Tag: Agency Leadership Decoded

Customer experience management agencies focus on delivering personalised and unique experiences to gain consumer loyalty across multiple platforms, and for Arshad Rahman, CEO of Merkle Indonesia, this goal of building trust and providing unique experiences applies towards how he leads his team as well.

When it comes to leadership, Arshad values transparency and open communication regardless of levels or ranks, championing psychological safety by showing appreciation for feedback and ensuring diverse opinions to be said and heard, regardless of how good or bad it may be perceived and who it’s from.

“I’m never under the illusion that my perspective is the only or right perspective, so it is crucial I cover as many angles as possible by hearing the perspective of others before coming to a conclusion. Therefore, my ultimate leadership philosophy could be a combination of situational and participative leadership,” said Arshad. 

Motivation through workplace initiatives

To get these principles through, Arshad shared several unique initiatives that are practised by Merkle Indonesia to build a high level of trust to achieve a high-performing workplace with depth amongst its team members.

Firstly, Arshad mentioned that there is a focus on communication, with monthly huddles and weekly sharings put in place in order to share performance updates and non-financial updates with transparency, celebrate the work done and put new learnings and feedback forward, nominate and celebrate individuals who went above and beyond to deliver a particular project or initiative, and have an open and transparent Q&A between employees and leaders.

Additionally, Arshad stated that Merkle Indonesia employs an initiative called the ‘Champions’ program, which helps employees build leadership skills by allowing them to take the lead in welcoming new partnerships or platforms that Merkle is exploring as a business.

“The program has also led to other social and recreational activities, with new clubs and gatherings were built and led by individuals, such as a badminton club, a pool/billiard group, a walking group and cycling group weekly, alongside other communities, with the objective of allowing people to get to know each other more and build better relationships to make collaboration smoother,” Arshad added.

Navigating complexities in CX

Talking about the challenges faced in customer experience management, Arshad said, “Delivering differentiated customer experiences involves a series of complex transformations across multiple touchpoints which is challenging in itself. While we stand firm on bringing the larger narrative of customer experience management to brands, we need to be mindful of the readiness and therefore one of our strategies to help clients through these types of large scale transformations is by taking a micro-level approach – we partner with clients across different departments/divisions and embark on various pockets of digital and data transformation initiatives, while still keeping the larger vision in mind.”

With that said, Merkle Indonesia always aims to mirror the client’s needs and focus on the services that are more urgent and important for them. This approach leads to clients being more open and willing to embark on these types of projects as they involve lower risk, lower cost, yet high impact and accountability.

Arshad expressed that breaking down these transformations into modules enabled them to deliver success a lot quicker and make the process more nimble and agile to changes, allowing them to pivot along with client’s needs.

Growing openly as a team

Since Merkle Indonesia’s inception in August 2021, the business has grown exponentially and maintained a strong retention of clients. The team has also doubled in size, with Merkle Indonesia also diversifying its service offerings from a focus solely on analytics tech platforms to now encompassing comprehensive data solutions and CRM services to the Indonesian market.

Talking about the leadership efforts that made this growth possible, Arshad shared, “Fostering a culture of trust through transparency, integrity and consistency – builds a team that collaborates openly and brings their best and real selves to work. Even when we fail, we fail together, we learn, and support each other to rise up again. Trust and transparency build credibility, encourage open communication, enable autonomy and empowerment, facilitate adaptability, and ultimately bring performance and success.”

When it comes to leading a strategic communications company, many might think that the ones at the helm tend to implement a convoluted formula for success, or a complex strategy to ensure effectiveness, but sometimes that isn’t usually the case, especially for Maverick Indonesia, one of Indonesia’s most prominent public relations and communications agencies.

For Ong Hock Chuan, Maverick Indonesia’s co-founder and managing partner, there is no exciting secret or formula to successfully lead an agency like Maverick. Instead, he only emphasises that leading is not an easy task, in which he stresses that one must simply lead and work with meaning and fulfilment.

“When my partner and I started Maverick in 2002, we were disillusioned from working with a multinational marketing communications group where they paid lip service to its people but worked them like they were cogs in a money-making machine. There was also a lot of emphasis on praising busyness, which never resulted in any impact to the client’s business”, said Ong when he recalled the challenges that he faced as a leader.

