40 Under 40 2015: Energy, talent and burning desire to succeed

Alex Littlejohn | SVP Asia-Pacific |Amobee: Prior to working at Amobee, Alex started the Adconion Australia business and helped the company become a regional powerhouse. This achievement saw him rapidly be promoted within the company, where he eventually relocated to Amsterdam to take over their European operations. In 2014, Amobee acquired Adconion. Six months prior to the acquisition, Alex came on board as the senior VP (APAC), where he became responsible for growing the APAC business and creating a position for Amobee as a major player in the digital space. In the past 12 months Alex has spearheaded the digital marketing technology company’s growth; the organisation has doubled in size, both in terms of revenue and headcount, with 100 staff across the APAC Region. Alex has also overseen the regional launch of Amobee’s Brand Intelligence, which gauges what is seen by consumers and not just what is "said" on social media. Marketers use Brand Intelligence dashboards and analysis tools to inform strategy, tactics and timing.

Cristina Buenaventura | Deputy head of planning | BBDO Guerrero: Just seven years in and Buenaventura has already been promoted twice and has picked up several industry awards. The 29-year-old has been responsible for planning some of the biggest campaigns for the agency, including the country’s multi-awarded tourism campaign ‘It’s More Fun in the Philippines’. Her most recent work includes the Philippine Department of Tourism’s #PHThankYou campaign, a social media-led initiative that activated the entire country to express its gratitude to the world after the rebuilding efforts for Typhoon Haiyan. Buenaventura’s other noteworthy campaigns include Pepsi’s ‘Liter of Light’ project, a locally created CSR program, and Pantene’s ‘Women Against Labels’ campaign, which enjoyed worldwide recognition.

Carlos Camacho | ECD | Lowe Vietnam: For someone who started as an intern at JWT Colombia, Carlos Camacho has come a long way. He spent six years as creative director at Lowe SSP3 working closely with Jose Miguel Sokoloff, CCO and co-chairman of Mullen Lowe Group. He’s not your typical ECD, occupying the corner office. Camacho is described as a hands-on manager and hates comfort zones. This approach has helped him turn around Lowe Vietnam’s creative reputation and winning at major global, regional and local advertising festivals including the nation’s first Gold at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. The Colombian thrives on challenges and the rise of newer media forms. According to him, good work goes far beyond coming up with ideas. It’s about bringing it to life in today’s context and nurturing it along the campaign roll out period.

Danny Phan | MD APAC | Blue Rubicon: When Blue Rubicon decided to open its doors in Asia the consultancy spent six months searching the market for the right leader. They found their man in Danny Phan. After launching in January this year, Blue Rubicon is off to a roaring start. In just six months Danny has built an impressive portfolio of clients for his consultancy, including leading brands such as Mondelēz, Fitness First, Volkswagen, Heathrow, Almacantar, and one of the world’s largest beverage companies. His success at Blue Rubicon comes after Danny lead Ogilvy PR’s successful market entry into Vietnam at just 27 years of age. Mark Hutcheon, director of communications at Fitness First says Danny and his team provided excellent advice and planning skills to advance their brand reputation goals in Asia. “He worked equally well at a strategic level and executing the strong ideas he brought to the table. I valued the support and enjoyed working with him.”

James Hollow | President | Lowe Profero Tokyo: James Hollow has been in Japan for over 10 years and his experience, deep understanding of and respect for Japanese culture had led to a remarkable turnaround at Lowe Profero Tokyo. Taking the lead at a struggling, unprofitable business just over two years ago, Hollow has led the agency to significant business growth, in a traditionally challenging market for foreign agencies. In the past 12 month, Lowe Profero Tokyo team has more than doubled in size, with revenue increasing an impressive 250 per cent. After being recruited by WPP onto their highly competitive 3-year graduate training programme “The WPP Marketing Fellowship", Hollow spent three years training as a strategic planner, first in London and the final two in Tokyo, all with Ogilvy Group companies. At the age of 25 he set up his own digital production shop in Tokyo and build it into a boutique digital agency, which was acquired by Profero in 2013. Hollow was nominated for the Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the British Chamber of Commerce Japan annual business awards in 2013, and Lowe Profero was nominated for Company of the Year award in 2014.

