Digitas Strengthens U.S. Operations With Regional Alignment

Tony Weisman to Lead Boston-Chicago-Detroit Region; Joanne Zaiac to Lead Atlanta-New York-Stamford Region

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Jul 20, 2010, 10:15 ET

BOSTON, July 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Colin Kinsella, President, Digitas North America (www.digitas.com), today announced a realignment of the Digitas N.A offices. Tony Weisman, Global Client Lead and President of Digitas Chicago, expands his president remit across the Boston and Detroit offices and Joanne Zaiac, President of New York and Stamford, CT expands her remit to include Atlanta. The move in part streamlines operations and promotes stronger client service models across the offices to better serve clients' evolving needs. Weisman and Zaiac will both report to Kinsella.

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"Joanne and Tony are two remarkable leaders who are adept at growing business and attracting top industry talent," said Kinsella. "This realignment allows them the agility and control to better organize around evolving talents, capabilities, and media offerings to better serve our clients' business needs."

Additional Regional Promotions

Barbara Goose, exec-vice president, has been elevated to executive director of Boston and Detroit. In addition, Goose will join Kinsella's N.A. management team. Goose will report to Weisman.
Kenneth Parks, sr-vice president, managing director of Stamford, expands his remit to include Atlanta continuing to report to Zaiac.
Lange Taylor, vice-president, Atlanta has been elevated to Managing Director of that office and will report to Parks.

Executive and managing directors are responsible for leading the operations and growth of their offices and the professional development of their people. Tamy Harms continues as managing director of Detroit, reporting to Goose.

This announcement comes shortly after the appointment of Lincoln Bjorkman to the N.A. chief creative officer post in early July.

Tony Weisman

Weisman joined Digitas in 2007 as president of the Digitas Chicago Region and added global client lead in 2010. Since joining the agency, the Chicago office has more than tripled in size adding numerous new clients, including MillerCoors, Walgreens, and Kaiser Permanente, and growing existing relationships.

Weisman came to Digitas with more than 22 years of advertising industry experience. He was most recently chief marketing officer at Draft Chicago, where he spearheaded one of the most dramatic growth trajectories in the business's history. Prior to that, he held various management positions at Leo Burnett.

Weisman holds a B. A. from Brown University (Phi Beta Kappa). He is a Chairman of the Board of Chicago Public Radio and a member of the boards of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (Chicago Chapter) and the Off The Street Club.

Joanne Zaiac

Zaiac joined Digitas in 1999 and has served as president of Digitas New York and Stamford since 2004. During her tenure as President, she has driven significant expansion and growth of Digitas New York, adding several Fortune 500 clients and recruiting some of the industry's top talent. Additionally, Joanne is the executive leader of the American Express relationship and drives the execution and strategy of Digitas services across clients that include Kraft, Delta, and Samsung.

Zaiac's career as an integrated marketer began in general advertising at Havas Dentsu Marsteller. She then spent 14 years in Direct Marketing at Wunderman Worldwide/Young & Rubicam.

Zaiac graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University and holds a B.A. in History and Literature and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She serves on the Board of Directors for Junior Achievement New York and on the Advisory Board for SheSpeaks.com. She is also an honored recipient of the Academy of Women Achiever's (YWCA) Women Achiever Award.

About Digitas

Digitas is a leading global integrated brand agency, helping the world's biggest brands develop, engage and profit from building profitable relationships with their customers. The Agency pairs media, marketing, technology, creativity, imagination and analytics to ignite emotional bonds between people and brands. Digitas also operates the brand content platform, The Third Act:, the independent healthcare marketing brand, Digitas Health, as well as Prodigious Worldwide, the world's only standalone, global digital productions company. With sister agencies Starcom MediaVest, ZenithOptimedia and Denuo, Digitas is a member of Publicis Groupe's VivaKi -- a global digital knowledge and resource center that leverages the combined scale of the autonomous operations of its members to develop new services, new tools, and new partnerships.

Paris-based Publicis Groupe S.A. (Euronext Paris: FR0000130577) is the world's third largest communications group, the world's second largest media counsel and buying group, and a global leader in digital and healthcare communications. With around the world activities spanning more than 104 countries on five continents, the Groupe employs as many as 44,000 professionals.

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