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David Ketchum to leave Bite after merger with Text100

David Ketchum

David Ketchum

PR agencies Text100 and Bite are to be merged in Asia by parent company Next Fifteen Communications Group, and Bite APAC president David Ketchum is to leave the company after almost five years at the helm.

The Bite brand is to be folded into Text100 to form an agency with 300 staff in China, India, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia. The merger is also happening in Germany and Sweden.

The agency will be led by Anne Costello, Text100’s APAC director APAC, and Paul Mottram, currently APAC EVP at Bite.

The merger is scheduled to take place in between September and December this year. Ketchum, who founded Upstream Asia 13 years ago, a marketing agency that was acquired by Bite five years later, is to leave after the transition is complete, he confirmed with Mumbrella.

The new entity will have a combined client list including Blackberry, Cisco, IBM, Lenovo and VMware in the tech space; Expedia, Rakuten, Tencent, and TripAdvisor in e-commerce; corporate brands such as DHL, Schneider Electric, Standard Chartered and SWIFT; Lupin and the Max Bupa group in healthcare; and the likes of Beats by Dr Dre, Cadbury, Haagen-Dazs, Hong Kong Disneyland and Jawbone.

“Combining these two great businesses in Asia creates a world-class regional agency with improved capabilities in each of the markets in which we do business,” Tim Dyson, Next15 CEO, said in a press release.

“With comparatively little overlap in the current businesses, this integration will strengthen our client offering across multiple sectors, provide greater career opportunities for our people and take us a big step closer to achieving our integrated communications goals.”

On Ketchum, he added: “David has created an amazing business in Asia, first as Upstream Asia, and as Bite over the last five years. His vision and entrepreneurialism have been instrumental in not only building our business in the region, but also in accelerating the adoption of integrated, digital marketing as a whole,”

“Client demand for integrated communications is only going to grow in APAC,” said Aedhmar Hynes, CEO of Text100. “Bringing Bite and Text100 together enables us to double down on our investments to date. We can offer a more complete set of integrated services to our clients to help them engage today’s always-on, always-connected consumers and business decision-makers.”

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