DDB Singapore overhauls leadership team as four employees leave to launch own agency
DDB Singapore has hired three industry heavyweights to its leadership team in Singapore, adding Chris Chiu as chief creative officer, Melvin Kuek as managing director and Guillaume Pagnoux as chief planner.
DDB Singapore overhauls leadership team
The new hires come as four DDB Singapore staff leave to set up a new agency called BLK J, which DDB Singapore has agreed to support. BLK J, started by Rowena Bhagchandani, Joji Jacob, Khalid Osman and Lester Lee, already counts StarHub as its founding client.
David Tang, chief executive of DDB Group Singapore and Asia, said: “Having helped set up Blk J, we’re bringing on the Champions Team at DDB for the next lap. Chris, Melvin and Guillaume are the best there are in our business and totally nice guys. They fit the ‘talented and nice’ DDB style and add to the pretty long list of top-class performers already under the DDB Group roof. It feels like we have a dream team of creative superheroes!”
The hire of Chris Chiu from J. Walter Thompson serves as a replacement for Jacob, who was group executive creative director at DDB Singapore. Kuek was previously managing director of Y&R Singapore and Pagnoux was regional planning director south and southeast Asia at TBWA.
"We’ve turned DDB from the best Singapore agency to become a creative powerhouse and a global hub agency," adds Neil Johnson, Creative Chairman of DDB Group Singapore. "Chris Chiu is huge for us as a creative leader and I’m really thrilled with the new talent – and especially the current, proven greats - we have with us”,
DDB Singapore has been building its senior creative team in reccentmonths and in September it hired its first ever social media creative director Benjamin Lee.
It also launched its first satellite office in Singapore at Temasek Polytechnic called Equator, which it wants to use to “groom the next generation of creative technologists”.