Global appointment for John Brown SA MD Lani Carstens

Effective from December 2021, Carstens will be relocating to the dentsu London office where she will lead over 2,000 skilled artists in 30 production studios across the world, combining their creativity with AI-enabled technology to deliver quality content with the agility and consistency today’s marketers are looking for.

Launched in 2020, Content Symphony uniquely enables dentsu clients to manage the entire content life cycle from production to distribution. It further enables them to collect and aggregate campaign performance data from media, creative and production to power real-time analytics dashboards to inform ROI. Responsible for driving the global growth strategy for Content Symphony forwards, Carstens will support dentsu’s vision of becoming the most integrated network in the world.

With 20 years of extensive publishing experience, Carstens has been the group managing and executive director of JBSA, dentsu South Africa’s multi-award-winning content agency for the past 11 years.

Commenting on her appointment, Carstens said: “Working at John Brown has been the highlight of my career. When I joined 11 years ago, we had one account, Pick n Pay (led by the inimitable Justine Drake) and 15 staff members. We soon grew to 55 full-time staff, 13 blue-chip clients, and won over 250 local and international awards.

"It has been an incredible honour to work with some of the best creatives and long-term client partners in the industry. I am confident that John Brown SA will continue to grow from strength to strength and I wish the team every success.”

“At dentsu, we support talent mobility both locally and globally and Lani’s global appointment is testament to the one dentsu culture and growth opportunities in the organisation.

"Her career journey with JBSA has been truly phenomenal and although she will be missed by both her colleagues and dentsu’s South African business, we are extremely proud of her new appointment and wish her huge success in her new role,” said Koo Govender, CEO of dentsu South Africa.

Carsten’s successor has been appointed and will be announced in early 2022.