ABOUT

Havas Media Group (HMG UK) has announced the appointment of Sharon Browne, formerly New Business Director at M&C Saatchi, to the role of Chief Marketing Officer.

Reporting directly to HMG’s Group Managing Directors, Paul Frampton and Pedro Avery, Browne will focus on driving growth across the media and creative businesses by consolidating the sense of shared purpose throughout the Group. In particular, she is tasked with building on the #havastogether proposition and ensuring that Havas continues to challenge and pioneer in new areas of marketing services.

In addition, Browne will work closely with Havas Media MD Natasha Murray to help build Havas Media Manchester as the Group opens its new base near MediaCityUK to service the newly-won £15m BBC media account. She will also work across Havas Sports and Entertainment Cake (Havas SE Cake), a new UK hub which puts entertainment and data-driven content expertise at the core of the Group’s offering.

All Havas Media Group new business and marketing personnel will report into Browne, safe-guarding brand consistency across the group, including Catherine Schrier, who oversees the Media Hub, and the new Lead at HSE Cake, ais London and Arnold KLP.

Browne is ideally suited to this varied, group-level role due to her wide-ranging experience, having held new business and marketing roles in media, creative, digital and direct agencies including OMD, Leo Burnett, Dentsu, Creston Group and Heresy. During this time she worked on a raft of diverse sectors such as FMCG, alcoholic beverages, financial, media and publishing, retail, travel and utilities. As well as this extensive agency background, she also brings valuable client insight to the role, gained at the start of her career on the client side at United Distillers.

Immediately prior to joining Havas Media Group, Sharon headed up new business and marketing at M&C Saatchi Group and was responsible for building thought leadership and translating this into new business opportunity. During her tenure there, new business gained included Boots, Douwe Egberts, Royal Mail and Blue Cross.

Paul Frampton, CEO, Havas Media and Group Managing Director, Havas Media Group , said: "Sharon’s vast experience across all agency disciplines, at group level and on the client side, make her a perfect choice for evolving the #havastogether narrative around joining the dots between creative, content, data and technology. I am very excited about her joining and acting as a bridge between Havas Media Group and Havas Creative Group to further our Village strategy for 2017.”

Sharon Browne said: “I am so happy to be joining Havas Media Group at this exciting stage of its journey towards becoming a truly integrated, dynamic and forward-thinking provider of media, content and data solutions. The sense of purpose from the leadership team is palpable, and taking this offer to brand owners seeking meaningful change will be a delight.”