been undertaking an agency review, which was announced earlier in the year. Sony said it will not be dropping any roster agencies, which include Euro RSCG, Saatchi & Saatchi, Starcom MediaVest, Iris and Hausmann Communications.
Hovell said: "The appointment of Naked as our lead agency, to develop strategy across all of Sony’s electronics business, demonstrates the importance of focusing on customers in this category. Naked's speciality, of behavioural change, will become core to how we bring campaigns to market in Australia."
Naked managing partner Mike Wilson said: "Sony is evolving as a company, from an electronics-focused organisation to a broader network services and entertainment company. This is an exciting challenge for us to lead this strategy and support the focus on changing customer behaviour, primarily through online mediums and directly at the retail shopfront."
Meanwhile, Sony has appointed its national customer care manager Tim Simons to the newly created role of customer insight and experience manager, within the brand marketing team. He reports to Hovell.
The brand is still searching for a general manager of consumer marketing to oversee both the brand marketing and the product marketing departments, following the departure of Toby Barbour, as revealed by AdNews.
The changes come amid a testing time for the Sony brand, which has suffered damaging attacks to customer trust and loyalty following cyber attacks on its online networks.
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