Dentsu Canada has promoted Patrick Hounsell [pictured above] to chief executive officer, while current CEO Stephen Kiely [pictured below] is taking on the role of chief executive officer of Tag Americas.

The duo will assume the roles Jan. 1.

Most recently, Hounsell was the president of Dentsu B2B Americas based in New York. Before that, he spent more than 12 years with Merkle, joining the leadership team in 2011 as chief digital officer before leaving as EVP.

Previously, Hounsell was the SVP and GM of national media at digital shop Razorfish, where he was responsible for leading the Publicis Groupe agency’s overall media practice, including paid media, search, social media, emerging media and ad operations.

Stephen Kiely assumed Dentsu Canada leadership in the spring of 2022 with Dentsu’s media agencies including Carat, iProspect and Dentsu X, as well as CXM agency Merkle, under his remit.

His new role is “to accelerate adoption of the [creative content agency] Tag x Dentsu offering in the market across [Dentsu’s] client portfolio.”

Last summer, Dentsu Group announced it had completed the acquisition of Tag Group from Advent International. It’s now operating as Dentsu’s sixth agency brand, absorbing 2,800 personnel into the Dentsu family.

Kiely, whose background is in performance media, data and technology and CRM, will help grow Tag across the U.S., Canada and Latin America.

Previously, Kiely was an EVP and president and CEO of integrated brand strategy and design firm, DentsuBos.

“We are building a competitive and differentiated offering to match our clients’ future growth ambitions across Canada, the U.S and Latin America,” says Michael Komasinski, CEO of Dentsu Americas. [The appointments] signal “our sharpened commitment to globalized delivery of end-to-end expertise across creative, media and technology.”

Dentsu’s client roster in Canada includes RBC, Subway, LePage and in February the shop was named AOR for Air Miles.