• by David Kaplan , November 3, 2004

Media agency personnel are doing a lot of job-hopping these days, as two notable marketing veterans have taken senior assignments at major media shops.

On Wednesday, Marston Allen announced he was leaving his post at Interpublic Group's Universal-McCann to head to Publicis Groupe's MediaVest USA. On the same day, Julie Kantrowitz said she was exiting AOL Time Warner to work with entertainment marketing guru Robert Riesenberg's Full Circle Entertainment.

Separately, Mary-Ellen Vincent has left as senior vice president-director of insights and accountability, the senior research post at MediaVest, and the agency is looking to fill that position. Vincent is said to have taken a personal sabbatical to travel the world.

Anecdotally, some media shop headhunters noted that the flurry of new business activity has been driving the need to lure media specialists, especially at the senior level.

"The hiring picture has been robust for the past year, and it will certainly be heating up before the year's end," said headhunter Kurt O'Hare, of O'Hare & Associates. "At the senior level, there has been a concerted effort at many top agencies to consolidate at that tier with the best and the brightest. And that brings additional attraction to agencies in terms of other hires and further new business."

Allen, a 15-plus-year veteran of the media industry, was previously the senior vice president and director of Communications Architecture at UM. In his new position at MediaVest, he will serve as senior vice president, director of Business Development and Marketing. He replaces Julian Porras, who became vice president-regional managing director for Starcom MediaVest Group Latin America.

Kantrowitz, formerly chief operating officer of AOL Time Warner's Global Marketing Solutions Group, will now become the Omnicom entertainment marketing shop's chief marketing officer.