Jarrod Martin, Head of Acxiom’s Sister Company Kinesso, Named CEO of Both Firms

Jarrod Martin, global CEO of Acxiom and Kinesso (Photo provided by Interpublic Group)

Jarrod Martin, the head of Conway-based Acxiom’s sister company Kinesso, has been named chief of both firms.

Martin, who will have the title Global CEO, follows Chad Engelgau as the head of Acxiom. Engelgau announced in January that he was leaving the data giant after 17 years to join nonprofit services provider Innovairre of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, as CEO.

Interpublic Group, the publicly-traded parent company of Acxiom and Kinesso, said in a news release Thursday that the move “fully aligns the teams responsible for the engineering behind IPG’s integrated marketing engine.” That operating system connects the company’s data, media, creative, production and commerce.

Kinesso is a marketing agency based in New York.

“Jarrod is an exceptional leader, with the valuable combination of deep technical expertise, a real understanding of the needs of our clients, and the ability to deliver tools and products that our collective teams adopt to make sense of and activate data in order to drive business outcomes,” IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky said in the release.

IPG also announced it’s consolidating Salesforce cloud services under Acxiom, including RafterOne Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a company IPG acquired in October 2022. The addition allows Acxiom to offer clients “streamlined consulting, implementation, and operational services” designed to reduce complexity and increase efficiency, according to the release.

The combined Salesforce cloud services will become part of Acxiom’s professional services organization, which offers go-to-market services for many other marketing and cloud partners.

In a statement, Martin said the consolidation will accelerate growth for IPG clients and result in more intelligent marketing strategies

“By uniting these groups, we’ve reduced the distance between the users of the technology and those who develop it,” he said. “We’ve created a solution that is both sustainable and future-focused, offering solutions with the optimal level of complexity or simplicity, as needed.”

Chief Operating Officer John Watkins, who had served as interim CEO of Acxiom, will remain responsible for leading Acxiom’s direct-to-market first-party data management business and will continue to oversee IPG’s data and cloud operations within Acxiom, as well as Salesforce cloud services.

IPG also named Keith Camoosa as Acxiom’s chief product & technology innovation officer. He’ll be responsible for aligning product strategy with the needs of customers, while also overseeing product development and technology investments.