MENTORS

Cheuk Chiang is CEO, Asia Pacific for PHD, a global media and communications network that has been built on a culture of thought leadership, creativity and innovation. In the Asia Pacific region, PHD has offices in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Cheuk’s experience is broad and eclectic, and his career to date spans across account management, strategy planning and agency management roles in creative, direct marketing, digital and media agencies. Over the past 20 years he has worked on a number of high profile brands including Accor Hotels, Coca-Cola, Heineken, Heinz, Hennessy, Hewlett Packard, Holden, HTC, Kraft, Mars, Motorola, Nestle, Nikon, Tiger Beer and Unilever.

Cheuk joined PHD from CumminsNitro in Australia where he had a long and successful spell as Managing Director of the globally acclaimed and highly awarded creative hot-shop. While at Cummins Nitro, he presided over several Agency of the Year awards, countless new business wins and award winning campaigns.

In 2002, he was recognised as one of the top executives in the region and conferred Media Magazine’s Suit of the Year award. In 2009, under his leadership, PHD Asia Pacific was crowned Media Magazine’s Media Agency of the Year. And in 2010, Cheuk was named Agency Innovator of The Year by the Internationalist Magazine and PHD went on to win 5 awards at Campaign Magazine’s Agency of the Year awards including the prized Asia Pacific Media Network of the Year award.

His wealth of experience in building successful brands brings with it strong strategic thinking, an entrepreneurial spirit and passion for innovative, highly effective and results driven ideas.

A veteran of the media & entertainment industry, Jasper Donat co-founded BRANDED with Michael Denmark in 2001, a leading media and entertainment marketing agency, where he has worked with a number of the world’s leading entertainment brands and executives.

Jasper began his career in media & advertising in 1987 at Chris Ingram Associates now Mediaedge: CIA before joining Eurosport in 1992. He moved to Asia in 1995 to work for STAR TV's ESPN Star Sports (then Prime Sports) and transferred to VP Sales & Marketing Channel [V] in 1997.

A regular speaker, host and moderator at high profile industry events, Jasper has also been instrumental in the creation, management and programming of a number of industry focused platforms such as, Mediaworks, Charged Magazine and Music Matters - the Asia Pacific Music Forum.

Steve Garton has worked on the client, advertising agency, media owner and market research sides of the business, based in the UK, Australasia, and Asia Pacific. He has developed entirely new services for sectors such as the Internet, and built multi-regional surveys such as PAX, the currency for upscale audiences in Asia Pacific, Middle East and beyond.

He is particularly focused on the discovery of new insights into the relationship between media and its audiences, and how digital technology will influence the future of advertising.

Steve is a frequent public speaker at major international events and holds an MA at Oxford University.

Greg started his advertising career in despatch at McCanns in 1973. In Greg’s 30+ years in advertising, he has worked for a number of high profile creative agencies; DDB, Burnett’s & JWT. In 1997 he launched Mindshare’s Melbourne office as Managing Director and has worked for WPP/GroupM for 20+ years. More recently Greg was the Marketing & New Business Director of Mindshare North America, based in New York for 7 years. In that time the agency was incredibly successful and was named AdWeek’s Media Agency of the Year for winning in excess of a billion dollars in new business!

Greg transferred back home to Australia in 2007 working in a similar role to the US across GroupM’s 4 media agencies. Greg is involved in a number of industry committees and has received numerous industry accolades eg. Media Person of the Year, Media Manager of the Year Asia Pacific etc…

Greg also volunteers for a number of charities including The One Water Foundation and consults Pro Bono to the Sydney Film Festival. Greg is passionate about nurturing and mentoring young talent and helps various industry bodies in this important area, eg. NGen, Young Lions …

Guy Hearn is the Director of Communications Insights, Asia Pacific for the Omnicom Media Group and is responsible for the company’s insights and research capabilities and expanding the group’s expertise in consumer understanding and planning within the region. As part of this he has been responsible for developing Antenna Omnicom Media Group’s proprietary social media listening service. 

An industry veteran, Guy has more than two decades of professional research experience – mainly in the FMCG, Finance, Travel and Leisure and Retail contexts. He specialises in motivational, stakeholder, shopping and ethnographic research as well as deriving insights from social media conversations.  

Guy joined Omnicom Media Group from TNS Singapore and Hong Kong where he was Director, Client Service & Insights, and was responsible for managing strategic accounts such as Procter & Gamble, Visa and Diageo as well as developing new business and managing the professional development program.

Guy is based at Omnicom Media Group’s regional headquarters in Singapore. He has been based in Asia since 1997 and has developed an expertise in understanding consumer wants, needs, desires and motivations throughout the region, but especially in China, Japan, Australia, India and the ASEAN nations.  

Guy is a graduate of The University of Western Australia, where he majored in history and anthropology, is a member of The Market Research Society and a frequent speaker at consumer insights and related conferences 

When not trying to understand consumers, he struggles to balance other obsessions such as music, art, football, cycling, Formula One, wine and reading. He spends a lot of time online, particularly at www.discogs.com, a community-built music database portal where he is a moderator.