Realising this, Ong, alongside Maverick Indonesia, decided to make a shift towards changing how they operate, prioritising principles that allows their employees and teams to do meaningful and satisfying work.

A different perspective in finding meaning

In applying meaningfulness to everything that they do, Ong says that they always strive to explain why whatever they were doing was meaningful to them and their clients. However, this only sounds great in theory since clients can be unpredictable and it can sometimes be hard to get anything substantial from what they demand.

To get something out of these situations, Ong explained how it can still be seen as meaningful, since the work done within it will lead his team towards developing their skills to prepare for the time wherein work can be substantial.

“With this principle in mind, 80% of the work you do is unlikely to be very meaningful, but it keeps you in play and offers you a chance to hone your skills and achieve mastery in the art and science of PR for that 20% of the time when the right client comes along. And then, Bam! Great fulfilment as all that you’ve learned comes together in work that makes a real difference to the client’s business”, said Ong.

Knowing and cultivating agency values

Aside from meaningfulness, Ong also focuses on the importance of knowing their own value, and being good enough to match the standard associated with it. In this regard, Ong also says that this value also has to demand respect from clients in order for teams to achieve proper results.

“If we are good enough, we should expect the respect and treatment that comes with being a professional and a strategic advisor. We try our best but if clients are disrespectful or unethical we walk out on them. Life is too short to languish in a toxic relationship if you’re out to make a difference”, Ong remarked.

In improving their skills and value as an agency, Ong also talked about the principle of being creative in all that they do, combining clever ideas with a sound strategy to deliver quality work.

Expounding on this, Ong shared, To flesh out this principle, we spend huge resources in time and investments to give consultants the knowledge and tools to be impactfully creative. We run internal courses all the time that touch on systems vs inductive thinking, behaviour science, the Trivium of classical education and ways of coping with new technology.”

Success through attaining balance

Lastly, Ong puts the spotlight on the importance of balance, as Maverick Indonesia allows for employees to pace themselves in work, as well as to get a life outside the office as they can perform effectively as consultants if they have the networks as well as the rich and varied experiences that only a life outside can bring.

“One way we encourage this is to offer those who have worked for us for a year a Persona Development Fund, that is usually equivalent to a month’s salary, to travel somewhere they haven’t been before or to learn something that has nothing to do with work”, Ong specified.

Talking about these principles, Ong commented, “Implementing these principles has helped us build Maverick to what it is today but it wasn’t easy. There have been many times when they seemed not to yield any results, times when we felt that they have not contributed an iota to our ability to retain staff. During bad years we wonder if they unnecessarily sap our energy from more direct money-making, client-acquiring efforts.”

“But we stuck with them because we felt that they were our salvation from running a meaningless money-making machinery. And I’m glad we did because Maverick today has, through much trial and error, managed to train and grow a new generation of leaders ready to take over the helm and take it to what we hope is the next level”, he concluded.

With INNOCEAN’s name being derived from the phrase ‘Ocean of Innovation’, it comes as no surprise that Chow Kok Keong, Innocean Indonesia’s chief creative officer, leads his team of creatives by cultivating an agency ecosystem that thrives on out-of-the-box thinking and bold ideas.

“Embracing the mantra of unlearning and learning, I always push my team to stay at the forefront of the industry and embrace new technologies to ensure our campaigns remain cutting-edge, fresh, and impactful,” said Chow.

As a creative leader who seeks to set their agency apart in an industry full of ideas, Chow has a unique way of encouraging his team members to think creatively, embrace diverse perspectives, and take risks rather than playing it safe.

Consistently staying out-of-the-box 

As the industry always demands fresh and unique ideas for new campaigns and initiatives, one of the biggest challenges faced by creative leaders is to always ensure that their team always has the creative direction to tackle a multitude of situations. Chow approaches this by seeing it as a challenge with a solution, and not a struggle. 

“Every challenge comes with a solution when we keep pushing ourselves and never give up until we find a way to overcome it”, Chow mentioned. 

As chief creative officer, Chow says that his role is to provide his team with clear creative directions when they are stuck in a rut when it comes to ideas. Additionally, he pushes his team to not settle for anything that they are too comfortable with.  

