Havas Market makes Warsaw its base for Central and Eastern Europe

Havas Market has set up a base in Warsaw for Central and Eastern Europe. Havas Market is the part of Havas Media Network that works on online shops, on retail media, meaning ads sold by online shops, and on performance marketing, meaning ads bought to bring quick sales or sign-ups. The Polish office will be the centre of skills and daily work for six more countries: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia and Serbia.

Izabela Polańska-Sitarek will run it. Her job title is Central European hub group manager. She reports to Beata Magdziarz, chief digital officer and board member of Havas Media Network in Poland. Polańska-Sitarek comes from Publicis Groupe. There she coordinated campaigns in 28 markets across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and worked on changing how the business ran. Earlier, at Wirtualna Polska and NuOrder, she did social media, search, affiliate and online shop work for brands including Lindt, Microsoft, Stellantis, Dr Irena Eris, eSky, Lexus and Toyota.

The new base has four tasks. It should coordinate what Havas Market does in the region. It should pass working solutions between countries. It should build up local teams. And it should bring in tools based on data, automation and AI. Magdziarz said the network is building a way to spread its skills and its service quality across the region, because clients are asking for more. The Polish team already runs performance campaigns for T-Mobile.

Havas Market has run in Poland since 1 September 2022

Havas Market started in Poland on 1 September 2022, four years ago to the day. It was a new name for Havas E-Commerce, with Tomasz Kwiatkowski leading the online shop side. Around the world the unit says it works in more than 30 countries with over 1,800 consultants and specialists. It helps clients plan sales on marketplaces, buys ads for them, and has its own tools called Havas Market Forecast and Retail Insights. It works on platforms such as Allegro, Amazon and Zalando.

Running the smaller countries from Warsaw fits a wider pattern. Poland’s size, its people and its costs have made it a usual choice for regional bases at several networks, above all in media, performance and production. Havas has been building up its digital and shopping skills to compete with bigger groups. A regional performance centre also lets clients who buy across the whole region deal with one contact.

Polańska-Sitarek must build teams across the six countries

The first job for Polańska-Sitarek is winning business in the six countries and building local teams that can follow one shared way of working. Retail media is the obvious place to grow. Marketplaces and grocery chains in the region are only starting to open up their data and their ad space. Networks that can bring Polish know-how to Prague, Budapest or Zagreb may be first in line for that money.