Tag: Creative Leader

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.

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”