Jun Yuan | Head of Accuen China | Omnicom Media Group: Described by the CEO of OMD China, Arlene Ang, as a “fearless leader”, Yuan was the founding member of Accuen China, OMG’s programmatic trading agency, in 2013. Since then he has driven Accuen’s rapid growth. Under his leadership in the last 12 months, Accuen launched the first white paper agency publication on programmatic buying in China, has expanded its team from 22 to 32 employees, and has achieved revenue growth of 330% from serving 48 clients across Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China. It has expanded the range of programmatic services and products from display to rich media, mobile, video and social, along with premium private exchange, and has boosted key clients’ share of digital spend in programmatic buying up to more than 70%. Jun is regularly asked to present at key industry seminars and panels across country, including the Google Think Platform in 2014. “Jun makes programmatic buying, which is a new and complex subject, into something that makes sense for clients, getting their buy in not just once, but repeatedly such that now programmatic buying is a regular item on the media investments,” says Ang.

Nishtha Mehta | Founder/executive trainer | CollabCentral Consulting: Nishtha has worked 10 years in China’s digital and mobile market. Four years ago, she set up her own consultancy, CollabCentral Consulting, and has since worked with the likes of Unilever, Estee Lauder, Wyeth Nutrition, start-ups, digital and social specialist agencies and agency networks such as WPP, Publicis and Omnicom Media Group PHD Media. At CollabCentral she focuses on building new arenas of gamified talent training and innovation acceleration programmes. These include brand integration training workshops, mobile-first workshops and mixers with start-ups and the tech community to stimulate innovative thinking. A mentor for the start-up communities Chinaccelerator and Startup Next (powered by Google) she’s hands-on helping various start-ups in accelerating their pitch, proposition, product and marketing. Nishtha believes mobile will soon sit at the core of the agency or brand marketer’s organisation. “Nishtha driving force in PHD’s initial phase of expanding into mobile ground up and was a part of our team from 2013 to 2015,” says Lars Bjorge, chief digital officer, PHD Greater China. “Since then, we have been supporting her collaboration based business, which we think is an important addition to China’s marketing services scene.”

Sean Lim | Business unit head | Geometry Global: Although Geometry Global’s Sean Lim started his career at a local medium sized agency, he was eager to get into an international agency and get noticed. His big break came after five years when Grey Worldwide offered him a role—an unfamiliar account that nobody wanted to work on. He counts the winning of a big telco client as one of his biggest achievements to date – not the least of which was becoming the most awarded account director of the year. He says moving to G2, the activation arm of Grey Worldwide was a challenge he couldn’t resist. Within a couple of months, the team snagged up Tiger Street Football and Malaysia’s number one telco in its portfolio. Lim describes his leadership style as “inspiring, encouraging and empowering” and says it is the key to getting great work done.

Jeanette Phang | Director of business intelligence | OMD China: Jeanette’s expertise is centred on consumer insights, data-driven decisions and digital. She strives to know and understand why we do the things we do, how we manifest our motivations and desires and how brands can better connect with people through that knowledge. In the last 12 months she has put together Dive Social, an in-depth investigation of social media habits and drives. Dive Mobile, released in April this year, explores consumer attitudes towards mobile advertising, debunking the myth that mobile advertising is viewed as annoying and revealing the complex relationship consumers have with their mobiles. Another key research piece written by Jeanette was Transcend, OMD's media futures report which exhorted clients to take advantage of contextual search to create better campaigns, focus on audience buys on programmatic and focus on content outside website verticals among other things. She’s passionate about fostering a vibrant company culture and productive workplace via mentorship programmes.

Gannon Osburn | Regional planning manager | Blue Hive Asia-Pacific: A native of San Diego, California whose entire career has developed in Asia, Osburn is representative of a new generation of planners who are truly integrated in their thinking. At Blue Hive, he is responsible for the Ford Focus, the carmaker’s top-selling vehicle by volume in Asia-Pacific. In addition, he works regionally on two other important vehicles: the Mondeo and Mustang. In his previous role at Blue Hive he was the regional digital campaign planner and led the digital campaign launches across all of Ford’s nameplates in Asia Pacific and Africa. During that time he helped launch The EcoSport Urban Discoveries Campaign, which earned a Silver Effie (India). The digitally led pre-launch campaign was so successful that all booked launch media was rendered unnecessary and it was the highest awarded campaign for Ford outside of North America. Previously, while working at sister WPP agency Wunderman on the Land Rover Range Rover business, he led the planning for two new big business wins on Unilever and one with IKEA. “Gannon is one of the true multi-faceted planners I have met in China,” says Bryce Whitwam, MD of Wunderman Shanghai. Whitwam says despite his traditional roots, Osburn quickly gained expertise in digital, CRM and social planning “that really sets him apart from other planners” and that his fluent Mandarin ability enables him to connect particularly well with both local clients and creative staff.

