Mindshare North America Appoints iProspect's Rolf Olsen as Chief Data Officer

NEW YORK, March 17, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Mindshare North America, the global media agency network that is part of WPP, announced today the appointment of Rolf Olsen as Chief Data Officer. Olsen will lead the agency's Marketing Sciences group, a team of more than 70 advanced analytics professionals across North America, and will drive new tools and data partnerships for THE LOOP, Mindshare's adaptive marketing engine. He reports to Colin Kinsella, CEO, Mindshare North America, and is based in New York.

"Data is the lifeblood to a media agency, to turn insights into real-time action, and optimize our clients' media investments. Rolf's not afraid to the push boundaries of what's possible and move quickly on it," said Kinsella. "He has the kind of grit – the perseverance – that we look for in our talent, and the creative thinking that helps us make media a competitive advantage for our clients."

Olsen joins the agency from global digital performance agency iProspect, and has run Marketing Sciences teams across Carat, Copernicus, and iProspect for the past seven years. As SVP, he transformed the capability, leading the integration of several departments to achieve better data management and reporting, and delivering large organic growth. Among other things, he also launched the agency's new reporting and optimization suite. 

"Data and insights are the cornerstones of everything Mindshare does," said Olsen. "I'm excited by the great work they're doing across The LOOP and the entire Marketing Sciences team - I can't wait to join in."

Olsen's appointment follows several other announcements and partnerships from Mindshare NA's Marketing Sciences team. Just recently they released a new edition of their Culture Vulture trends report, which uses a proprietary research model to analyze and forecast the biggest consumer shifts and trends of the year. Right before that, they had also released new research focused specifically on millennials, and how best to capture their estimated $200 billion in direct purchasing power.

More About Rolf Olsen:

Olsen's work at iProspect was part of his ten-year tenure at the Dentsu Aegis Network across the U.S. and the U.K, including leadership positions at Carat, Copernicus, and more.

At Carat, Olsen grew and developed the agency's Advanced Analytics Group, which later became Carat Marketing Sciences. He also developed the Carat Media Analytics Platform, covering data and vendor management, visualization design and functionality, KPI definition, and usability design. At Copernicus he then led the integration of the Carat Marketing Sciences into the agency, spearheading research/analytics capabilities for clients, launching new products, and driving team development.

Olsen's work at both agencies helped bring in new business wins for Aegis with Sony Mobile, PlayStation, Mastercard, Discover Card, and Mondelez. In 2013, he was the recipient of the Carat Innovation award.

With over 15 years of industry experience, he has worked with numerous national and multi-national brands, including P&G, The Home Depot, Macy's, Bacardi, Disney, and more.

ABOUT MINDSHARE
Mindshare is a global media agency network with billings in excess of US$31.4 billion (source: RECMA). The network consists of more than 7,000 employees, in 116 offices across 86 countries spread throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.  Each office is dedicated to forging competitive marketing advantage for businesses and their brands based on the values of speed, teamwork and provocation. Mindshare is part of GroupM, which oversees the media investment management sector for WPP, the world's leading communications services group. Visit us at mindshareusa.com or MindshareInTheLoop.com and follow us on Twitter @mindshare_na and facebook.com/MindshareNA.

ABOUT GROUPM
GroupM is the leading global media investment management operation. It serves as the parent company to WPP media agencies including Mindshare, MEC, MediaCom and Maxus, as well as Xaxis and Catalyst. Our primary purpose is to maximize the performance of WPP's media communications agencies on behalf of our clients, our stakeholders and our people by operating as a parent and collaborator in performance-enhancing activities such as trading, content creation, sports, digital, finance, proprietary tool development and other business-critical capabilities. The agencies that comprise GroupM are all global operations in their own right with leading market positions. The focus of GroupM is the intelligent application of physical and intellectual scale to benefit trading, innovation, and new communication services, to bring competitive advantage to our clients and our companies. Discover more about us online at www.groupm.com.

Contact for more information:
Julie Gomstyn
Associate Director
Mindshare North America
[email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150317/182506

SOURCE Mindshare North America

Related Links

http://www.mindshareworld.com