Matt Collette promoted to regional director of planning and innovation at Zeno Group Asia

Zeno Group Asia, the global integrated communication agency, has promoted Matt Collette to lead its new regional planning and research capability as Director of Planning and Innovation.

In this new role, Collette (pictured left) will be tasked with building a planning and research capacity across Zeno’s offices in Asia. With the new planning and innovation function, Zeno will deliver research-based insights to help clients understand and engage with today’s ‘always on’ consumer. Collette will also be responsible for building the agency’s partnership portfolio and a paid media capability. Based in Singapore, Collette will report to Zeno Group Asia’s managing director, John Kerr.

Kerr commented, “Zeno Group has grown over 50 per cent across Asia over the past 12 months. This explosive growth has primarily been fuelled by new or expanded social-digital remits from brands such as Audi, Lenovo, Motorola, MSD, Nivea, P&G and Tesco – making the need for cutting-edge regional planning absolutely critical. Matt has deep regional experience and is one of the best planners in the industry. What he is building is no traditional planning team. Requiring expertise across brand and content strategy, applied analytics and new approaches to paid media – his team will drive our continued expansion into owning broader integrated marketing and branding assignments – to meet the needs of clients seeking a true social-digital core at the centre of their campaign planning.”

Collette will oversee a regional planning team that includes a string of new hires in Singapore, India, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam.

“The marketing function is more complex today than it has ever been. The maturation of social media and content marketing, constantly evolving ad tech, and new platform innovations continue to demand reinvention,” said Collette. “Understanding consumer behaviour and grounding campaigns in research-based insights are critical to successfully engaging consumers who are exposed to more touch points than ever. Our focus will be on helping our clients stay ahead of that curve by building a robust planning function which will answer their most pressing business challenges.”

Collette, who has been part of the team at Zeno Group Asia since 2012, has driven social-digital innovation for global and regional clients, leading campaigns which have won a series of awards including Zeno’s first Spikes Asia Award for social media and a Gold at the Marketing Excellence Awards in 2013 for Excellence in Social Media Marketing. In addition to his work on client campaigns, Collette has led the development of the agency’s services and offerings portfolio across multiple disciplines including advocacy, real-time content, social amplification, engagement planning, and process management and design.