Rebecca Liu | Director of corporate communications | Saatchi & Saatchi, Greater China: Liu joined Saatchi & Saatchi in 2010, when she built the in-house communications team from scratch, leading corporate communications for the four Greater China offices, BJ, GZ, HK and SH, which comprise 480 staff. Liu undertook an initiative to enhance the agency’s Greater China digital profile and image as a digitally integrated communications agency. Prior to 2014, the agency faced the challenge of maintaining its creative leadership in the "Age of Now," an age defined by new media and technology. Liu and her team reversed the perception that in-house communications add to agency expenditure without directly raising the top line. Due to these successful initiatives promoting the agency's creative work and talent, new clients contacted the PR team directly with invitations for to pitch for new business. This led to an increase in new business pitch invitations in 2014 by 30 per cent. The agency was also awarded five new accounts in 2014 in this way, without needing to participate in a pitching process.

Mani RK | MD international clients | Carat China: Mani joined the Dentsu Aegis Network in March 2013 as a strategic lead to drive trading efficacy and was promoted to MD of International Clients, Carat China in January last year. Under his watch Carat’s client portfolio expanded exponentially, with revenue up 46% in the 12 months following his promotion. He boasts a 100% client retention rate and has won 80 per cent of the business he has pitched for, including clients like Lego, Friesland Campina, SH Disney and Dutch Lady. Mani has forged joint business partnerships between Burberry and Mondelez and China’s technology giants BAT (Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent) and has been responsible for ideating and delivering tailored ecommerce and programmatic workshops for Adidas, Friso and Mondelez. He also lead the ideation of the Oreo Emoji’s campaign, which won gold at the 2015 China Advertising Awards, delivered unprecedented social traction and a 50 per cent uplift in sales. Mani has taken on the additional responsibility of heading up Clarity, the network’s specialist luxury agency. Helen Zhou, VP of marketing for Sephora China claims Mani is a “true futurist” with an “unquestionable knowledge of media and deep China insight.”

Shayne Garcia | GM | iProspect Philippines: In 2012 at just 30 years of age, Shayne was appointed GM of iProspect Philippines. In just three years she has won blue chip accounts including Adidas, L’Oreal, IMAX, Honda and Philippine Airlines. Under her leadership, all of the agency’s staff have become Google-certified with multiple certifications across social, display, video, search and analytics. Before, the team relied on resellers, but Shayne encouraged each one to undergo training to ensure they could independently run on self-serve technologies such as Double Click, Kenshoo, Sysomos, Marin, and Atlas. Passionate about teaching the younger generations, she recently launched the Dentsu Aegis Network’s first formal internship programme, called Project Jedi. Jason Gervasio, head of marketing at Adidas in the Philippines says Shayne’s inherent desire to mentor is her greatest strength. “She is a brilliant general manager who has inspired a young team to follow in her footsteps,” he says. “Although I have always been impressed with the way Shayne has tackled all challenges with a smile and great results, I believe her ability to influence people, especially her team, and mold them into ‘future Shaynes’ is her most outstanding quality.”

Erik Hallander | Regional director, mobile and innovation | Isobar: Erik started in digital as a programmer 17 years ago. He worked his way through a variety of programming languages and worked for brands such as Sony-Ericsson, Nokia and HP. He arrived at Isobar Melbourne as an interactive developer seven years ago and has held six titles since. As Director of Mobile and Innovation, he helped create award-winning work for major international and local brands including General Motors, ANZ Bank, Jetstar, the Australian Football League, Australian Defence Force and many others. Now, in his newly created role as regional director, mobile and innovation APAC, he is responsible for driving Isobar’s mobile offering across the region and focus on developing emerging technologies. Erik recently used his expertise to help create the world’s first large scale virtual reality experience ‘CoDriver’ for Chevrolet. He’s incredibly passionate about introducing technology in places where it can add true human value, such as healthcare and education.

Anna Choi | Head of strategy and communications | Siemens: Since assuming her current position at Siemens in 2013, Anna has propelled strategy and communications from a supporting role to a value-adding consultative role that has a strong impact on business results. One prominent example is Siemens Week, an initiative to get the technology giant closer to stakeholders. Through this annual flagship event, Anna brings together stakeholders such as government, C-level executives, academia, industry practitioners, students and employees to discuss city development, innovative technology and sustainability. At Siemens Week 2013, Anna collaborated with AIESEC to organise a workshop with 300 university students to envision sustainable city development. In 2014, she collaborated with the Asia Society to organise a program attended by more than 100 industry executives on “Hong Kong, London, New York: How Resilient Cities Minimise Disruption, Recover and Adapt”, where experts discussed the implications of disruption for Hong Kong. Anna is passionate advocate for innovative technology adoption and believes it can make the city smarter. Eric Chong, president and CEO, Siemens describes Anna as passionate, dedicated and constantly striving for excellence. “All these qualities have made her an indispensable part of our management team,” he says.