With this in mind, one of Chow’s strategies to drive creativity in the workplace is to include internal sessions among his team members on ‘Trend & Knowledge Sharing’ to always stay relevant on what’s new within the industry, and holding an ‘Open Brief Challenge,’ to allow collaborative effort between multiple entities to come up with a collective solution to the client’s demand.

Going into more detail, Chow remarked, “I conduct idea reviews every two weeks and regularly participate in brainstorming sessions with the team. Consequently, the best ideas will be produced and submitted to award shows, where exposure and involvement serve as the best rewards and motivation for the team members to stay passionate in their creative work.”

Creating memorable, iconic campaigns

With his style of leadership, Chow and his team always strive to make sure that they always put the similar creative intention and passion into every brief, as they see it as a significant opportunity for them to showcase their skills and make themselves proud of their work, regardless of how big or small the projects are.

When asked about the most memorable projects that he led as CCO, Chow said that he really appreciated doing Hyundai’s U17 project, which was a campaign that supported young football players in terms of transportation during the U17 FIFA World Cup in Indonesia.

“There are several projects that we produced in 2023 that I like, and one of them is the Hyundai U17 project where we believe every young footballer deserves an opportunity to shine. Hence, we empowered the youth with a series of programmes to inspire them to be champions of tomorrow for the nation,” he explained. 

Furthermore, another major project that Chow shared was the ‘Anti-Hate Keyboard,’ which was actually a campaign for corporate social responsibility(CSR) which helped raise awareness and stop cyberbullying through a creative way of modifying gaming keyboards.

“I am proud of the Anti-Hate Keyboard, a CSR project that stopped cyberbullying through innovation by reprogramming the firmware of the gaming keyboard. When bullies type out insulting words, the keyboard automatically swaps the negative words for positive ones”, added Chow.  

A rising force of creativity in Indonesia 

Founded in 2020, INNOCEAN Indonesia has seen its fair share of milestones and successes. On the creative side of things, Chow admits that there are still several things that they need to improve on to always stay on top of the industry, but there is no denying that Chow’s leadership contributes greatly in always pushing the agency to that goal. 

“Over the past 18 months, through the collaborative effort of my creative team, along with the unwavering support and guidance from our APAC regional CEO, James Lee, we’ve achieved several milestones.” 

“Although our creative output isn’t perfect yet, it has significantly improved, and we remain committed to pushing for even greater creativity. Additionally, we successfully secured new business through pitches and earned recognition in creative award shows, both regionally and globally,” concluded Chow.

The mission of VMLY&R ANZ is to help create connected brands and its CEO Thomas Thearle says that this will only be possible if they themselves are a ‘connected’ team. 

For Thomas, to bring everyone together isn’t always a walk in the park where being appointed to leadership made him inherit “a really interesting” situation. It was in 2018 when parent company WPP announced the merger of VML and Y&R, birthing the agency that Thomas now helms for the ANZ team. 

“Mergers are complicated enough but when you also add in that there are five locations all at different levels of capability maturity and throw in two additional businesses at the same time, while coming in and out of lockdowns, it takes on a life of its own,” shares Thomas of the challenge of leading an agency that continues to evolve from its combined capabilities. 

This then becomes the heart of their team engagement strategies – creating a seamless and harmonious working dynamic to move as one. 

Creating a well-connected agency

First of all, in order to develop a team that manoeuvres as a single unit, right leadership must be in place. 

“The initiatives we put in place to keep our team engaged and motivated through this process were firstly to get the right leadership team in place,” said Thomas. 

Thomas said this needed to be a small passionate group of people that lived and breathed VMLY&R’s values and is as determined to see the organisation progress to an aligned mission and vision.

The former Y&R business had traditionally been a network of boutique agencies, which the agency began connecting at every level whilst investing heavily in developing its CX, technology and commerce capabilities to be able to truly deliver on its global mission to create connected brands.

“This process gives us all belief in what we’re doing,” said Thomas.

Developing a future-oriented working environment 

Aside from prioritising the promotion of unity and connection, VMLY&R ANZ also doesn’t ignore the fact that the tangible aspects of working together are as important. In line with this, the agency is looking to evolve and improve its approach to flexible working that would answer to the demands of the present working landscape. 

