Impressive hires at GOVT Singapore to service OCBC account
After a long search stretching back to September last year, independent creative agency GOVT Singapore has finally made a number of senior hires to service the OCBC account it won in late 2016.
Speaking to Mumbrella Asia, managing director Leon Lai championed the recruitment of a number of talents from the big holding companies to work on the account, which was previously with McCann. “It’s not such a big risk anymore to join an independent agency as all of them have professionalised,” he said. “And we have ambitions to go to 10 new markets in 10 new countries. We are already in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, and that approach is attractive to the talent out there.”
Leading the creative side on the account for the large bank will be associate creative director Mark Lim, who has spent the past 11 years at agencies such as TBWA and DDB – and was most recently creative director at local agency Splash.
Andrew Ho, previously of MullenLowe, will take on responsibilities as creative group head. His work for Unilever’s Clear, Lifebuoy, Citra, Knorr and DirectAsia Car Insurance has won him multiple accolades at international awards shows including D&AD, One Show and AdStars.
Gloria Tan is the group account director, bringing with her more than 15 years of experience at agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi, TBWA, BBDO and Leo Burnett – having handled clients such as SK-II, Great Eastern Insurance, Singapore Airlines and Standard Chartered Bank. Tan will report to business director Jude Foo.
Jaslyn Lam has also been taken on as a senior account director. She was previously at Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore, where she led the global management of Procter & Gamble brand Pampers. Lam will also report to Foo.
Lai applauded the new arrivals for putting “their faith in us despite coming from a multinational network background”. He added: “In the coming couple of months, we hope to be able to put out some stellar work and we are already working on the concept for the first TVC despite only being six weeks into the contract, which officially started on January 1.”
The growing agency currently employs 43 staff in Singapore and 27 in KL. Its roster of clients includes MINI Asia, Häagen-Dazs Southeast Asia, National Gallery Singapore and Nescafé, Maggi.
Dean is the general manager at Mumbrella Asia. He is an experienced British journalist, who has worked in a number of international markets including Singapore, Australia, Dubai, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. As well as his media work, he is also a published academic.
I guess “impressive” is a matter of opinion. It will be interesting to see. Then again its OCBC so it could be a match made in heaven.
ReplyA guy from Splash, the guy who did all of that stunning work on Citra and the diaper lady, impressive indeed
Replysome of the comments from the MD are quite amusing. Specially the part where he makes a big deal about people from MNCs wanting to work for his company even though it’s local. There has never been a stigma attached to working for a local company as long as it has reasonable policies and treats employees well.
Many MNCs here started out by buying flourishing local agencies.
Whats important is to stop talking about doing “stellar” work and actually doing it for a change.
When local agencies think “being local” is some sort of advantage and then translate that by doing work full of singlish phrases, awkward acting and cringe worthy stories they will never go anywhere… except to be seen as the (much) cheaper choice.
ReplyWord. Ironically big boys like DDB love to sell this notion of “being local” as well in almost all their brands too.
Not sure if us locals really have such an inflated ego which we would wan to see ourselves in every brands or agencies just too lazy/incompetent to think of anything else beyond that.
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