Marianne Blamire | MD and co-founder | Salt Communications: Salt’s group MD Nicky Young describes Marianne Blamire as a “freak of nature,” which stands to reason. Marianne created and implemented the business plan for Salt’s entry into Singapore three years ago and exceeded commercial targets two years in a row following. Her passion is helping brands find their social purpose and bring to life their sustainability stories, and she is doing just this for Unilever, Syngenta, Givaudan and Kimberly-Clark. She has partnered Unilever global brands in Europe and Asia continuously for seven years, leading teams across multiple categories to deliver PR, social media, social mission and internal communication for haircare, personal care, oral care, deodorants, Unilever Food Solutions and the Unilever Corporate Brand, for which she was seconded in-house to cover the role of global brand development manager. She wrote the strategy for Lifebuoy’s Global Handwashing Day and launched it to government and sanitation stakeholders at World Water Week. To get cut-through for Unilever Food Solutions’ brand re-launch across 74 markets, she led a series of ‘World Menu Reports’ and global campaigns around big industry issues such as obesity and food waste. Brand awareness increased globally by 50% off the back of a PR-led campaign and it was a finalist at Cannes Lion for best global brand relaunch.

Regina Goh | Managing director, Asia | BlisMedia: Regina Goh has been described as “force to reckon with” by her industry peers and she has earned herself a deserved reputation as a leading figure in the mobile advertising space. A mobile expert with a career spanning across multiple job functions, Goh’s extensive experience and enthusiasm for the industry has led her to her current MD post at leading adtech firm, BlisMedia. Since joining in January 2015, she has made an immediate impact, tripling the staff base and giving the company the ability provide regional face-to-face client support for campaigns across Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, India and Hong Kong. An active supporter of the industry, Goh regularly attends Campaign’s media training event, MediaWorks and has also been re-elected as co-chair of the IAB’s Mobile Committee in Singapore, where she spearheads initiatives to drive investment in mobile advertising sectors - a group that she has been involved with since early 2014.

Nick Cakebread | MD | BBDO Live: As managing director, Cakebread has injected new life into BBDO Live, an agency whose future only three years ago was in doubt. It has now become BBDO Greater China’s fastest growing agencies and is driving deeper integration across the business. Since taking over in 2012, Cakebread has helped quadruple the agency’s revenue, while delivering record size and profit. Cakebread is currently focused on developing stronger partnerships, collaboration and integration with parent BBDO. He sees cross-agency work as critical to building a complete communications solutions that includes PR, social, activation and experiential and design based services. His other achievements include establishing a retail experience team and spreaheading the launch of the agency’s Design Hub—a specialist design offering focused on BTL creative and retail design. Its clients include Master Kong, Diageo and Pavillion and it now accounts for 25 per cent of the agency’s revenues.

Jia Jih (JJ) Chai | MD, Southeast Asia and India | Airbnb: Jia Jih Chai holds the distinction of being the first Airbnb employee in Asia. Since taking on the role of managing director of Southeast Asia and India in 2012 for the then emerging startup Chai has led the expansion of the company’s footprint across the region and been closely involved in brand-building activities. Airbnb has grown at an incredible pace and Chai has been credited with steering Asia to become the company’s fastest growing region, with Asian travellers growing at an annual rate of 200 per cent in the last two years. Under his leadership, Airbnb has set up local customer support to cater to Asia, built out new payment methods, engaged local travel influencers and launched eye-catching marketing campaigns and partnerships, including a ‘Night-at’ campaign at the Sepang Circuit, where winners experienced Airbnb-style hospitality at a furnished studio overlooking the sharpest bend at the Sepang track during Malaysia’s F1 race. With 15 years of experience in the tech industry, Chai has emerged as a passionate advocate for the technology and entrepreneurship community within Singapore and throughout Asia.