Thomas said that they are trying to redefine their perspective on factors such as when the team is in the office and why they are in it, be it for collaboration, ceremony, or celebration. In addition, they are also considering the length of the working week and even the locations of their offices. 

“There may be more desirable locations than metropolitan cities for example. There are lots we’re working on for what’s next that I’m really excited about,” he said. 

In the end, for VMLY&R, each step taken is always on the road to creating more shared opportunity, capability, capacity, and knowledge base for its team, and in turn, its clients.

Success from the inside out

VMLY&R views the success of their business performance through four lenses: their team engagement through ‘Office Vibe’; their work through industry recognition; their client satisfaction through Vantage; and their commercial health. 

This goes back to their core principle that if the team is doing great and is delivering great work, this in turn, will help them attract great client partners and be commercially healthy. 

“I’m pleased to say that all of these KPIs are trending positively,” shared Thomas. 

This of course is not possible without great leadership, and for Thomas, the best leadership is having the desire and pushing on one’s capability to “unlock the potential of others”.

“As leaders, we have to know what it is that we want to unlock the potential of others to do,” he said. 

He added, “[Ask yourself] what is it you want to change and is the answer to that question meaningful enough for your team to get behind it.”

For Madina Kalyayeva, M&C Saatchi Singapore’s managing director, to keep a team engaged and empowered is simple – it’s all about looking no further than the team in generating and spurring innovation in creative work – trusting what each has to offer and share. 

“We tend to seek motivation from special programmes or coaches, while we neglect the talented individuals we interact with on a daily basis,” said Madina. 

As a female leader, there are three things that Madina encourages the most in her team: Seeing the good in change; keeping one’s network diverse; and learning to be comfortable with the unfamiliar. 

Being comfortable with the unknown

The digital world is ever-changing which means that brands and creative partners like M&C Saatchi are continuously placed in new and unfamiliar positions that demand them to adapt to change and drive inventiveness amidst making sense of the unknown. Madina said that considering this challenge, while best practices are good, it doesn’t serve well to stick to one thing for too long. 

Best practices are good, but not necessarily reliable as information flows faster than ever, and complex models are now required to evaluate possibilities. That is why today, in the digitally enabled world, we need to create new patterns and seek new opportunities.

Madina Kalyayeva, Manading Director, M&C Saatchi Singapore

In building up the sophistication and versatility of her team, the marketing leader strives to encourage members to make their network as diverse as possible. This is the same principle she adopts herself, and thus one of the key aspects of the kind of leadership she puts forth. 

She believes that the “diversity of thought” can be the very tool in coming up with effective creative-led solutions. 

Develop relationships with people who are outside of your comfort “friendship” zone, connect with those who are different and learn about similarities and cooperate with them to achieve a common goal. This can become a tool for a solution through the diversity of thought.

Madina Kalyayeva, Manading Director, M&C Saatchi Singapore

Strategic & insight-driven huddles

The MD of the Singapore team believes in beefing up the team’s talent and experience and actually tapping them in order to bring to fruition groundbreaking work. 

The marketing leader implements sharing sessions where once a month, a partner, client, or team member is invited to conduct a session about something they believe is exciting which could be anything under the creative and marketing domain, such as Discord training session, Metaverse Fashion Week walkthrough, 101 to Minting of NFTs, and Best Practices in Publishing, amongst others. 

Madina strongly sees the effective impact of these strategic huddles as they become a unique opportunity to learn from one’s peers, clients, and partners. It’s about encouraging team members to use the people around them and their network to the most potential, and constantly interacting and really listening to how they have solved a problem, initiated a solution, or suggested an impactful idea. 

“We all go home and put on a different role – this initiative allows one to show the wider team the other functions they take on and their interests outside of work and teach us something new,” says Madina.

Genuine interactions producing out-of-the-box thinking

As the world changes by the minute, it’s not only important, but crucial, to constantly think outside the box. Madina said that the insight-driven sessions have only borne good fruit upon their implementation. Besides the fact that it allowed the team to learn about each other’s outside-of-work interests and activities, the new things learned allowed them to view and put together proposals differently. 

“We started to utilise the networks better and welcomed more outside-of-the-box ideas from the junior team, as they often have the most diverse connections,” she shared. 

