• by April 12, 2011

Aegis Media North America has set up a new position of chief marketing officer to direct strategic marketing and development for both the holding groups, as well as its individual agencies: Carat, Isobar, Vizeum, Posterscope, iProspect, Team Epic and Copernicus.

Filling the position is Donna Wiederkehr, previously managing director at Interpublic's Lowe New York, prior to its merger into sister agency Deutsch in 2009. Before that, she had the post of director, business development at Interpublic's Campbell Mithun in Minneapolis.

Aegis attributed its ability to put one person in charge of cross-agency marketing and development to the group's operation under a single profit-and-loss entity in North America, which differentiates it from other holding companies.

Wiederkehr has already been consulting with Aegis Media in several capacities for the past eight months, and the group credits her as a key player in securing large wins for Diageo, Disney and Home Depot, as well as retaining its longstanding client Pfizer.

Having "spent the bulk of my career on the creative agency side," Wiederkehr told MediaPost her consulting experience with Aegis has led her "to really appreciate how powerful media can be in how brands are built." She said she has seen many parallels between creative and media, including their use of "insights, ideas, communications and creating stories."

Telling those stories for the Aegis companies will be easier, she said, due to the shared P&L, which means that all of them already "naturally work together. ... This is a highly, highly collaborative and innovative group."

In addition to her advertising career, Wiederkehr is also a leader in helping orphaned children in Rwanda, and she stressed how Aegis has committed to help her efforts by providing a "global platform" for volunteering and fund-raising.

"Under the corporate social responsibility part of the company," she said, there's "a commitment to really drive our efforts forward." For example, iProspect will work on all of the charity's search strategies. "[Aegis'] commitment will literally take kids off the street," declared Wiederkehr, who is affectionately labeled RwandaDonna on the nonprofit's Web site.