TELSTRA'S brand chief and one of Sol Trujillo's American imports, Bill Obermeier, announced yesterday that he would leave the company next month but would stay in the country to work on a digital marketing venture with the French-controlled advertising agency Publicis Mojo.

He will be replaced by BigPond's sales and marketing boss, Amanda Johnston, as executive director of brands and marketing communications.

Mr Obermeier's departure will trigger further speculation about the tenure of the team of senior US managers brought in by Telstra's chief executive, Mr Trujillo, after he joined the telco.

However, there was no mention of that yesterday. "I have always valued Bill's creativity," Mr Trujillo said of Mr Obermeier's departure. "What is even more valuable is that he combines that with sound strategic thinking and always maintains a customer perspective. Bill is one of the best in his field among all those I've worked with across the world."

Mr Obermeier will leave next month and start immediately with the digital venture, called Myne and set up by Publicis Mojo to match advertisers with Telstra's customer base. Myne was originally planned last year as an equity joint venture with Telstra.

The chairman of Public Mojo, Graeme Wills, was unaware of the Telstra announcement yesterday but confirmed from Singapore that Mr Obermeier was joining the fledgling digital business next month. Myne remained focused exclusively on Telstra's disparate business units and customers, he said. Although rivals late last year rubbished Myne, suggesting it had collapsed, Mr Wills said in an interview with the Herald in February that the venture was proceeding with Telstra.

Big corporations such as Lion Nathan, Toyota, Nestle and Nike have already begun projects with the venture.

"Myne is all about the digital capacity of Telstra and our clients and the agency," Mr Wills said. "It's not just mobile phones. We're talking about Foxtel, BigPond, Sensis and mobile phones. It's how we can bundle all those things together.

"We might take a portal from BigPond, some other things from mobile, content from Foxtel and put it together as a package for a client to go to market in a different way."

Mr Wills said there was "a lot of momentum with this in Telstra" but said the equity joint venture was not proceeding because of "some structural accounting complications".