CHEP Steals PwC’s Ben Shepherd, Appoints As Chief Media Officer

Ben Shepherd, former head of strategy, innovation and digital at OMD and most recently former director of management consulting at PwC Australia has been snared by CHE Proximity.

Shepherd will move to CHE Proximity as its chief media officer on June 19.

He will lead CHE Proximity’s media practice across Australia, working with the agency’s other leaders across creative, tech and CX.

CHE Proximity CEO, Chris Howatson said: “Ben is a stand out leader in the media and consulting fields. He is curious, tenacious and absolutely driven to achieve success for his clients. He has the perfect balance of incumbent media knowledge and transformational experience thinking”.

Shepherd added: “Chris and I share the same idea of the opportunities within media and the best way to approach it in order to create material value for marketers. We have a model that is unlike any other in market and one that will deliver strategic rigour, consultancy capabilities as well as operational and delivery excellence.

“The CHE Proximity approach to connected creativity was appealing to me as it merges rational, data led thinking and analysis, with creative thinking and strong capabilities across data, design, customer experience and technology to build business changing work for its clients.”

David Halter, CSO at CHE Proximity, noted the role for media accountability. He said: “We’re managing enormous spends for our clients. It’s easy to become desensitised to the value, but we always come back to the simple adage of ‘how would we spend it if it were our money?’

“This encourages a performance culture and a desire to not spend it if we don’t have to. We’ll often direct paid investment into owned channels if that is the most effective and efficient path to take.”

Shepherd was one of PwC’s major hires in 2017 as the consulting firm shifted into the CMO advisory and marketing practice two years ago.

The same year, PwC invested in creative agency Thinkerbell, lead by formed Cummins&Partners global chief strategy director Adam Ferrier and co-ECDs Ben Couzens and Jim Ingram.

A former commercial director of Sound Alliance, Shepherd joined OMD in 2014 as head of digital before moving into the role of head of strategy and innovation.

Shepherd will have been at PwC for just 12 months before he starts his new role at CHEP in June.

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