Miranda Dimopoulos | Executive director | IAB Singapore: Since taking the reins at the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) in Singapore less than two years ago, Miranda Dimopoulos has propelled the associations’ growth, and reinvented the IAB’s image in the region. Under her leadership, the IAB Singapore has started to generate profits that are being reinvested into the industry and helping to drive the digital transformation agenda in the region. A popular industry figure, Dimopoulos is praised by many for her enthusiasm and proactive approach to the IAB, which has helped boost member satisfaction by 35 percent over the last one year. “Miranda has single-handedly led the transformation the digital community in Singapore. Since joining the IAB, as the only full-time resource in the association, membership and revenue has grown by more than 300 per cent,” says Keith Timimi, chairman of VML Qais, and member of the IAB Singapore leadership council.

Tobias Wilson | CEO | Asia Pacific Digital: Ever since he started the pencil color “tattoo parlor” in his fourth grade class, Tobias Wilson has expressed a strong entrepreneurial and creative spirit. Born in Australia, Wilson moved to Singapore aged 26 and eventually founded creative digital agency Accomplice – a startup with a vision to create an business focused on providing the innovative, high-impact ideas reminiscent of a big agency, but coupled with the flexibility of a smaller one. Starting in 2010, with a humble investment of S$10,000, Wilson led Accomplice to an impressive S$750,000 turnover during its first year. Over the next four years the agency would win a raft of major business with the likes of Panasonic, Toyota, Lexus, Suzuki and DBS bank, and claims not to have lost a single client during that time. In February 2015, Accomplice was acquired by Asia Pacific Digital, an Australian integrated digital marketing and commerce specialist, a move that boosted Wilson to the role of CEO. Alongside a string of other business ventures in the region, Wilson is a keen mentor and also acts as vice-chairman of the IAB Singapore.

Alan Cerutti | Co-founder & CEO/strategic director | Happiness Saigon: Alan Cerutti had a passion for brands even as a kid when he was unbeatable at the "recognise the car brand" game. But it was while travelling around Australia and New Zealand, upon seeing a giant billboard in Wellington with a full-sized Mini car on it, that he became inspired to pursue a career in advertising. His playful introduction to the industry hasn’t worn off, and Cerutti’s passion for creativity has led him to Vietnam, and a new agency housed in a mansion on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City. “We see an opportunity to start putting Vietnam on the creative map,” Cerutti said of the launch of Happiness. In it’s first few months of business, Happiness Saigon picked up a number of major brands, including Bosch and Oreo. Before moving to Vietnam, Cerutti was at Ogilvy & Mather in London, where he served as global account lead on Dove and WWF, overseeing the brand strategy and creative development for markets including USA, Latin America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

Tuomas Peltoniemi | President, Asia | TBWA’s Digital Arts Network (DAN): A digital specialist with a wealth of global experience, Peltoniemi has been credited for his leadership skills that have helped drive the TBWA’s Digital Arts Network in the past three years. As well as playing a key role in winning MasterCard’s social and digital business for eight markets, Peltoniemi has helped established DAN offices in all Southeast Asia markets and is a regular keynote speaker at industry events including ad:tech, Spikes Asia, and Google Squared. With experience in the USA and Europe, Peltoniemi previously partnered with two like-minded digital marketers to start their own agency in Helsinki Finland. Under his leadership, NOOB went from a start-up to Finland’s largest digital production agency and Finland’s ‘Agency of the Year’ in only three years. Outside of TBWA, he is passionate about innovation and emerging technologies, and mentors early stage technology start-ups with SMU’s incubator, as well as Singapore-based technology startup RIOT. Peltoniemi’s motto in life is, ‘Win the hearts of people, and their minds will follow’.

Josh Black | CEO | GroupM Content: Josh Black’s rise to the top of GroupM’s content division has been impressive both for the relatively short time it has taken and the impressions he has left on people along the way. Now 39, he started out as a sports marketer at Gatorade. Since then, a common refrain is that Black is a ‘doer’ in an industry known for its big talkers. Damien Cummings, who has known Black since the early days of his career, says his mantra is “if the model no longer works, create a new one and make it happen”. In one example, Virginia Ng, formerly senior marketing director for KFC in Singapore, credits him with developing creative ideas that changed consumption habits. “Many people can come up with exciting plans and proposals but few live true to their word and Josh is one of them,” Ng says. GroupM CEO says simply: “Our content business is in great hands with Josh at the helm”.