A member of the international media community for many years, Malcolm has enjoyed a multifaceted career on both the creative and media agency sides in Australia, Asia and the UK.

With over 13 years at ZenithOptimedia, Malcolm has held a number of senior positions within the organisation. From 2001-2006 he was Managing Director of Zenith’s international division in London running a number of key global accounts. These were very successful years as ZenithOptimedia International won Media and Marketing Magazine Agency of the Year in consecutive years, as well as three Cannes Gold Media Lions for HSBC, Lexus and HP.

Most recently Malcolm was the CEO of Zenith Media China and under his tenure became the largest media agency group by billings with some of the largest clients in China such as China Mobile, Mars, Budweiser, LVMH and GM. In 2007 he helped launch and build Zed Digital into a top 5 digital agency in the market. In recognition of achievements, Malcolm was honored as a 2009 Global Agency Innovator by The Internationalist Magazine.

In 2010 Malcolm was promoted to Managing Partner Asia Pacific for ZenithOptimedia and is based in Singapore.

Vishnu took up the responsibility of setting up the media network from scratch for the Havas Group in Asia in 2005. The youngest international network has continued to grow aggressively under his watch. Today as the CEO of Havas Media, Asia Pacific, he oversees all of the 40 offices in traditional, digital, sports and entertainment marketing across 25 cities in the region running under the brand names of MPG, Media Contacts and Havas Sports & Entertainment.

Starting his advertising career in early 90s with Y&R in India, where he looked after the Colgate Palmolive business, he moved to Singapore in 1995 to work with Euro RSCG. Over the nine years with the agency he took on multiple roles in media, strategic planning and account management before heading the agency in 2001. He ran the Philips and Dell business for the region and in his years at the helm of the agency, Euro RSCG grew to be one of the most successfully integrated 360 agencies winning the Agency of the Year at the very first Effies in Singapore.

In an earlier "avatar" as an offshore oil engineer, he had developed the ability to get to the core of a problem. In his post-MBA career of advertising, he has honed it to perfection. Little wonder then when his love for media saw him pioneer the formation of an independent media planning cell ahead of its times, he called it "precision media".

The IIM- A alumni is an ardent believer of the co-existence of "innovation" and "accountability" and the only thing that drives him is his version of ROI - Return on Innovation.

Sean O’Brien is Chief Client Officer of Aegis Media Asia Pacific. Joining in March of this year, he leads their multi-national teams on brands such as Nokia, adidas, Fox, BMW, ANZ and Philips and is responsible for new business development across the region.

Sean has over 20 years experience in media communications, working in global and regional management roles with P&G, Carlsberg, Nissan, McDonald’s, Pepsi and Mars. He has worked in London, New York, Latin America and Asia and has a track record of driving growth; as CEO at OMG in Thailand from 2004 to 2009 he helped grow the business threefold. Most recently in London he led the wins and management of HP and Google business across EMEA and the development of M2M International. Previously Sean was instrumental in establishing the Mediacom network in Latin America and has lead his teams to multiple creative and effectiveness awards.

Aside from media, he brings the added perspective of having run a full service advertising agency, a brand & integrated communications consultancy and of having developed businesses in content, design, sports marketing, digital, outdoor, corporate communications and analytics.

Sean is a qualified business coach, a member of the “Chartered Institute of Marketing” and an assessor for the “European Business Excellence Awards”.

Aegis Media brings together some of the world’s leading brands in marketing services including Carat, Vizeum, Posterscope, isobar and iProspect, under a common vision of ‘Reinventing the way brands are built”.

• Experience across all aspects of planning and buying, most recently focused on communications strategy, insight development & media planning
• 16+ years experience servicing within North America, EMEA and Greater China markets, with main focus on FMCG – Wrigley, Coca-Cola and 11+ years on P&G
• Developing initiatives, cascading training and sharing best practices across Starcom’s five  Greater China and two North Asia offices,
• Specific focus placed on aiding strategy development and capability building across region’s MNC client teams including P&G, Wrigley China and Coca-Cola
• Led the development of award-winning media strategies on Coca-Cola China, with First Coka of the Year and Coke with Food campaigns, as well as receptivity insights development on Rejoice and Whisper China

Vikram Sakhuja graduated from IIT Delhi and did his MBA at IIM Calcutta. He joined Procter & Gamble where over his 8 years there, held positions in Marketing Research and Media. Next was Coca-Cola for 5 years where he was responsible for brand marketing. From there Vikram spent a year with Newscorp as the Executive VP Marketing for the Star TV Network in India. From 2002 onwards he has been with the WPP group. He started there as the Managing Director of MindShare Fulcrum, went on to become the Managing Director of MindShare South Asia; and is now the CEO of GroupM South Asia.

He is proud to have been part of the team that has shaped GroupM into becoming India’s largest and most awarded one-stop shop for marketing Investment. He also sits on several industry body boards/ committees including ASCI, ABC, NRS, ISA-AAAI, IBF-AAAI, INS-AAAI, CII marketing and FICCI Marketing.

