AMV Group Hires Sam Regan Asante to Lead New Creator-led Division, native@AMV

native@AMV: Sam Regan Asante and Matt Henry

​AMV Group has appointed former Joe Media CEO and UNILAD founding team member Sam Regan Asante as the head of native@AMV, its new creator-led social division.

A successful creator in his own right and long-time innovator in social publishing, Asante is joined by Matt Henry, AMV’s Innovation Lead, who steps into the new role of head of innovation. Together they will oversee creator work for current AMV BBDO and Redwood clients as well as building the division’s own client roster.

native@AMV brings together content creators and community managers from across AMV and Redwood to form a dedicated creator-first social offering. In-house creators will collaborate with a select roster of partner creators to produce agile, authentic content that’s built to unlock the algorithms.

The launch of native@AMV forms part of a broader restructure of AMV Group, which sees the introduction of three new specialist divisions designed to drive growth and innovation across high-impact categories. Led by AMV group CEO Xavier Rees and Redwood CEO Colin Kennedy – who now becomes CEO, AMV Specialist Brands – the restructure aligns the strategic and creative capabilities of both agencies to offer clients deeper expertise and greater creative scale across social, entertainment and B2B.

After successfully taking films to ITVX, BBC, ITV and Prime in the past 18 months - including the hit Channel 4 show Anna Richardson: Love, Loss and Dementia, for Alzheimer's Society -, AMV Stream relaunches as a dedicated branded entertainment division. Ben Padfield, most recently the head of Red Studios, will take on a new role as managing director of AMV Stream, leading a growing client roster that includes Netflix and AppleTV+. Victoria Noble, former VP for factual programming at Warner Bros Discovery, has joined the team as Head of Long-Form.

The restructure also includes the launch of AMV Works, a dedicated B2B offering which will bring together creative, content and ABM capabilities from across AMV Group to work from brand to demand. As head of ABM, Orla Murphy, former founder of account-based marketing agency SeeBlue, will add her demand gen expertise to a mixed-agency team of B2B creative and content experts, alongside Redwood’s executive creative director of B2B Nick Duxbury in a new role as ECD, AMV Works. AMV Works’ portfolio of clients include Google, YouTube, FedEx, Nokia and Vodafone Business.

As part of the group reorganisation, Redwood will rebrand as Redwood@AMV working more closely with AMV BBDO, following successful collaborations on clients including Decathlon and Essity. Once part of BBC Worldwide, Redwood’s heritage in editorial storytelling and content making will help AMV’s big ideas flow further, while AMV’s big thinking will in turn help Redwood compete as a creative boutique in specialist categories, as well as for challenger clients.

AMV Group CEO Xavier Rees says, "This evolution of AMV Group is about ensuring we stay ahead of the game, bringing together existing and new world-class expertise in social, entertainment, and B2B to turbocharge the commercial impact for our clients. With the launch of our specialist divisions, clients will benefit from deeper capabilities and faster solutions across the board. It’s about building an agency model that’s fit for the future - one that’s creatively ambitious, commercially sharp, and engineered to help brands grow in a world that’s changing fast."

AMV Specialist CEO Colin Kennedy says, "The combination of Redwood’s agile content culture and AMV’s big creativity puts AMV Group in a unique position to offer clients a mix of true specialism and real scale in creator-led social, branded entertainment and B2B. Redwood’s signature editorial storytelling also benefits from deeper integration with AMV, giving us four brand new ways to engage audiences with both big ideas and deeper, faster stories that cut through the sea of sameness.”