Marketforce has announced the appointment of former Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) CEO Alice Manners to its newly-created position of chief digital officer.

Manners is a senior digital and media specialist with more than 20 years’ experience working across the Asia-Pacific region.

She stepped down from her role as CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) in May, and previously worked in a number of roles at WPP Asia Pacific, including as the chief operating officer for interaction for GroupM Asia Pacific and as managing director of mOne Asia Pacific.

Manners said Marketforce presents an exciting opportunity for her to combine her experience at the IAB with her agency credentials to address the evolving needs of today’s marketer.

“As we move forward, the creative application of technology to solve problems is vital, but at the same time we can’t forget the importance of human touch,” she said.

“Marketforce’s commitment to a fully-integrated media, strategic and creative solutions for clients and its ability to deliver on this commitment is impressive and the envy of many larger agencies across the globe who are struggling to re-connect these key elements of their service offering.”

Marketforce CEO John Driscoll said the newly-created role reflects a maturing of the agency’s approach to its digital offering, and is in line with a worldwide trend to provide a seamless integration of traditional and digital media planning with strategic and consumer planning – “all linked with campaign based creative solutions”.

“Clients today are faced with a barrage of marketing choices and often conflicting information provided from a multitude of sources” he said.

“Our role as an agency must be to make sense of those choices using well-grounded research, data analytics and consumer media consumption habits to provide simple, fact-based single source solutions for our clients.”

Manners commences her new role at Marketforce on 22 August 2016.