Russ Tucker | National creative director | Whybin TBWA Group and Digital Arts Network (DAN): At the age of 30, Tucker became one of the youngest creative directors in Whybin TBWA Group. One year later he made a large business contribution to the company by winning the ANZ account for Asia. Tucker was also responsible for launching the Digital Arts Network offering for Whybin TBWA Group clients in Melbourne. Now 36, Tucker has a string of achievements to his name. He was responsible for arranging the first gay marriage in New Zealand and creating a powerful niche destination re-brand of the country’s logo from ‘100% Pure’ to ‘100% Pure Choice’. Tucker also developed a mobile application that fights cyber bullying which was adopted by Facebook shortly after the launch. It went on to win an International Digital Emmy Award in Cannes for the Children and Young People category and was the only Australian production to be nominated. Tucker helped to put Australia on the map as a world-class place for virtual reality experience. He came up with the NRMA Crash Test Drive, an idea using 360-degree content to educate Australians about car safety technology and help reduce collisions on Australian roads. The NRMA Crash Test Drive campaign won 10 prestigious awards in 2014 making it one of the most successful campaigns in Tucker’s career to date.

Antony Yiu | Head of search & performance | MEC: Since joining MEC at the start of 2014, Yiu’s business growth and client record has been phenomenal. In the past year, he has brought in 14 new clients. He created the first-in-Asia FWD X Spotify Music Channel with ongoing activation and has driven the network to evolve from search to performance marketing. He has also been instrumental in winning the agency multiple awards. From an industry standpoint, Antony has strong industry acknowledged expertise and profile. He is a regular contributor to industry magazines and trade journals, and a regular speaker at industry conferences around the region. Yiu’s digital career started with Google and from there he went on to work for a number of US-based startups including oDesk and Adbrite. Prior to joining MEC, Yiu was managing director of iProspect Hong Kong.

Upasana Roy | Head of strategy | Digitas LBi, India: Roy started her career with Google India as a 20-year-old campus hire and went on to spend 5 years with the company working in different roles in sales, operations, planning and strategy. She went on to become one of the first people in Gurgaon office to be trained as a dedicated account manager. Her final stint at Google was with the Customer Sales team in India, where she was as an industry analyst supporting clients in the FMCG & Auto Category (HUL, P&G, Nestle, Honda, Maruti). Roy then worked at Omnicom Media Group in Singapore as platform strategy manager, helping to build their display and mobile planning team. She led their biggest client, Google Asia-Pacific, designing campaigns across 17 different B2B/B2C Google products, spanning eight countries. As planning director at Ogilvy & Mather in Mumbai, she served clients such as Cadbury, Castrol, and Vodafone. Her latest role is head of strategy at Digitas LBi in India.

Henry Manampiring | Head of planning | Leo Burnett Indonesia: Manampiring started his career in the finance department of British American Tobacco before realizing that Excel spreadsheets and ‘bean-counting’ wasn’t his thing. Moving to the Coca-Cola Company as a consumer research manager, Manampiring grew his passion for consumer behaviour, where he worked for four years. His career in advertising began in 2003 as strategic planner at Lowe Indonesia. Since then, he has continued in the industry. By the time he was 30, he became the head of planning at J.Walter Thompson Indonesia. Since joining Leo Burnett Indonesia, the agency won 90 per cent of the business pitches coming from high profile client such as Indofood, Bank BTPN, and Sampoerna.

Joe Zhao | Group business director | Starcom Beijing: For the past two years, Zhao has been the account lead for Mars at Starcom Beijing. During his time, he improved on the agency's reach-based planning and developed an effective buying model — the Media Decision Making Tree — based on Mars' data analytics. This tool has enabled Mars to choose investments that have lead to effective business returns, quickly. He has also helped the client evolve its digital video investment into a private market placement-buying approach, and established a PMP platform that top video websites are clamouring to join. Zhao was also instrumental in helping Mras adopt and lead ecommerce, resulting in more than double market average growth in sales over the past two years. His efforts are credited with helping Mars China pick up multiple awards at several shows.

Deepa Jatkar | GM | MediaCom Mumbai: When Jatkar first joined MediaCom Mumbai in 2008 as business group head, she headed as single account and a team of four people. Today, she leads the Mumbai office of more than 40 employees and has managed some of the networks' most prestigious global accounts including Volkswagen, Vespa and Audi. She's credited with her office's 'dream run' last year, racking up new business wins of more than US$25 million, leading to revenue growth of 21 per cent. She has also built and mentored a team that is dedicated to success, leading to award-winning work such as 'The World's first talking newspaper' for Volkswagen Vento or India's biggest Twitter contest for Jetta. Her leadership is also credited with transforming MediaCom Mumbai from an office of traditional planners to digital strategists. Initiatives such as 'Digital Fridays' have helped lead to projected digital billings growth of 60 per cent over last year.