Madina said that in the desire of organisations to connect teams together, initiatives would sometimes feel forced, hence, turns to be counteractive. Therefore, the key is building authentic and genuine points of interaction. 

“Forced by management team activities to bond became unnecessary, and the teams started to also hang out outside of work and on weekends together,” said Madina.

She added, “In general, productivity increased as everyone became more familiar with and keen to learn more from each other.”

A growth mindset is always the goal amongst teams, but Virat Tandon, MullenLowe Lintas Group’s Group CEO, said that the path to it isn’t always smooth and straightforward. 

“Growth initiatives always create resistance from within as well as from the environment,” said Virat. But–this is the ultimate test for leaders – creating a resistance-proof environment towards growth.

 Virat says that while a growth-inclined culture is substantial for any company, creative firms which have a fast demand for innovation and ingenuity make it not just a need – but a crucial element within its team. 

A growth-driven firm thrives on inclusivity 

For Virat, the top management of creative group MullenLowe Lintas Group (MLLG), inclusivity and diversity are indispensable in the aim to maintain a team that is susceptible to change and continuous improvement. 

MLLG, in fact, has its own DEI Apex Council which is focused on the task of promoting gender equality and inclusion. Through its Apex Council, the agency plans to steer initiatives and changes aimed at shaping and embedding DEI in the DNA of the organisation. 

Virat said that the agency’s gender ratio for women at the leadership level stands at 31%, where few of its business functions carry the same. He said that what is transpiring at present is a result of none other than years of inclusive leadership, to which Virat aims to continue himself and in the future by giving birth to leaders that are passionate about growth and diversity.

‘Like a Boss Baby’ 

As a leader, Virat’s aim is to create more leaders with the right mindset, so that growth snowballs into even more innovative improvements within the team. This principle is at the heart of MLLG’s’ corporate initiatives such as one that’s called ‘Like a Boss’ and ‘Like a Boss Baby’. The two programs circle soft skills development and eye to develop in team members, early on, entrepreneurial and leadership skills. 

Aside from definitive programs, the agency makes sure that practice that puts a premium on expertise development and leadership building is deeply embedded in the agency. Virat talks about the importance of exposing team members to Indian and international festivals like SXSW and Cannes to provide intellectual and creative stimuli. Besides this, coaching is also made available for anyone who needs it to enable their growth journey at crucial junctures in their career. 

We have a culture of accountability not only towards numbers but also towards people and developing an attractive place to work 

Virat Tandon, Group CEO, MullenLowe Lintas Group

More interestingly, the agency introduced a referral program that would give 2X referral bonus to those that are able to successfully help in hiring women, PWD, and LGBTQ+ team members – in line with their DEI imperative and the goal of leading with accountability and intent.

For advertising, more than most other industries, DEI is not just a humanistic issue, it is a business case. At the heart of diversity and inclusion is getting diverse thinking, diverse perspectives, thereby inspiring imagination and impacting societal change

Virat Tandon, Group CEO, MullenLowe Lintas Group

Developing leaders comfortable with making a difference 

Virat shares that the agency’s DEI initiatives are bearing fruit where aspiring women leaders are becoming more emboldened to step up and take key roles within the organisation. Part of their mission in inclusivity and leadership building is appointing from within. 

Ultimately, Virat says the idea of leadership is not to develop more people like yourself but to foster people that are unique and comfortable in the difference they bring to the team. 

“Promoting a culture of learning and diverse growth journeys is good for any business, but crucial for a creative company like ours,” reiterated Virat. 

He added,“This might sound like a cliché and it is. But it’s difficult to practice. Unconscious bias is a real thing and leaders must proactively watch out for it.”

For Jacqui Lim, the CEO of Havas Media Group in Singapore, there’s nothing grandiose to excellent leadership where simply the values of good ‘ol humility and service are king. She says that a large part of the organisation’s culture stems from the top, and this means that the demand for transparency and accountability is higher from this level of the firm than anybody else. 

“If we are not transparent and hold even the most senior person in the organisation accountable to upholding the core values we stand for, we won’t be able to build motivated teams who truly believe in building their career with us,” says Jacqui. 

