Movers & Groovers : Arena bolsters senior team with Time Out and Razorfish talent

Arena Media has appointed its first ever Editorial Director, Jon Wilks, as well as a new Head of Paid Search, Suzie Rafla, in a double senior hire at the agency.

Formerly Editorial Director at Time Out Tokyo, Wilks is an experienced journalist and blogger, and has interviewed the likes of Yoko Ono and Sir Tom Jones. As head of Arena’s newly created Editorial Team – which includes writers, designers, developers and producers – Wilks will be driving high quality editorial initiatives for clients such as Domino’s Pizza, Three Mobile, Betfair, Blinkbox, Tesco Bank and LG.

Rafla joins Arena from Razorfish, where she was Associate Search Director, responsible for high level client search strategy. Her career history has also included time working client-side at Google. She will step into the lead role as Head of Paid Search at Arena, developing search strategy and planning across the agency. As head of the PPC team, she will be working with the entire portfolio of Arena’s PPC clients.

Pedro Avery, CEO at Arena, commented: “It’s fantastic to be welcoming two such experienced and talented people to our team at once. Jon will cast a journalistic eye and add editorial flair to the content we create for our clients, ensuring it’s worth reading, sharing, and of value to the consumer. And Suzie will help us drive planning excellence for our clients in search.

“The search industry is going through some very exciting changes. One constant is the need to put consumer behaviour at the very heart of planning, and that is why we’re delighted to be welcoming Suzie’s expertise and dynamic approach to the team.”

Jon Wilks added: “Every brand worth its salt knows that the onus is on them to become publishers, and subsequently there’s a tsunami of bad content heading our way. I’m delighted that Arena has taken this responsible step towards installing a level of quality control, and I’m looking forward to stepping into the flood and seeing what can be done.”

Suzie Rafla said: “I’m really excited to be joining Arena at such a pivotal time for Search Marketing. With the industry becoming far more audience-centric with Enhanced Campaigns, there are huge opportunities for innovation. The increased ability to reach the right consumer at the right time with the right message offers the potential to drive significant improvements in performance. Arena is ideally positioned to lead in this space with its Behavioural Economics product at the heart of the planning process, so I’m very much looking forward to getting started to help drive real value from this for our clients.”