New Commercial Director & Head of SEO announced

Managing Director Kristi Hoyle said:

“We’re building the leadership team around the kind of agency we believe clients will need next.

Kaizen has always been built around specialist expertise, what’s changing is the scope of the challenge. Search and discovery are more interconnected than ever, and brands need to understand how their authority carries across the wider Search-Verse™.

Martin and John bring two complementary strengths to our ambition. Martin brings the specialist depth to continue evolving our organic discovery proposition, while John brings the commercial experience to connect that expertise to the challenges our clients are facing.

As an independent agency, we have the agility to make decisions quickly, invest ahead of the curve and be proactive about change. We’re committed to staying on the front foot as the industry evolves, and Martin and John joining the leadership team gives us even more momentum to do that.”

John joins as Commercial Director, bringing extensive experience from across the industry. Having worked in senior client-side digital roles before moving into leadership positions at independent and, more recently, network agencies, his appointment marks a return to the independent agency world and an opportunity to work alongside truly specialist teams at a pivotal moment for the industry.

John Sellwood said:

“The pace of change in our industry is unlike anything we’ve seen before. The scope of organic discovery is expanding rapidly, and brands now need to think about how they show up across an entire ecosystem rather than individual channels in isolation.

I believe independent specialists are incredibly well placed for that environment. You have the depth of expertise, but also the agility to join the dots across channels, move quickly and respond to what clients need right now as the landscape changes at pace..

Having spent a long time within network agencies, I’m delighted to be back in an independent agency and working alongside specialists with a real curiosity and depth of knowledge. What really attracted me to Kaizen was how proactive the business is. There’s a genuinely future-facing mindset here, with a team that wants to run towards change and get on the front foot rather than wait for the industry to move and then react.

There’s already real momentum behind Kaizen, and that makes this an incredibly exciting time to join and help shape where the business goes next.”

 

Together, Kristi, John and Martin will lead Kaizen’s next stage of development, combining specialist expertise and commercial strategy with technology to build an independent agency designed around the future of organic discovery.

As AI becomes a greater part of how purchasing decisions are researched, Kaizen is broadening how organic performance is understood and measured. Alongside established measures such as rankings, links and referring domains, the agency is developing its approach to measuring share of answer, citations and the accuracy of how brands are represented within AI-driven search.

The ambition is to ensure clients do not simply remain visible as search changes, but earn the authority to be cited, recommended and accurately represented wherever their customers are researching.