Vikram’s family includes his wife Simmi, a professional fitness trainer, writer and radio personality and his two daughters Tara and Diya
 

After roles in account management and traditional media planning, Leigh became the joint Head of Media at BMP Interaction in London on secondment from OMD in 2000. Leigh was responsible for Sony's first pan-European digital strategy which won Interactive Campaign of the Year at the Media Week Awards. In 2001 Leigh returned to OMD to launch OMD Digital in the UK building the team from scratch. It was short listed for Agency of the Year at the Revolution Awards 2003 and won multiple industry awards across for its activity on Vodafone, SONY (AIWA) and Rimmel. In 2004, Leigh led OMD's Direct and Data offering while retaining overall responsibility for Digital. He moved to OMD Australia in October 2005 as Executive Director of OMD Digital and became Managing Partner in October 2006.

Since joining OMD Australia five years ago the digital and direct teams have grown from 4 people to over 40. Leigh’s area of expertise lies in understanding how the digital world relates to the changing business model of media, and his focus is on ensuring that OMD remain leaders in the fast changing digital media environment.
With Mark Coad’s return to Melbourne in 2009, Leigh Terry and colleague Peter Horgan were promoted to Managing Directors of OMD Australia, where they saw the company collect such accolades as B&T’s Grand Prix, Media Agency of 2009, Media Agency of the Decade, Media Network of 2009 and Employer of 2009.

In March this year Leigh was promoted to CEO Omnicom Media Group ANZ; charged with the leadership of all Omnicom Media Group assets in Australia and New Zealand – the scope includes managing 11 offices across the brands OMD, PHD, M2M and Total Media.

Susana has dedicated her career in digital agencies, both creative and media disciplines in Asia Pacific. Before Neo, she was the MD of full service digital agency, XM Hong Kong (Bates/141 digital agency) and later, MD of XM/RMG Connect China.

Prior to her 8 years at WPP, she was the Client Services Director of Modem Media, North Asia (now part of Digitas). In 1997, as one of the first digital media pioneers in Asia Pacific, she spent 4 years as the Director of North Asia at Engage Media (aka Space Asia Media, the first adnetwork and adserving company in Asia). She has extensive full service agency experience-from web development, website usability, user experience, online marketing strategy and online media.

Currently, Susana is the Regional President of Neo@Oglvy - the digital media agency within the Ogilvy Group and part of WPP. From a startup, she built Neo into a network of 350+staff in 16 offices across 11 countries in Asia Pacific. Clients include IBM, Cisco, American Express, Lenovo, Kodak, Diageo, Motorola China...

Susana has a Bachelor of Science from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada and a Certificate of eCommerce from the Australian Graduate School of Management. At work, she tries hard to keep her head above the water. Outside work, she tries harder to stay underwater scuba diving.

A certified life and executive coach and a true internationalist, Andreas is armed with strong media, management and life experiences spanning three continents and six countries. He has a relentless passion for excellence and enjoys “building”.

With exemplary achievements and contributions in the global and local business communities, Andreas was inducted in the International WHO’s WHO of Professionals in January 2009 and in the YPO (Young Presidents’ Organization) in January 2010.

He started his career with DMB&B in New York and later managed JWT’s international clients in Greece. In 1997, he set sail to Asia. He first established D’Arcy’s media department in Japan and later restructured Starcom to be the strongest international media independent in the country. In Taiwan he led and built the Mindshare Group at the highest position in the market. In 2006 he relocated to Malaysia, assuming his current role at the helm of Omnicom Media Group (OMG), overseeing the operations for the award-winning OMD and PHD brands in the market.

Under his leadership, OMG has grown from strength to strength, and OMD Malaysia was conferred the Silver Award in 2008 and 2009 for Best Office of the Year in South East Asia – the only agency from Malaysia and the only media agency in South East Asia to win this highly coveted industry award.

He currently serves as a council member of the Malaysian Media Association (MSA), the Malaysian Digital Association (MDA) and is chairing the MDA training council. He has also served on the Board of Directors of the European Chamber of Commerce in Malaysia (EUMCCI), Vice Chairman of ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation), media advisor of the AIESEC Student Organization, juror in the Malaysian Effie Awards in 2008 & 2009, MSA 2009 and 2010 Malaysia Media Awards, 2010 PRCA Malaysia PR Awards, as well as MMA APAC - Mobile Marketing Awards 2010, among others.

Training being one of his many valuable contributions to the industry and academia, he has been organizing and conducting high rated training sessions for various clients, the Advertising/Media industry as well as several Universities locally and regionally (USM, UCTI, UTM, KDU and more). A much sought after industry speaker, Andreas has been invited to numerous industry talks and forums, locally and abroad, and has received extensive publicity across the region.

Born and raised in rural Greece, Andreas grew up amongst olive groves and vineyards at the heart of the island of Crete in the Aegean Sea. He graduated with High Honors in Advertising and Marketing from the University of Florida, is married to Lisa, an American-Japanese and enjoys being challenged by their digital native seven year old son, Alexi-Akito.