Havas Media UK chief Matt Adams joins Brainlabs as Managing Director

Matt Adams, CEO of Havas Media Group UK and Ireland, joins digital marketing agency Brainlabs as global Managing Director.

Daniel Gilbert, chief executive of Brainlabs, who founded the business in January 2012, said Adams has an “exceptional” record as a media agency leader.

“He is what I would describe as hungry but humble and has a level of ambition that matches what we have for the business, which is to grow exponentially,” Gilbert said.

Adams has spent nearly three-and-a-half years at Havas and previously worked at Dentsu Aegis Network’s iProspect and WPP’s MEC, now known as Wavemaker. He helped to turn around Havas’ media division, with Havas Media topping Campaign’s media new-business league table in 2019.

Gilbert said: “We’re bringing in someone with the experience of leading 1,000-plus-person businesses because we’ll try and get there shortly [in terms of size].”

Brainlabs has more than 280 staff in London, New York, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas. Clients include Formula One, Which? and TUI.

“The business has already grown to the extent that we needed more experience in the management team,” Gilbert said, explaining why he has recruited Adams. “There are multiple parts of the business where we feel we can step up another level.”

Adams has known Gilbert for a number of years and also worked with Jim Brigden, currently Brainlabs’ global managing director, at affiliate marketing business Tradedoubler. Brigden, a serial entrepreneur who ran The Seach Works and I Spy, is to become executive director of Brainlabs with a focus partly on M&A.

“Clearly, we’re a very small business and early on in our journey to becoming the best and biggest in the world – we’re still 30-odd years away from [achieving] that,” Gilbert, who is 34, said.

“We’re still focused on digital marketing. Through acquisitions, the plan is to expand our capability and become a truly integrated full-service offering for clients that is driven by experimentation.”

News of this appointment was originally reported in Campaign, 17.01.2020