GSK media lead to chair The Drum Digital Advertising Awards APAC 2019
Silas Lewis-Meilus, APAC director, media consumer health from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) will chair The Drum Digital Advertising Awards APAC 2019.
GSK director to chair The Drum Digital Advertising Awards APAC 2019
Lewis-Meilus is joined by digital gurus from across the APAC region including Wunderman Thompson, Media Exchange Singapore, Kayo Sports, Mediacorp, Essence, S4Capital and Unilever, with more to be announced.
In the 25th anniversary year of the first digital ad, these awards will once again be celebrating and rewarding the teams, individuals and the work that is making the biggest difference in the industry throughout APAC.
Over the next 18 months, however, there is going to be plenty of change in the digital space across APAC, suggests Lewis-Meilus. "China’s advanced state of platform thinking and eComm connectivity are going to start to weave their ways into some of the players we work within the rest of Asia.
"This will have a dramatic impact on the way we build brands, connect them to the right consumers and importantly allow companies to have a greater connection between their marketing and conversions. Additionally, I believe there will be great strides made in data availability from key first-party data holders which will significantly improve our ability to make our advertising relevant."
Lewis-Meilus is currently the APAC head of media for GSK Consumer Healthcare. Prior to this, he worked as the global media lead for the McDonald’s. In this role, he managed a team of subject matter experts who worked to drive systemic improvements and transformation in the media space across strategy, attributable growth, effectiveness and efficiency. Previously he also led McDonald’s global digital engagement teams in Singapore and London overseeing social, CRM, merchandising, marketing and media. This allowed him to lead a group of digital experts tasked with driving change in the organization through a variety of marketing disciplines.
On why he got involved with the awards, Lewis-Meilus explains that as an industry, digital advertising still has great strides to make. "There is still a swath of baseless, general advertising being pushed out to consumers who’s messages are completely irrelevant to them.
"Does it work? Sure, in a way. Could it be better? Absolutely. That’s our job and for awards like these offer us the chance to help everyone improve. I want to see results and how the efforts made have positively impacted actual business measures."
Check out the full judging panel here. The deadline for the awards has now passed but you can still enter by applying for an extension.
Sponsors of these awards are: AdColony, Telaria and OpenX