Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase





2022 | |

Gamechanger in Innovation Towards Transformation

Advertiser: -
Brand: -
Creative Agency: -
Credits: Winnie Chen - Partner, Head of Product & Growth

Background
Winnie is the real tangible example of what happens when passion meets grit. She has played a game changer role in multiple role across organizations not just transforming the businesses but also the people she has worked with. She is the glue that binds passionate people within high performance teams. She leads SPG for the agency group – Strategy, Product and Growth. This has been able to give her the perfect platform to exercise her strategy and people leadership skills. Clients come to her for trusted advice and that makes her an invaluable contributor to the marketing industry. Her ability to switch between long term future-proof Digital Transformation discussions, to strategic thinking in Comms Planning, to brainstorming innovations with partners for client campaigns, to managing daily operational problem-solving scenarios, to leading almost all new business pitches for the agency is one of her key strengths. In less than a year with the agency, Winnie led a number of initiatives from hard business KPIs to softer people metrics. – Launching agency-wide products across E-Commerce and Influencer Marketing between just 2 internal stakeholders – Leading >10 new business pitches with some key Global and regional wins and successfully retained 5 non-competitive key account renewals amidst high team attrition – Streamlining and growing agency’s tools and capabilities previously managed by multiple or no stakeholders

What’s Special about You & Key Achievements
Winnie loves building new things, perfect recipe for her role in Product & Growth. While the industry focuses on short term tactical wins through incremental optimisation, she believes in growth planning for disruptions in a sustainable tomorrow. Balancing the art of Marketing with the science of data and insights, she accelerated development of the agency’s product roadmap: – Accelerating local adoption of Global products across gaming, digital transformation identity solutions, attention economy and sustainability offerings – Build and launch total E-Commerce offering with products from Marketplace Optimisation to LiveCommerce solutions to help start, scale and grow client’s E-Commerce stream accelerated with the Covid pandemic – Solving client’s perpetual challenges of data-driven insights in selection and measurement of influencer engagement combining both art and science of working with KOLs – Drive client conversations to unlock potential for Digital and Data transformation in preparation for the cookie-less future, unlocking new projects beyond the Media scope, and building a strong pipeline to achieve scale to soon launch a new CXM Consulting business pillar Not being put down by the challenges of the pandemic years, she has truly revolutionised businesses when agility and perseverance was most needed. Winnie has managed to achieve key wins in under a year with the agency: – Product – launched >5 local products in 6 months expanding local expertise and capabilities for existing and new clients – Profit – secured >5 client projects beyond Media buying scope in Strategy & Consulting, diversifying revenue opportunities for the agency network – Profile – Led and secured 2 new business wins in Q1 2022 thus far, one Global and one regional worth >RM20m in billings

Leadership Skills
Winnie is highly passionate and thrives in perfecting her craft. She’s a ringleader when taking on #1 roles in bringing order to chaos, and delivers results in the #2 seat when operationalizing big visions of the organization. As an INFJ personality, she has high EQ to unlock motivators in people internally and externally: – People Management She dedicates 1on1 time with each team members regularly to listen and discuss goals, challenges and more. This led to some restructure for better casting of people to the accounts they work on. This proved rewarding with improved employee satisfaction scores, improved individual performance ratings, off-cycle promotions and unprecedented bonus for >60% of the team members this year, the first in 4 years! – Extreme Ownership Winnie believes in leadership by example and never shies from rolling up her sleeves to work alongside her team. In many of the pitches she led, she guides the team with precise directions and examples, builds slides in pitch decks way into the night and weekends with the team, and even help coach individuals in pitch strategies and presentations. This resulted in key Global and Regional wins that she led personally, worth >RM20m in billings in the past 3 months alone. – Coaching One of her direct reports in Strategy completed her probation period in half the time, with a “Very Strong” performance rating. She’s due for an unprecedented increment and is now enrolled in a Next Gen Leadership program to fast track her growth.