Edisen, the unskippable content company, has appointed industry leader  Jacques van Niekerk as its new Global CEO.

He brings 30 years’ experience to the role as Edisen continues its drive to    enhance the technology that is revolutionising content creation, from Generative AI capabilities to cutting-edge Special Effects and CGI.

In his new role, Van Niekerk will oversee development of Edisen’s 350-plus team’s skills to meet the demands of clients and shifting consumer content consumption habits.

He commented: “Edisen is in the vanguard of a movement which uses technology, data and creative guile to take the entertainment and marketing industry to new heights in making original and groundbreaking content.

“In a world becoming dominated by streaming and AI-driven applications our skills in original storytelling and artistry, from long to short form content, have become more valuable than ever. My role is to harness and develop our technology and talent to propel Edisen forward with innovation that will benefit our clients, the content industry as a whole, and the end customer who experiences it.”

Van Niekerk’s previous roles include a stint in the media, film and entertainment industry in his native South Africa. Following this, he rapidly rose to prominence as a CEO, firstly at ad-tech start-up Acceleration, and subsequently in the same role at leading marketing agency Wunderman Thompson Data.

He added: “Marketing in its current state has over-emphasized the ‘last mile’ of implementation, activation and measurement. Mostly as an over-hang from web-centric software workflows, compounded by decoupled production and media. That’s lob-sided: if we concentrate equally on ideation with the intelligent production of great content, and ensure we embed all the required data at the source of creation then our industry – and the work I believe it’s capable of – can advance exponentially.

“My mission is to build on Edisen’s world-class content production capabilities and proactively demonstrate how paying more attention to the value of the ideation and creation phases can drive success, whether its enhancing episodic content for streaming services, long-form solutions for the entertainment industry or short-form content for story-telling brands.”

Says Henric Larsson, one of Edisen’s Founders; “Edisen’s creative heritage using tech to scale combined with Jacques’s experience in building one of the world’s most powerful consumer data solutions is a killer combination – one that will deliver the performance clients are looking for. We all know that third party data is being challenged and that creativity is generating +50% of performance today. In his new role, managing one of the few global, independent content companies in the world, Jacques will be uniquely placed to solve clients pain points and deliver the performance they demand.”