José Fernandez appointed as new Managing Director at DigitasLBi Belgium
José Fernandez takes over the lead of the company from Antony Slabinck who resigned as CEO from LBi Belgium for personal reasons. With over 20 years experience in the digital market, Antony Slabinck has been active at LBi since 2007 where he has been driven succesfully the merge between LBi Belgium and Winsome as Client Service Director, before taking up the company’s leadership in 2011.
José Fernandez has been appointed as new Managing Director and will take over from Antony Slabinck as from June 2013. He will report to and closely work together with Caroline McGuckian, COO of DigitasLBi West Europe, at group’s global level.
After 10 years of international experience acquired in Sales & Marketing with a large FMCG food manufacturer, José Fernandez has built up a strong track-record in the digital industry, where he contributed in 2000 to the succesful start-up of Citobi as Associate Partner, a leading Belgian-based CRM and digital marketing agency, serving clients like Kia, RTBF, Brico and Novartis.
He has joined LBi in 2009 as Client Service Director , before moving as Client Partner since 2011, serving agency’s major clients like Belgacom, National Lottery and SNCB/NMBS. In 2012, José Fernandez took up the head of the Strategy Department, enhancing the user experience, user engagement, metrics and digital strategy offering of the agency.
«Antony has done a great job in leading the company through a difficult market transitional period and has been able to better shape it, allowing a smoother integration into the evolving LBi Group’s structure, while contributing as well to new important accounts like Barco and Vlerick Business School. With the take-over by Publicis Group in 2013 and the further consolidation in the DigitasLBi leading digital network, we are now facing a new exciting era, enabling us to serve our local and international clients with an unmatched level of expertise and service line. Being able to deliver the right level of strategic, creative and technology answer in this period of digital disruption and business challenges for our Belgian clients and prospects will be the key to success and I am proud of being asked to lead our agency along this pathway», said José Fernandez.
José Fernandez holds a Business Engineering Master from ICHEC Brussels (1991) and has been a regular speaker and lecturer at STIMA Marketing Foundation, IAB Belgium and business schools alumnis.