Havas Media Group appoints its first group chief marketing officer

Virginia Hyland and Francis Coady

Havas Media Group has promoted its marketing leader, Francis Coady, to the company’s group chief marketing officer (CMO) role as recognition for his efforts and focus on growth.

Coady joined the media agency in 2016 to establish the Havas Sport and Entertainment division, which has since grown into a multi-million-dollar billing operation. The division has worked with the likes of Bupa, Gillette, LG, NRMA and most recently produced the digital-first series, ‘The Long road’, for Destination NSW.

Prior to this, Coady was general manager of brand and marketing agency, Merchantwise, working with entertainment brands such as 20^th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures and ABC TV. He boasts of a 20-year career working across music, film, partnership, content, media and marcomms industries and also oversaw artists such as Thirsty Merc and Hi-5, as well as produced the Bondi Short Film Festival for 13 years.

Havas Media Group CEO, Virginia Hyland, said Coady had made an outstanding contribution to the business after building the specialist sports and entertainment division from scratch.  

“The creation of the CMO position not only recognises Francis’ exceptional track record over the past five years, it will enable us to leverage his broad cross-industry expertise to grow the agency and the strength of our amazing client partnerships,” she stated.

Coady said the role of marketing professionals is “to entertain, engage and educate”.  

“The last five years working at Havas Media have given me the opportunity to bring this philosophy to life, with the support of incredible leadership, a smart, empathetic team, which has fostered a culture that is always focused on doing work with meaning,” he said.  

Havas Media Group said it would announce an internal replacement for Coady shortly.

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