After a search that lasted more than a year, INNOCEAN has filled its new European chief operating officer role with the hiring of Susanne Plümecke.
She joins from a managing director Germany role at Media.Monks. Before that, she worked for 15 years in leading positions at DDB, the last being managing director at DDB Berlin
Plümecke brings over 20 years of automotive expertise with European brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Audi and BMW.
Her role will directly oversee the European business with INNOCEAN’s key clients Hyundai, Kia and Genesis, bringing the operation of the agency offices in Berlin and Frankfurt closer together.
Plümecke will be leading an agency with 200 employees in Germany and over 400 employees Europe-wide. She will be based in the Berlin office–where she already knows part of the team from the stay at DDB–splitting her time between the capital city and Frankfurt, where INNOCEAN’s regional headquarters and main clients are based. She will report directly to Sam (Wooksang) Ryu, CEO and president of INNOCEAN Europe, and will work closely together with the local leadership in Europe’s big 5 markets.
The Berlin and Frankfurt operation consists of various teams working together in the assorted aspects of the Hyundai Motor Group communications in the European region. While both offices have historically collaborated, an increasingly integrated planning is bringing the collaboration between these two offices even closer.
The office in Frankfurt is home to several multidisciplinary teams, including German campaigns, Retail Marketing, Brand Experience and the agency’s Innovation Centre of Excellence, merging its Strategy, Insight & Analytics, Media and Adtech activities. This year, it set-up INNOCEAN X, a new spin-off agency specializing in driving experience, motorsport, event, e-sports and content creation in the digital world.
The Berlin office operates as the Creative Centre of Excellence for European campaigns. The team, led by Gabriel Mattar and Ricardo Wolff since 2018, has scored numerous creative successes, winning 138 awards–six of them a Grand Prix–over the last six years, the latest being the Grand Prix for Good at Cannes Lions this past June.
