The former CEO of Simply Zesty Ken Fitzpatrick is to head up the rapidly expanding Digital Marketing Institute as CEO.
Taking over the running of the company from current CEO Ian Dodson and managing director Anthony Quigley, Fitzpatrick will be responsible for spearheading the company’s ongoing international expansion and establishing its programmes as the global standard for digital marketing education.
Last month, Dublin-headquartered Digital Marketing Institute (DMI) secured a €1.6m training deal with the London School of Marketing. This was the latest in a series of partnership deals secured by the DMI in the past 12 months across Malaysia, India and South Africa. The combined value of these and today’s deal amounts to €9.6m over three years.
In March, the DMI said it plans to create 30 new jobs on the back of the latest contract wins, as well as open a new office in London.
Prior to joining the DMI, Fitzpatrick oversaw the successful sale of digital agency Simply Zesty to UTV Media. Fitzpatrick was also group CEO of Saongroup.com for two years until February 2008 – a global online recruitment business owned by Denis O’Brien and Leslie Buckley.
Under his tenure, Fitzpatrick grew staff numbers to more than 800 worldwide across 22 different businesses, with revenues exceeding €28m. He also developed and led the group’s international expansion strategy, which saw the group complete nine acquisitions, five start-ups, and enter seven new markets in just 18 months.
“The Digital Marketing Institute’s goal and ambition is to be the international standard for digital marketing education,” Dodson explained.
“Our focus, through the support of Enterprise Ireland, has been on international markets for some time. To date we’ve achieved good traction and success, growing the company from two people to 24 people. Now we’re entering a phase where we need a strong hand at the helm to take advantage of the domestic and overseas opportunities that exist for this business as it moves from a small business to a medium-sized enterprise with global traction and ambition.
“As entrepreneurs, we need to let go, we can only take a business so far. We wanted to bring on board someone who had significant international experience positioning Irish companies in the global marketplace and we’ve found this in Ken,” Dodson said.
