• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, July 25, 2012

Publicis Groupe's ZenithOptimedia has promoted Dave Penski to the post of U.S. CEO of Zenith, one of the two agencies under the ZO banner. The other is Optimedia.

Penski will continue to report to Tim Jones, North American CEO of ZenithOptimedia.

Previously, Penski, who has been with the agency for more than a decade, had been president of Zenith since 2009. In what was considered a major executive shakeup at the time, he replaced agency veteran Wendy Marquardt in the president’s role, after running the shop’s Verizon account for five years. He joined Zenith in 1999 as a print buyer.

For ZO, it’s the second major executive change in the past year. Last July, David Ehlers was promoted to the post of U.S president of Zenith sister shop Optimedia, after Antony Young’s departure, to become North American CEO of WPP’s Mindshare.

Earlier this year, the agency network spent some time refreshing its marketplace branding with the new addition of a “Live ROI” tagline to underscore the shop’s real-time ROI accounting capabilities. The shop also spruced up its logo and redesigned the logos of its specialty units to present a uniform corporate look. Zenith also dropped “Media” from its name.

It’s been a relatively quiet year on the new business front for Zenith, although it retained the Qantas airline media account last month after a review. Late last year, it won the Gulf States Toyota regional dealer association media planning and buying account with estimated annual ad spending of $100 million. Around the same time, Optimedia won the estimated $120 million Bridgestone Tire assignment.

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