Mathias Chaillou | MD | Optimedia China: In his first year of joining Optimedia China in 2012, Chaillou has been credited with increasing the efficiency and profitability of its business units with revenues for Newcast and Performics increasing over 300 per cent and productivity by 50 per cent. He has been instrumental in bringing in a new generation of leaders and, in terms of new business, brought in Fiat, now one of Optimedia’s top clients. Over the past year, Chaillou has built Performics’ ecommerce capabilities, with L’Oréal as a foundation client. Successfully launched online stores have resulted in more TMall brand stores being awarded to the agency. Performics has also extended the practice to new clients, such as Reckitt Benckiser and new platforms with JD.COM and Amazon. He has also developed the agency’s programmatic capabilities. As a result, programmatic billings have already grown by over 320 per cent in the first three months of 2015. Under his leadership, the agency has acquired 10 new clients including 20th Century Fox, Tsinghua Tongfang, Rolex, Next, Line, Infinitus and Bordeaux Wines.

Simon Nichols | MD | GroupM Entertainment Asia-Pacific: Once an estate agent in London, Nichols joined GroupM from the Asian Food Channel four years ago to run the media group’s growing content investment business GroupM Entertainment. Under his management, GME Asia-Pacific has invested and brokered over 2000 hours of content in the region. Notable examples include the strategic acquisition of TV series ‘Omar’ from MBC1 in the Middle East which helped propel MNCTV in Indonesia to the top spot during Ramadan, and the localisation of MasterChef in Thailand. “Simon is a true content man,” comments Joshua Black, CEO of GroupM’s Content business across Asia-Pacific. “I know of no-one else in Asia that is as connected as Simon with rights holders, broadcasters, talent, platform and technology companies. His passion and energy for driving the business and ‘the deal’ is unparalleled within our organisation and I am sure we are only just seeing the start of his career in media”.

Sukesh Kumar Nayak | ECD | Ogilvy & Mather India: Setting out to become an economist, Nayak became waylaid by advertising 14 years ago. He uses his personal background, coming from a small town, to create stories that everyday people can relate to and that help make positive changes to society. ‘Will of steel’ for JSW Group, one of India’s largest steel companies, encouraged people to reconsider the way women are treated. Nayak’s ‘Google reunion’ even went some way to building more positive sentiment towards Pakistanis, while ‘Google pledge’ helped to shake millions of young people out of a state of indifference to vote in the general elections. “There is enough negativity in the world,” Nayak says. “Therefore I try and inspire and show people their best self through my stories. I get them to be part of the story … and allow them to add their bit to make it ‘their story’ from the brand’s story.” His mentor Piyush Pandey calls him the embodiment of “creative brilliance and creative integrity”. Sandeep Menon, country marketing head for Google India, meanwhile says Nayak “is one of the most passionate creative people I have ever worked with” whose work “has been key to building the Google brand in India”.

Sunshine Farzan | Vice-president and head of marketing and communication | MetLife Hong Kong: While competitors focused on preparing for an uncertain future, Sunshine Farzan gave a fresh twist to insurance — positioning MetLife Hong Kong to help people feel positive today. The move paid off: MetLife Hong Kong is currently enjoying an all-time-high for brand awareness in its 20-year history. Core to Farzan’s marketing approach is an obsession with digital. Despite widespread industry knowledge of Hong Kong’s high levels of internet and mobile, no one had acted on it. In an effort to create ongoing, emotional interaction, Farzan’s team designed and launched the MetLife Infinity App that allows people to securely capture, host, organise and share content. MetLife Hong Kong won seven awards in digital innovation in marketing in 2014 and 2015. In addition, brand awareness increased 8 per cent and searches on Google and Yahoo went up exponentially. Online sales via the company’s ecommerce platform also increased significantly during the period.

Vinoaj (Vinny) Vijeyakumaar | Managing partner & co-founder | Sparkline: After successfully driving analytics innovation for Google in the region, Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar left the company in 2012 to launch Sparkline, Singapore’s first integrated digital analytics consultancy. Vijeyakumaar saw an opportunity to take advantage of the shift in mindset toward digital as more CMOs and CFOs realised that it could be held accountable. In just three years, Vijeyakumaar and his co-founder, Aleetza Senn, have built Sparkline into a global business. Headquartered in Singapore, with a second office recently opened in Malaysia, the firm services 11 other countries with particular expertise and focus on Asia and Asian companies. The 35-year-old has been instrumental in building and leading both the product development and technical analysis teams. He says his methodological and data-driven approach come from his background as an engineer and stresses that companies need to test and iterate everything before making long-term strategic decisions.