She said that in addition to active listening and transparent communication, it’s about “Exuding the right vibes.” What does this exactly mean?

Cultivating ‘meaningful work’ experiences

For Havas Media Group in Singapore, the goal is to nurture and create meaningful experiences within the team so that in turn, they are able to manifest ‘meaning’ and ‘substance’ through the work they do – a meaningful difference. 

As an agency network whose mission is to make a meaningful difference, we continuously strive to promote a positive work environment. All the initiatives we embark on for our staff are done with the sole purpose of creating a meaningful core to all that we do.

Jacqui Lim, CEO, Havas Media Group Singapore

Of course, in order to put forth notable work that shakes audiences, the agency must set up an environment that effectively breeds this ingenuity and Jacqui says that the Singapore team does this by prioritising inclusivity – where everyone has an equal voice – at all times. 

Regardless of how junior or new they are in the industry, we are often pleasantly surprised by their perspectives and ideas if we offer them the platform to be heard.

Jacqui Lim, CEO, Havas Media Group Singapore

This step pays off in multi-folds, shares Jacqui, as they cultivate a space of empowerment and inclusivity, where everyone has an equal chance to speak up and become more engaged and involved in the organisation’s journey.

‘Meaningful’ internal initiatives

When Havas says they aim to do meaningful work together, they literally mean being a team and engaging in valuable activities as a group.

One of the initiatives in line with this is pro-bono work. The aim is to marry multi-talented teams and their capabilities for a good cause to be able to give back to society. Doing ‘meaningful work’ also means helping to create a sustainable future together. One such activity is called Green Nudge where teams came together to clean up the Sembawang shoreline in Singapore and collected over 150kg of trash. 

Meanwhile, another initiative was the #OneDabaoAtATime where they encouraged agency members to maximise reusable containers for packing their lunches instead of disposables.

Jacqui said that while the agency has always had various employee initiatives in the past, the pandemic has taught them that more effort is required to promote mental wellness, work-life balance, and a sense of belonging. 

The collective of our initiatives are centred around achieving these larger objectives of providing motivation and appreciation to the people as teams and as individual.

Jacqui Lim, CEO, Havas Media Group Singapore

Keeping the Havas Village happy 

Havas Media Group is known for calling their integrated teams ‘Village’, and suffice to say, the Singapore village of the group is consistently being kept happy and empowered. 

According to its HavasSay Survey which serves as a report card after all the programs and initiatives are rolled out during the year, the agency has had a +35% overall improvement in scores across various categories such as sense of belonging to the agency, fairness, and confidence in the future, amongst others. The interactions among its people, in-person and online on the agency’s social pages, also show how the initiatives have taken effect to its Villagers having a happier and more fulfilling time at work, shared Jacqui.

She says that the key will always be walking with them and not ahead of them – the virtue of servant leadership. 

Be authentic and a servant-leader.

Jacqui Lim, CEO, Havas Media Group Singapore

For her, to be a servant-leader is to have the mindset of growing, learning, and thriving together with the team. “Only then,” Jacqui continued, “ will there be a sense of fulfilment and purpose for all that will invariably lead to a flourishing organisation. The heart always guides the mind to achieve greatness” 

Change. For Jiravara Virayavardhana, Ogilvy Thailand’s managing director, leading her people revolves around the only constant matter in this world – change. 

The 6-year MD believes that leadership is the ability to successfully lead people “to win over change.” Sure, this philosophy emanates from Ogilvy Founder David Ogilvy, but Jiravara as a leader, is taking this concept as her own, and adapting it to the contemporary challenges of her time. 

She says, ‘The bigger you are, the bolder you must become.’ More often than not, everybody rallies behind the smaller and nimbler teams, but Jiravara believes there isn’t any reason that the bigger firms can’t be as agile and sprightly when it comes to change. 

This is in the case of Ogilvy – as a large network agency with a global presence, the advertising firm is in an incredibly advantageous, rather than restricting, position to be a driver of change. 

Leaders must have the courage – to embrace the unexpected, to try the untested, and to charter the unknown territory – and they will surely conquer the furious tides of change.

