Execs & Accounts: Pereira & O'Dell, McKinney, MarketShare

James Brown plays Apollo. BBDO vet James Brown was named creative director of San Francisco-based Pereira & O’Dell, where he’ll work on the University of Phoenix account, among other brands. The University of Phoenix is owned by major online advertiser Apollo Group. Brown was previously SVP and creative director on the Mitsubishi account at BBDO/Los Angeles.

Nationwide selects McKinney as its agency of record. The Durham-based agency replaced TM, which had worked with the insurance and financial services organization since 1998. Campaigns will incorporate traditional and emerging media including interactive, social, and mobile media.

MarketShare Partners takes in a former Yahoo executive. Iván Markman was named executive vice president of finance, operations, and strategy at the Los Angeles-based marketing analytics firm. Markman spent seven years at Yahoo, most recently he served as vice president of corporate strategy.

Mr Youth creates work for Marshalls. Social marketing agency Mr Youth created video to promote Marshalls’ in-store boutique, The CUBE.

Ogilvy & Mather adds seven to its board of directors. Nasreen Madhany, global CEO of Neo@Ogilvy is among the new members.

Message Systems and Adknowledge team to put ads in e-mail. The two companies will work with Internet service providers and e-mail service providers to allow for ad insertion into Webmail interfaces. Message Systems offers the deliverability component while Adknowledge inserts ads on a pay-per-click, performance basis and applies targeting technologies.

Healthcare-focused digital agency network Cadient laid off about 10 percent of its staff in March. A spokesperson said the cuts were due to reduced budget visibility as a result of the economic climate. Cadient’s clients have included Shire, AstraZeneca, and JNJ. Yesterday Cadient announced the hire of Beth Hartzell as associate creative director.

NBC.com deploys dynamic video ads in mobile. Mobile video provider Kiptronic provided the technology to allow NBC.com to serve dynamic ads over its existing Web-based advertising infrastructure.

Bravo hosts a live virtual viewing party via Wiredset. For the close of the show “Real Housewives,” the cable channel hosted a virtual event where fans could Twitter with two of the show’s actresses, Bethenny Frankel from New York City and Tamra Barney from Orange Country.

Inform Technologies names Balazy CEO. Rob Balazy was named chief executive officer of the semantic Web solutions provider. Balazy was most recently vice president, business development at NameMedia.