Piotr Jakubowski | Head of digital | VML Qais Indonesia: An Absolut Vodka ad he saw at the tender age of 14 spurred Jakubowski to join the advertising industry. Although too young to drink the product, he collected the artwork and remained inspired. Born in Jakarta, he has lived in Southeast Asia most of his life. Since joining VML Qais Indonesia in the past 12 months has contributed to revenue growth of 300 per cent. He led the wins of new business from Prudential, Adidas and two Danone brands, Aqua and VIT. It has been an intense year. “When space ran out, people shared desks and worked late into the night,” says Keith Timimi, chairman of VML Qais. “It is a great credit to Piotr’s leadership that in the midst of all this chaos, there has been no staff attrition for a year.” He adds that Twitter and YouTube have featured some of the resulting work as case studies for best practice in emerging markets. Marjorie Garrovillo, marketing director for Danone Waters in Indonesia, says his insight into consumers combined with grasp of social media tools and leading edge technology results in “magic”.

Yukie Ogaki | Art director | ADK: Now in her 30s, Yukie Ogaki entered the world of branding and design at the age of 12, when she won a contest held by ANA: her concept of a flying whale became a reality, with the ‘Marine Jumbo’ airliner (complete with water spout) captivating people’s attention all over Japan. She has been designing for brands ever since. Guided by the straightforward aim of creating “designs that make people smile”, she believes strongly that design can lead brand communications and the way people relate to a company. Ogaki’s biggest strength is perhaps that she doesn’t see any division between brands and the outside world. She says her passion for design informs everything she does, and as a children’s book author as well as an advertising professional, her work often makes the transition organically from art to something commercial. A recent example was for the retail conglomerate Aeon: inspired by the abstract flower designs in a book she had published, the company invited her to design a fabric that it now sells widely in its stores.

Valerie Pinto | CEO, India | Weber Shandwick: One of the youngest PR agency heads in India, Pinto has already achieved an impressive amount and is described by one client as “a phenomenon”. Most definitely someone to watch, she has only been at Weber Shandwick since the beginning of this year, but prior to that built Perfect Relations into one of the biggest consultancies in the market with a team of 400 servicing around 200 clients. Pinto now sets out to build Weber Shandwick into an agency with content at its heart. “She walks into the room and always has a solution to offer,” says Siddarth Singh, EVP of GSK Consumer India. “It’s not just her passion that drives us but also her ability to look at a situation or a problem with a fresh perspective.” Adrian Terron, head of corporate at Nielsen, has further praise for Pinto’s leadership style: “She has evolved and set new benchmarks for herself constantly,” Terron says. “Looking at her energy, I feel I need to do more personally. She builds teams and that’s what sets her apart. Her leadership skills are truly a distinguishing factor and her ability to build talent is unmatched in the industry.”

Justin Cohen | Co-founder/business development director | Mirum Vietnam: The man behind the acclaimed Vietnam-based Sofresh, Cohen has so far generated a 40 per-cent year-on-year revenue increase for Mirum since WPP acquired his agency and made it part of the group. Highlights for Mirum under Cohen included becoming the first agency in Vietnam to use Oculus Rift, in a piece of work for Pepsi energy drink Sting, and expanding the business of existing clients Suntory PepsiCo and Unilever. Cohen is taking steps to make Mirum Vietnam a regional production hub, and recently began working with China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and San Diego. He has also helped strengthen the relationship with sister agency J. Walter Thompson, having jointly pitched for and won the regional business for three Diageo brands. Cohen’s working style is inspiring for staff: an absence of rules mean people are relaxed but focused on producing great work. The agency’s original five developers are still in place, each leading their own team. “Justin’s spirited leadership and entrepreneurial drive have changed the face of digital marketing in Vietnam,” says regional CEO Nanda Ivens. “He is constantly thinking of how to develop his team and the industry and is an asset to Vietnam.”

Arshan Saha | VP | Xaxis Southeast Asia: A founding member of Xaxis in Asia-Pacific, Saha joined the company as its second employee for the region in 2012. The Malaysian has since led the establishment of its offices in his home country, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines. In the space of three years, he has grown the business 20-fold and is a champion of local leadership, something the staff appear to appreciate: churn stands at just 5 per cent. He is also the youngest leader in the IAB. He stands out for his efforts to grow the industry as a whole. “[Saha] was one of the few who dabbled between providing solutions to advertisers while continuously sharing ideas with peers, partners and even competitors,” says Asia-Pacific chief executive Michel de Rijk. “His passion, commitment and determination make him a consultant before a salesman, a leader before a manager, and I am proud to have him on my team.”