Institute of Advertising Singapore collaborates with industry and government on mentorship platform to boost talent attraction and retention

According to the IAS, this is the first time the industry has come together on such a scheme in Singapore.

Shufen Goh, president of the IAS and principal and co-founder of R3 Worldwide, told The Drum: “In Asia certainly there hasn’t been an industry-led mentorship programme and even within big agencies with certain scale there hasn’t been formal mentorship programmes for their own people.”

For the Singapore government, the programme sits within its plans to grow the marketing and advertising industry, a part of which is talent development. So far the EDB has focused largely on technical skills, according to Clarence Chua, director of professional services at the EDB, referencing a programmatic training programme is launched alongside Google last year.

“When we go about developing an industry there are quite a few aspects to it and the first is, how do we get our companies to grow the top line? The second aspect is how we help them to innovate and build capabilities and the third is usually about the ecosystem and whether they have good partnerships. Underpinning all of that is talent and the resources. When we were looking at what we could do for the industry, we realised that we were focusing quite a bit on the technical skills, such as digital marketing. It’s really important because people have built their careers on being good planners or creatives but there is a need to incorporate digital. But at the same time, we realised there hasn’t been a concerted effort, both at the firm level and at the industry level, to look at some of these longer term issues,” he said.

Chua said a key long term issue is retaining Singaporean talent within the agency ecosystem, who are currently being lured away by the likes of Google and other technology businesses, as well as the brands themselves that are being encouraged by the Singapore government to set up marketing centres of excellence in the country. “The agencies have to work doubly hard in attracting, retaining and also developing talent,” he commented.

For the IAS, it’s the latest in a series of schemes set up to encourage talent development for the industry in Singapore. It hosts a major career fair each year and has a grad scheme called Upstarts.

According to Goh, the job of organisations like the IAS is core because they are able to encourage the industry to cross pollinate, something that is essential in a market like Singapore that doesn’t have the scale or history of an industry like the US or the UK, but has similar ambitions creatively.

“The lack of scale in a market like Singapore forces us to come together as an industry. We are playing catch up to the UK where the IPA is now 100 years old. There’s a lot of importance and prestige attached to the industry [in the UK] because it’s seen as the engine of creativity and the IPA has a role to play to promote British advertising globally. We are not at that stage but we need to start to make people engaged and proud, and therefore stay within the industry. A lot of people come into the industry and they leave,” she explains.

The mentor and mentee will meet at least once a quarter, with goals set to ensure effectiveness, and the IAS has organised training and facilitation sessions to make sure that the mentoring works for both sides.

Mentors taking part in Mentors@IAS include Corine Ooi-Bremmer, director of Anmum at Fonterra, John Hadfield CEO of BBH Asia Pacific, Valerie Madon, head of Creative Shop at Facebook Southeast Asia, Luka Nathans, regional CEO of Iris Worldwide, Lizi Hamer, regional creative director at Octagon, Lou Dela Pena, CEO of Publicis Communication and many more.