We R Interactive, the social games publisher for sport and music, is building its sales and marketing team with three new hires; all reporting to the company’s Co-Founder, Oli Madgett.

Mark Wilson joins the team as Head of Sales, charged with negotiating and overseeing all brand integration and digital advertising sales across We R Interactives’ games portfolio.

Wilson brings more than nine years digital media sales and sports credentials to We R Interactive - joining from Sports New Media where he was Head of Agency Sales. Prior to that, he was at ITV for two and a half years as Senior Online Agency Sales Manager and at Orange for a year as a Client Development Manager. The early part of Wilson’s career was spent at AOL, formerly as Agency Sales Manager and latterly as a Creative Solutions Account Manager.

In addition, Howard Kingston joins as Marketing Manager with responsibility for all digital marketing, and Josh Tarrant takes on the role of Community Development Assistant.

We R Interactives’ first game, I AM PLAYR – the first ever point-of-view social football game that lets users play the life of a professional footballer, pitting themselves against their mates and the rest of the world; launched officially in October 2011 after a successful beta phase. Initial brand partners to I AM PLAYR include Nike, Red Bull and Alfa Romeo and top football talent featured in the game includes Theo Walcott and Aaron Lennon, amongst others.  To date, the game has notched up 270, 000 monthly active users and 1 million cans of Red Bull and over 250,000 Nike boots have been purchased virtually in the game.

Commenting on joining We R Interactive Wilson said, “Gaming is at least twice as engaging as other media* and we’ve reached a tipping point in terms of the advertising and marketing communities’ understanding about the opportunities that games afford. What excites me about We R Interactive is that they are taking a completely unique approach to gaming, creating new digital advertising platforms for brands where advertising and brand integrations actually enhance the player’s experience. I’m looking forward to getting my teeth stuck in on I AM PLAYR which is proving to be a massive success; as well as the forthcoming music product.”

Oli Madgett, Co Founder, We R Interactive said of Wilson’s appointment, “We’ve reached a really exciting milestone in We R Interactives’ development, with I AM PLAYR fully launched and on a healthy growth trajectory and now preparing to launch our next product. So we’re now in a position to start building out our marketing function and I’m delighted to be adding this high calibre blend of digital media sales, sport and digital marketing communications to the team.”

*IAB research report – ‘Gaming Britain: A Country United by Digital Play’, September 2011