Twitter names new marketing director for APAC and Japan

Twitter has named Hideki Nick Watanabe (pictured) the new director of marketing for Japan and Asia Pacific. Marketing understands this role was last held by Frederique Covington, who left the role last year.Based in Singapore, Watanabe is responsible for both consumer and business marketing for Twitter in Japan and the Asia Pacific region. He reports to Leslie Berland, chief marketing officer, for consumer marketing as well as to Christine Cuoco, senior director of global business marketing, for B2B marketing.In a statement to Marketing, Twitter said Asia Pacific, including Japan, is its largest and fastest-growing region outside of the US. In order for this region to continue to be an engine of audience and revenue growth for the company, Watanabe will be responsible for educating consumers, partners and brands about the social media platform’s unique value proposition of: “Twitter is the best way to see what’s happening in the world today and to talk about it to get all sides of the story.”"In his new role, he will bring his creativity mindset and use his big-market experience to tell Twitter’s story to both consumers and advertisers across the region," said Twitter.Previously, he was the head of brand strategy for Twitter Japan, responsible for creating innovative, high-engagement Twitter campaigns for top brands to connect with their Japanese audience.  He managed a team of brand strategists who provided bespoke Twitter marketing solutions and campaigns to top brands.Prior to joining Twitter in mid-2014, Watanabe was a creative director at AKQA, executive creative strategist at Naked Communications, and interactive creative director at Beacon Communications / Leo Burnett Tokyo.In an e-mail interview with Marketing, when asked about the state of social in the Singapore market and the uptake of Twitter here, Watanabe (pictured) said,“With our Asia Pacific headquarters based in Singapore, we see a major opportunity to influence the business and marketing community for the region. That’s why we held our exclusive #BeyondSocial CXO workshop with INSEAD’s Emerging Markets Institute yesterday. We hosted 60 C-level APAC leaders across brands and agencies, who came together and heard from experts on how the dynamic nature of real-time marketing and communications are disrupting businesses today and how to use Twitter data to ride this change and maximise the opportunity to connect with digital natives.”During the session, Twitter shared its big bets in 2017 around video, premium content, and live where it showcased some inspiring work to demonstrate the creativity, power and effectiveness of Twitter to marketing decision-makers.