ATG Appoints Hervé Hannequin as Group Customer Officer and Oliver Clark as Group Marketing Director

With close to 50 venues in Britain, the United States and Australia, the Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG) is the world's leading theatre company.

The new leadership team

In the fourth quarter of 2016, ATG made a number of new appointments to the leadership team:

· Tony Ball as Chairman;

· Michael Lynas as Group Content and Creative Director;

· Adam Kenwright as Group Commercial Director;

· Nick Potter as Group International Venues Director;

· Stephen Lewin as CEO, North America;

· Kristin Caskey as EVP, Content and Creative, North America.

Today, they are announcing two further appointments:

· Hervé Hannequin as Group Customer Officer (and member of the Senior Leadership Team);

· Oliver Clark as Group Marketing Director (and member of the Operating Committee).

Hervé Hannequin - Group Customer Officer

ATG's products and services range from theatrical production and theatres to ticketing, branded merchandise and food and beverage.

Hervé is to take strategic responsibility for ATG's relationship with all its customers, worldwide - and across all products and services - as head of a newly created division: "Client Services".

The Client Services Division will be responsible for the way in which ATG presents, promotes and provides products and services to existing and potential customers; and for the manner in which they "converse" with our "audience" - and communicate their values.

It will have six different departments:

· Operational Marketing;

· Ticketing (ATG and TMG);

· Retail and Customer Experience;

· Digital and e-commerce;

· External Communications;

· Business Intelligence.

Oliver will head Operational Marketing, External Communications and Business Intelligence.

Hervé has been in the branding, advertising and marketing industry for over 25 years.

In the course of this time, he has worked for a wide variety of household names - Diageo, Procter & Gamble, GSK, BMW, LVMH and Samsung, amongst many others - and built an enviable reputation as a branding strategist.

He began his career in 1990 at Publicis-FCB, Frankfurt (as an account executive), after which he worked at Saatchi and Saatchi (as a Senior Planner); J. Walter Thompson (as a Global Planner); Brand Genetics (as a Senior Consultant); WCRS (initially as Head of Planning and then as Head of International Planning); DDB (as Global Planning Director of the Philips account); and, finally, at Abbott Mead Vickers (AMVBBDO), the leading advertising agency.

At AMVBBDO, he was, for six years, Global Strategy Director of the Mars Petcare account. During this period, AMVBBDO's Mars Petcare campaigns won no fewer than twenty-three industry awards.

He is French but with a bilingual command of English (and fluent German).

Oliver Clark - Group Marketing Director

Oliver will have responsibility for the delivery of marketing strategies, for ensuring coordination across products and the customer base, for handling business clients and prospects, and for market research.

He, too, comes from the world of advertising.

For the past five years, he has worked at AMVBBDO, above all as a senior executive on the Mars Petcare account, in close partnership with Hervé.

During the previous ten years, he worked at three companies: Mustoes (as an Account Director); Lowe, London (as a Group Account Director); and The Red Brick Road (as New Business Director).

Like Hervé, he has worked for a broad range of major brands, including: Unilever, Stella Artois, Innocent Smoothies, Lloyds Pharmacy, Kia and Magners Cider.

Hervé said:

"I've always thought of myself as being in the storytelling business: the business of telling carefully crafted stories about brands, stories that generally resonate at least as much at an emotional as a rational level. It's an exciting business to be in. It always was but the recent explosion in the number of tools and techniques at our disposal has made it even more so. Theatre is a storytelling business, too, of course: one of the very oldest and, at its best, surely the greatest. That's why I am so looking forward to this job. Live theatre is storytelling royalty; and ATG is the king of live theatre companies. ATG and live theatre, live theatre and ATG...: two amazing brands with amazing potential."

Oliver said:

"The digital world has changed the marketing business out of recognition: created fresh challenges and opportunities; and radically new ways of thinking and communicating. And yet, there are some things digital hasn't changed. Live performances have something - an authenticity, an emotional energy, and a place at the heart of human experience - that digital can't replace any more than film could. It's difficult to think of a sector I would rather serve."

Mark Cornell, ATG's Chief Executive, said:

"The sad death of Pat Westwell, ATG's Marketing Director was a tragedy. I'm sure that everybody who had the privilege to work with her misses her. She was a talented and dedicated Group Marketing Director. I am confident, though, that she has worthy successors in Hervé and Oliver. As a new chapter well and truly opens in the history and leadership of ATG - one that should be positive for producers and audiences alike - I am excited to see what this formidable double-act will bring to the company in this important, fast-changing and complex domain."