Andrew Knott of McDonald's to lead APAC WFA network

Andrew Knott will become the new Chairman of WFA's Integrated Marketing Communications Forum (IMCFORUM) in Asia-Pacific, a peer-to-peer group of senior marketers from the WFA membership.

He replaces Gary Lim, former Regional Connections Director at Johnson & Johnson, and will work alongside the Unilever and Grupo Bimbo marketers who lead the WFA's IMCFORUMs in Europe and Latin America respectively.

Founded in 2009, the IMCFORUM now includes more than 200 individuals in Asia-Pacific and over 500 globally. Knott's goal will be to support WFA in growing the network across the region as more and more brands look to ensure their marketing solutions work in harmony across all channels.

In a 2015 WFA study of marketers globally, integration was ranked as a top or high priority by 73% of WFA's multinational member companies. Many multinational marketers struggle to deliver consistently integrated communications given the bewildering increase in potential communications platforms and the corresponding rise in complexity of their agency rosters.

An Australian national based in Singapore, Knott is Vice President, Media and Digital for McDonald's APMEA. Between 2010 and 2012, he led the digital efforts of Havas Worldwide in APAC and has also worked at Salesforce.com and Ogilvy & Mather.

"It's a great privilege to be named as the new Chairman of the WFA's IMCFORUM. I'd like to thank Gary for his work in building up the network and look forward to taking it to the next level, demonstrating the learnings that we as Asian marketers can share with the world," said Knott.

"The IMCFORUM is one of our most vibrant groups in Asia and has provided a base from which to expand our offering beyond South East Asia into India and China. The benefits of such knowledge sharing are demonstrated by the fact that marketers of the calibre of Andrew see clear value in being part of and freely give up their time to support our Asian network," said Stephan Loerke, Managing Director at the WFA.

The IMCFORUM is one of five marketing groups that WFA brings together throughout the year across Asia-Pacific. The others are the WFA CMOFORUM, MEDIAFORUM, DIGITALFORUM and SOURCINGFORUM, which bring together regional CMOs and senior marketers with regional media, digital and procurement responsibilities respectively.

The DIGITALFORUM will next meet on 9th July, CMOFORUM on 16th September and SOURCINGFORUM on 22nd October. These three meetings will all take place in Singapore. For more information, contact Rob at r.dreblow@wfanet.org