Budi Dwisantara Sutisna
Senior planner,
Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore
A Dutch-Indonesian who spent his first 11 years in Albania, Sutisna can lay claim to have interviewed Britney Spears, among other celebrities, while working as a radio reporter with his own movie show.
After Kessels-Kramer in Amsterdam and Strawberry Frog, he joined Saatchi & Saatchi in late 2005, where he works primarily on UOB, The Navy and HP.
A keen football fan — his dream is to shoot a documentary about the world's hottest local football derbies — his proudest moment so far has been a TVC made with MTV for jailed Burmese pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi.
Sutisna's secret for great planning
Make messages about a complex world entertaining and meaningful
Cherry Chan
Strategic planner,
BBH Asia-Pacific
Chan's close connection to Singapore's media scene — she is the driving force behind a female-only music collective, PopMyCherry, which encourages girls to try out DJing and VJing — enabled her to keep a close eye on youth trends when she worked with youth specialist research house The Filter Group.
She's retained her youth focus at BBH, working on accounts such as Levi's and Axe. She also runs BBH's cultural research unit Profusion, which aims to identify emerging attitudes and behaviour, and their impact on contemporary culture. Her personal goal is to set up a brand programme to help young people achieve their wildest dreams.
Chan's secret for great planning
Never be on the outside looking in — stay personally connected to your target consumers
Amrit Kekre
Area planning director,
Grey Worldwide Malaysia
Kekre's move from servicing Unilever to planning three years into his advertising career chimed with his underlying belief that advertising is a fascinating business that is made or broken by its study of people. "Planning is not a department: it's a discipline that everyone in the agency, irrespective of their function, needs to practice," he says. "The fact that planners do it by design is a matter of mere allocation, focused resources and skills." Kekre recently left India, where he worked with JWT, Ogilvy and Everest Brand Solutions, to move to Malaysia, where he is now adding a pan-regional and international perspective to his planning acumen.
Kekre's secret for great planning
Look at people as people first, consumers later
Kaori Yatsu
Strategic planner,
McCann Erickson Japan
Currently on maternity leave with her second child, Yatsu still often takes interviews from the press and writes articles on McCann Japan's Real Mothers project, for which she has become a recognised authority.
Part of the reason she became a planner was her desire to become an expert in how and why people change with the circumstances of society, and her involvement with the Real Mothers project has allowed her to realise that goal. When Yatsu returns from maternity leave, she will head a special consultancy service for McCann clients focused on marketing to today's mothers.
Yatsu's secret for great planning
Being a housewife, a mother and a planner
Navonil Chatterjee
Account planning director,
JWT India
This rising star within JWT India showed what he was capable of in JWT's hard-fought and successful shootout against Ogilvy for a Nike India new business pitch, where he was at his creative, passionate and enthusiastic best.
A former suit, Chatterjee realised his ambition to become a planner when a vacancy opened up in the account planning department in 2004.
Two years later, he has proven his worth as a key driver of new business initiatives and handling cult brands such as Nike and Levi's. His ultimate goal, however, is to work at a global level, devising brand strategy for any of JWT's global brands and playing an integral role in a global new business pitch.
Chatterjee's secret for great planning
Always seek to inspire
Siaw Meili
Strategic planner,
Rapp Collins Malaysia
Siaw's shift from creative to planning was triggered by a training session that roped in business heads from the Naga DDB group. By the time the training culminated in a full-blown pitch exercise and presentation to top management, she was hooked on what she describes as "that thrilling alchemy of moving from key insights to brilliant communication ideas — what an awesome marriage of art and science".
The contagious enthusiasm of Naga DDB's strategic planning director Sulin Lau sealed the deal, and Siaw's transfer request was accepted. Since then, DDB's hunger for new business has given her the opportunity to work on luxury cars and frequent flyer programmes.
Siaw's secret for great planning
Massive amounts of curiosity
Fredrik Sarnblad
Regional creative planner,
Y&R Brands
This young Swede can claim a colourful past before his fascination for psychology steered him into planning, with a career that has included a year in jail (as a guard), acting in a Chinese soap opera (as an American rocket scientist) and helping set up a Swedish telco in Hong Kong. "I don't think you become a planner overnight simply because you get a planning job," he says. "For me, I think I kind of naturally and irreversibly evolved to become one."
After co-founding brand planning shop Monkey Spank in Singapore, Sarnblad moved to Y&R in 2005, where he now holds a regional role working on Tiger Beer, Chevron Lubricants and Cerebos Brands, as well as supporting Y&R's network of local offices.
Sarnblad's secret for great planning
Works best when the rules are discarded
Lois Huh
Senior account planner,
Lee & DDB Korea
Huh started working at Lee & DDB in 2000 and has been there ever since, her first and only employer. She works on a range of clients, including Johnson & Johnson, Philips, and Volkswagen. Her defining moments so far have been helping develop key insights for Zic QX, a synthetic engine oil, and Korea's premier lingerie brand SY Wacoal — insights which proved instrumental in driving sales for both brands.
"As a marketing student, I was always keen to see how brands were built by marketing strategy and what the brand meant to people's lives," she says. "As a planner, I want to build brands that are meaningful to people and that enrich their lives."
Huh's secret for great planning
Be simple, be open, and always listen hard
Marcus Sigurdsson
Planning director,
DraftFCB Greater China
After a brief flirtation with Gartner, where, as an analyst, he was involved more with technology and less with strategy and trends, Sigurdsson returned to his first love, account planning. After getting back up to speed with the latest developments, he joined DraftFCB. A fond memory is a shared car journey to the airport with a potential client that resulted in the client calling his team to implement Sigurdsson's suggestions there and then. "It's a great feeling when your strategy and their tactics match their needs and it all starts to happen in front of your eyes."
Sigurdsson's secret for great planning
Great insights come from an indepth understanding of your client, their competition and their consumers
