Women to Watch Greater China 2023: Alana Zervos, Omnicom Media Group

Alana Zervos

Associate director, culture, communications and new business
Omnicom Media Group
Hong Kong

In her current capacity as the associate director of culture, communications, and new business, Alana Zervos wears many hats. She drives the people experience within Omnicom’s media agencies, enhances their reputation, develops internal and external communication strategies and deployment, and works from lead generation to convert new business. Quite a handful, but if achievements are the yardstick, she dons multiple roles with equal ease.

As a propeller and project manager for all new business pitches, she has helped secure 13 clients across the group, including onboarding key accounts such as L’Oreal and Chanel, driving 402% new business revenue growth for OMD and 211% for PHD in the last year alone.

As part of her ‘communications’ remit, Zervos has worked hard to improve the agencies’ prominence in the market with multiple accolades and recognition. She has been the creative brain behind crafting and writing all the award entries, capturing the agency’s hard work with her compelling storytelling abilities. At the last count the agency won 30 awards under her leadership, including Campaign Asia’s performance, media and digital Agency of the Year awards in 2022 among others.

Since embarking on improving the company’s culture this year, Zervos has come up with new and innovative ideas to unite the company, making it a fun, creative and diversified place to work in. She lobbied for an office renovation, which has just been approved, enhanced the onboarding process for new employees by introducing a buddy system, a welcome video and a welcome pack. Faced with a high turnover rate at the beginning of 2022, she built an inclusive, all encompassing culture at OMG and decreased the turnover rate by 32% in the last six-months she has been in the role.

Zervos constantly puts her hand up to assist the teams and offers support and services beyond the requirements of her role. An active proponent of raising awareness about mental health in the workplace, she has been instrumental in drilling the message that nurturing the teams’ mental health is just as significant as honing their other skills.

For the mental health awareness day, Zervos organised a leadership training for all the leaders on how to support mental health in their teams. She is constantly championing DEI and showing support to local communities. She hosted a panel discussion with the LGBTQ staff members on how to be an ally in the community.