Comes Over From Leadership Post At Interbrand
Elmwood, a global design consultancy owned by MSQ, has appointed Daniel Binns as its new Global CEO. Binns joins Elmwood from Interbrand, where he’d spent more than a decade as part of the global leadership team, most recently as Chief Executive of Interbrand North America and as Global Chief Growth Officer, where he ran new business and marketing across 13 offices. Prior to Interbrand he was the Founding Partner of global research and strategy boutique, The Leading Edge, and previously spent 18 years at McCann Worldgroup, running offices and global client teams in London, New York, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Kuala Lumpur, Bahrain and Brussels during his near two-decade stretch.
Binns’ appointment, say Elmwood officials, underlines the studio’s ambition “to deliver world-class design-led creativity and strategic thinking to global clients and national brand leaders.” The studio has over 250 people in 4 locations working in New York, London, Singapore and Shanghai, and develops work for the likes of Mars, Wrigley, Heineken, Haleon, Kimberly-Clark, Danone, CVS Health and Colgate-Palmolive.
Based in New York, Binns will oversee Elmwood’s global growth strategy and creative innovation agenda, as well as fostering greater integration the studios and uniting the business around a vision for design-led, creative transformation. He will also work closely with parent company, MSQ, which acquired Elmwood in December 2021 and merged Elmwood with its own existing design consultancy, Holmes & Marchant.
Binns takes up his role in February, reporting directly to MSQ’s Executive Director, Bart Michels, and working closely with Elmwood’s Non-Executive Chair, Steve Gatfield. He will lead a team at Elmwood, which includes Elmwood Asia chief Paul Galesloot, London agency MD Sue Knowles, newly appointed Elmwood Shanghai MD Angeline Kong, Elmwood Singapore MD Celeste Cheong, and New York MD Nulty White. Last year Elmwood made two further additions to its global team, hiring Kristin Nevin as Global Client Partner and Abi Main as Global CFO.
Bart Michels says: “We’ve been looking at the right global leadership approach for a newly integrated international Elmwood era, and in Daniel we’ve found a rare global design industry talent to help lead this growth journey. His obvious passion for strategy, design and creativity more broadly, combined with the fact that he is a truly global citizen, make him an excellent choice to lead Elmwood, its clients and its people to an exciting new design industry leadership position.”
MSQ’s agencies emcompass Brave Spark (creative production studio), Elmwood (branding & design), Freemavens (research & insights), MMT (Web & Digital Product Development), Smarts (PR and content), MBAstack (CRM and Customer Engagement), Miri Growth (mobile marketing), Stein IAS (B2B marketing), The Gate (creative and media), Walk-In Media (full-service media) and 26 (full-service digital). Over 1200 people work at MSQ across 13 global offices.
