JWT adds senior talent on new wins

The new hires will bring the team of senior account and group account directors to six, up from four previously. The latest recruit -- Joey Cheong, formerly with TBWA and Ogilvy & Mather -- joins at Media's press-time as group account director on the globally-aligned HSBC business, the growing Nike brief and Unicharm, a Japanese sanpro brand. Cheong takes over from Luis da Rosa, who is leaving the agency. Other new hires at the agency are Jenny Luk; Yong Yuan and Philip Lin. As group account director, Luk -- formerly with Bates/141, where she worked on Heineken -- has initially been given the Lux and 999 businesses. Yuan, who worked for the agency for six years in the mid-'90s until his departure for Harvard, will handle the Lipton-Pepsi joint-venture business as group account director and double up as new business director. "As a returning Harvard graduate, Yong believes the best place he can develop is JWT," said the network's Northeast Asia area director Tom Doctoroff. "Yong's strength is in being able to articulate and fight for a point of view without causing offence." A former Leo Burnett executive Lin joins as senior account director and will help drive integration for clients. Doctoroff said the increase in head count was prompted by the office's strong wins record for this year -- Shanghai Mobile, Bosch, B&Q -- several global realignments as well as expansion by clients such as Ford and Nike. He expects the office to end the year with 153 staff, up from 118 at the start of 2004.