Harte Hanks (NYSE: HHS), a leading data-driven multi-channel marketing solutions firm, announced the hiring of Bant Breen as Chief Executive Officer and the promotion of Andrew Harrison to the role of President and Chief Operating Officer, effective immediately. Harte Hanks created an interim “Office of the CEO” in September 2018 as it mapped out plans for the company’s future growth and leadership. The selection of Breen and Harrison is the culmination of this transitional phase, providing the core leadership team to return Harte Hanks to growth and profitability.
Alfred V. Tobia Jr., Chairman of Harte Hanks, “We initiated an executive recruitment process three months ago evaluating internal and external leadership candidates. After meeting many highly-qualified candidates, the board felt that Bant emerged as the best candidate to lead Harte Hanks as CEO. Bant brings a wealth of experience in sales, advertising and marketing to top-tier corporations. This expertise will be invaluable as we continue to build Harte Hanks. Andrew has proven his ability over two decades at Harte Hanks, and as our President, he can partner with Bant to harness the company’s tremendous talent base. We are confident in their ability to deliver performance-focused marketing solutions excellence and drive improved results to write the next chapter of our story.”
The combination of Breen and Harrison provides a commitment to maintain the best qualities of Harte Hanks’ heritage and to continue to move the company forward to support its clients. Breen, who has been a member of the Harte Hanks Board of Directors since June, 2018, is a recognized global marketing leader and entrepreneur. He was most recently the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Qnary, an acclaimed executive advocacy technology platform company. Qnary was listed as one of America’s 5000 fastest growing companies by Inc. Magazine in 2018 and was also named to the Entrepreneur 360 List by Entrepreneur Magazine in 2018. Before Qnary, Breen held numerous leadership roles with top marketing holding companies such as IPG, Publicis and WPP. In 2010, he was inducted into the American Advertising Federation’s Hall of Achievement.
“Harte Hanks has been a foundational player in direct, digital and data-focused marketing solutions as well as contact center and fulfillment,” stated Breen. “I’m honored to join Harte Hanks and to work with the amazing team here to deliver growth-oriented marketing solutions for the greatest brands in the world.”
Harrison is a veteran of Harte Hanks with over 20 years at the company and over 25 years in business services. Harrison played a critical leadership role as a member of the temporary Office of the CEO that oversaw the company’s day-to-day operations, focusing on overall business performance and development of the turnaround strategy. Before that, Harrison served as EVP and Chief Human Resources Officer of Harte Hanks where he successfully led major operations with full P&L responsibility for contact center services, including customer support, demand generation and back office marketing services to top brands. Throughout his career, Harrison has helped to lead change through acquisitions, functional consolidations and process improvement, delivering improved top- and bottom-line performance.
Harrison said, “Harte Hanks has tremendous people who have a passion for delivering well-executed services, working every day to create success for our clients, a fantastic group of world-class companies. I’m excited to work closely with our teams and clients across all of our services as we continue our intense focus on business performance. Bant and I bring complementary skills and experience, and we will partner to bring the talent of the organization together to drive higher operational performance and reignite growth in all areas of our business.”
About Bant Breen :
Bant Breen joins the company from Qnary, where he served as Chairman and CEO since founding the company in 2012. Qnary started seven years ago with a mission to empower senior executives to take control of their digital information and to benefit from it. The company now works with hundreds of enterprises and thousands of executives around the world to optimize, control, and grow their digital identities. Qnary’s proprietary leading-edge technology platform acts as a digital media agent for executives. Qnary works with over a hundred of the largest companies in the world across a full range of business verticals (banking, packaged goods, retail, energy, tech, media, real estate, insurance, education, healthcare, automotive, and food and beverage). The company is based in New York City, USA but also has offices in Barcelona, Spain; Sydney, Australia; and Tokyo, Japan. Qnary delivers solutions to clients globally and in many languages such as English, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin, French, Italian and German.
Breen was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Achievement in 2010 and has a global marketing and communications background steeped in digital and innovation. Prior to founding and serving as CEO of Qnary, Bant was the Worldwide CEO of Interpublic Group’s global search and social media agency Reprise. Prior to that he served as President of global media agency, Initiative, where he launched the worldwide social media strategy and activation unit Prophesee. Before joining Initiative, Breen served as the Executive Director of the IPG Emerging Media Lab, created Ansible (IPG’s Mobile Marketing Agency) and led the global digital communications offering for Universal McCann (IPG). Breen has extensive agency holding company experience. He worked at IPG’s holding company level, leading the merger and acquisition activity of digital marketing and media agencies and technologies. He also worked on the corporate development team that led the sale of agency holding group BCom3 to Publicis. He started his career working at the holding company WPP as part of the first class of WPP Fellows. Breen holds an M.A. and a B.A. from the University of Cambridge and a B.A. from Duke University.
Source: Harte Hanks Press Release
