Dentsu Aegis hands Audrey Kuah executive director of media role in APAC
Audrey Kuah has taken on the role of executive director of media business for Asia Pacific at Dentsu Aegis Network, on top of her current responsibilities as managing director of the network’s Global Data Innovation Centre.
Kuah’s new role will see her cover the Singapore and work closely with Phil Adrien, managing director of the OneSG Media Group.
Kuah’s new role will see her cover the Singapore hub and work closely with Phil Adrien, managing director of the One Singapore (OneSG) Media Group, which was formed after the network restructured its Singapore operations and layoff around 2% of its workforce.
That saw the likes of Sunil Yadav, the former president for APAC at Amplifi, Kristian Barnes, the former chief client officer, and media chairman at DAN, and Sean O’Brien, the former chief executive of Posterscope and MKTG departing.
Before the restructure happened, the network announced that Nick Waters, who was the chief executive of APAC, will depart to take on the role of executive chairman for the UK and Ireland.
“Audrey has been instrumental in the transformation of our network since 2011. Over the years, she displayed a solid record of building high caliber teams, making real visionary insights and transforming brands,” said Masaya Nakamura, the deputy chairman and chief growth officer for APAC at Dentsu Aegis.
“Audrey demonstrates a deep understanding of the business landscape and is the right person to lead our OneSG Media Group together with Phil. I look forward to working closely with her.”
OneSG consist of the likes of Carat, Dentsu X, iProspect and Vizeum, and was headed by Jonathan Chadwick, who is currently the chief executive officer for APAC at Carat. However, Chadwick has announced he will take on another role within DAN and relocate to Australia, with Adrien taking on the role on an interim basis.
DAN also previously announced it will split its APAC business into three clusters which will be named Greater North, Greater South and ANZ.
Greater North will consist of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea, Greater South will include India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and Myanmar and ANZ will consist of Australia and New Zealand.
The split saw the network promoted Ashish Bhasin to the chief executive officer of the expanded region of Greater South, tasked Takaki Hibino to oversee Greater North in the interim, in addition to his role leading the regional business and retained Henry Tajer to lead the ANZ business.
That meant that Phil Teeman, the former DAN Singapore and South East Asia chief executive, Rob Hughes, the former DAN North Asia chief executive and DAN China chief executive Susana Tsui all exited the business.
It then promoted Dick Van Motman, previously the global president of Dentsu brand agencies, to the global chief executive officer of creative, based in Singapore.