Jiravara Virayavardhana, Managing Director, Ogilvy Thailand

Building the ‘the immunity for change’ 

The Ogilvy ethos couldn’t stress enough the power of flexibility and adaptability to change. As such, every move the global collective does is being aimed toward building ‘the immunity for change’ – that is, being equipped with a special combination of new and crucial skills in order to propel the agency in being the top of the competition against the never-ending unpredictability of the market and the industry. 

And who better person to lead this charge for the Thailand team than Jiravara. The leader is a veteran communications consultant and has been with the agency in Thailand for about two decades now. ‘The immunity for change’ principle is being held at the core of every internal initiative developed within the agency. 

Our initiatives come from the idea of how we can most effectively inject the ‘immunity for change’ into our people: we need to both stimulate their minds and nourish their souls

Jiravara Virayavardhana, Managing Director, Ogilvy Thailand

Data-driven team engagement

Marketing campaigns are now measured against their strategic use of data, and in Ogilvy Thailand, putting in place internal programs to keep the team highly motivated is no different. 

Amongst the agencies’ team initiatives is the ‘Super U’ program which was inspired by the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report and is built to equip people with the skills for the next decade. According to Jiravara, the program consists of workshops for every capability – from client service, planning, to creative departments. She shares that through it, the team is made empowered to think more sharply and analytically and do their jobs faster and more productively, and ultimately, help them stay ahead of the new developments in data, technology, and digital transformation. 

Of course, there’s to nurturing their creative geniuses while there’s also taking care of their wellbeing. For the latter, Ogilvy Thailand has what is called ‘Livewell@Ogilvy’. Aimed at nourishing their souls, the online toolkit reveals the science and principles of well-being that will benefit team members’ professional and personal lives; meanwhile, its ‘I Am Here initiative’ is a safe community for employees to raise their mental concerns and get peer support. 

Ultimately, Ogilvy lives out the principle that existing leadership is only meant to beget future innovative leadership. In line with this, the agency in Thailand has developed Diversity & Inclusion schemes such as ‘30for30’ – a leadership program that is designed to encourage and challenge strong female talent at Ogilvy to reach their full potential.

Most awarded creative agency in Thailand

Jiravara must have been hitting the home run with her team to make Ogilvy Thailand the most awarded creative agency in the country; the agency has recently been named Cannes Lions’ Top 3 Creative Agency of the Decade in the region. 

Jiravara says, “All initiatives are driven by data. We have a systematic collection and analysis of data to determine what issues have the most impact and need to be addressed first.”

On the performance side, she shares the internal programs have significantly improved the agency’s winning rate. People are able to complete difficult tasks faster and more efficiently and are able to generate more leads within shorter timeframes. Its clients have rated them 88% in service quality in the Vantage satisfaction survey and the majority of their top 20 clients have continued their partnership with the agency. 

Jiravara shares that despite these achievements, what’s most important, above all, is knowing that its employees are happy and proud to work at Ogilvy and highly recommends it as a place to work. 

Singapore – Oftentimes, we honour the collective genius of marketing and creative agencies against the backdrop of a groundbreaking brand campaign, but this time, we want to dive deeper.

The creative collaboration and process that these creative outfits immerse in is no minute feat, and we want to put the spotlight on the driving force that pushes for their success – the leaders.

There’s leadership and then there’s ‘unique’ leadership; and by this, we mean the agency chiefs that choose to let their ingenuity and out-of-the-box thinking influence the way they lead and empower their teams. 

Called ‘Agency Leadership Decoded’, the series will be inviting the top management of leading creative agencies in APAC to share with us how they are innovating their strategies to keep the morale and engagement of their teams in tip-top shape. 

Through each story, we aim to let leaders reveal their distinct leadership philosophies and share how they are letting their passion and prowess in the creative shapeshift into one-of-a-kind corporate initiatives. 

Learn the interesting insights of the following leaders:

Jiravara shares about how she is helping build within teams the ‘Immunity for change’.

Jacqui lets us in on how they are creating meaningful experiences within the agency that enables them to cast meaningful difference for brands.

Virat talks about the challenge of leaders in creating an environment that is resistance-proof to growth.

Madina discusses how strategic and insight-driven huddles can make a difference in teams’ empowerment.

Thomas shares how the agency is creating success from within in order for the team to live out its mission of ‘creating connected brands.’