• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, January 9, 2020

Mark Penn’s The Stagwell Group has collected a group of marketing specialty companies over the past four years and has  created a central marketing team in a bid to more aggressively market their capabilities to brands undergoing digital transformation. 

Penn, who last year invested $100 million in MDC Partners and became its CEO, said that after years of building the Stagwell portfolio of specialists, “now is the time to build the team that can meld all the pieces that we’ve gathered and bring them to market.” 

The new marketing team includes Anas Ghazi, former Growth Officer at Kantar, who will be managing director and Chief Strategy Officer.

The firm has also hired Politico veteran Alexis Williams as executive vice president-head of marketing and Merrill Raman, who had been CIO of Stagwell company Harris Poll as managing director, enterprise data at the marketing group. Also Regan Considine, formerly of National Journal, joins as senior director. 

The team will be led by Stagwell Chief Operating Officer Beth Lester Sidhu, who adds Chief Marketing Officer to her duties. 

Stagwell’s central marketing team is also tasked with fostering collaboration across its brands, which includes companies like creative digital agency Code and Theory, performance-marketing agency ForwardPMX, analytics and insights firm Harris Research, and creative agency Observatory.