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Background
While everyone loves an underdog story, not many realize the amount of blood, sweat and tears that are shed in this ruthless and unforgiving industry where for every three things that get resolved, other five arises. Success doesn’t come overnight. Success here in advertising lies in the tedious grind day-in and day-out for weeks and sometimes months before one sees the light at the end of the tunnel. It requires a lot of hard work, but above everything it demands grit and humility. And it brings me great pleasure to be writing this entry for Saravanan Asogan, an individual who embodies these characteristics.

What’s Special about You & Key Achievements
Out to make to make a mark and a legacy in the industry, Saravanan has and continues to push himself beyond media and the status quo to deliver fresh and outside-of-the-box solutions: 1. How He Turned a Coke Can into a Nationwide CNY Greetings? During a period where people couldn’t travel back home for CNY, Saravanan led the team to the launch Coke’s first AR campaign in Malaysia. Malaysians were able to send personalised AR Greetings to their loved ones by scanning an actual Coke can. It changed the way how campaigns were traditionally executed beyond the conventional touchpoints and resulted in positive growth in brand attributes, ‘Brand I Love’ by 8+ points in Malaysia and +1 in Singapore. 2. Wooing Malaysian Mums with the Launch of Anmum Essential Gold The driving force behind the launch of the Essential Gold product variant in Malaysia. Saravanan lead the team to a digital takeover strategy through Google Max activation on display and video, followed with a 360-content strategy as well as expanding the brand’s e-commerce capabilities to include both on and off platform commerce inventories. Within 8 months, the brand snatched 1.6% market share and the e-com business grew in size by more than 2x making Malaysia a top 5 market. 3. Geofencing Malaysian to an Uplift in Vaccination During the Pandemic Instead of opting for a conventional digital campaign in support of Redoxon’s partnership with MOH, he lead the team to design a hyperlocalised mobile campaign to ensure maximum localisation. All yellow and red zones were geofenced with customized messaging in which all banners were made to dynamically change daily based on the status of a particular region, delivering a more precise communication! Vaccination registration increased by 10 mil while vaccination rate increased 50% during this period of time! Redoxon’s new product searches drove +153% search increased and +40% traffic vs. P6M.

Leadership Skills
Through his tenure with us, he has been nothing short of dynamic and was able to deliver consistent and great results and below are key highlights where his leadershipship skills shine the brightest: 1. Thoughtleadership : Turbocharging Fonterra E-Com Full-Suite Activation Across Malaysia and Vietnam Saravanan understood the importance of an e-commerce first approach during the pandemic and led the implementation of a full suite of on-platform and off-platform inventories across Google, Facebook, Shopee and Lazada. He subsequently also designed a 4-quadrant framework which enables micro-optimization on an SKU level instead. The results: Fonterra E-Com in Malaysia and Vietnam are now consistently within the top 5 performing market in Southeast Asia. 2. Finesse in Account Leadership / Management : Leading TCCC and Fonterra to One of The Best Client Rating Point in 5 Years Within 18 months, Saravanan provided stability and innovation in the highly competitive FMCG category through his tenacity and grit, achieving one of the best client ratings since: “Throughout the span of this turbulent year (pandemic), Sara has been a giant rock as our media partner, being consistenly agile and dynamic to address multiple business challenges the brand faced.” – Marketing Director Fonterra “As a team leader I saw how he helped enable and grow his team through patient guidance while from a business standpoint, he helped pushed us into innovative digital media executions that led to several indusry awards!” – Global Social Engagement Director, The Coca-Cola Company 3. Ability to Lead, Nurture and Grow : Driving Force Being the Agency’s Super Pitch Team Being the jack of all trades, Saravanan is also a part of the leadership team of the Agency Super Ptich Team which in the past 6 months as achieved: 25 clients engaged; 16 clients pitched; 6 new clients won! These includes e-hailing giants across Asia, one of the biggest airline companies in Asia, Malaysia’s top food aggregator app, world’s top 15 bank, and a few key govermental clients. In totality he brought in over RM35mil worth of billing in FY21 / FY22! The success Saravanan enjoys today was not achieved overnight, it was endless cycles of constant learning. From analysing data, building partnerships, understanding a business’s needs to knowing what it takes to lead and nurture a team, every lesson has led him to where he is today.

Background
Great planners don’t just plan, they build. Maaz Khan is proof. Maaz builds systems. He creates better ways of working, thinking, and solving client’s business challenges. Every project, account and team Maaz has led runs better thereafter. He builds teams. He works with every member of his team to make them better, synchronizing their personal development with work goals, and eventually used this experience investing in people to build an entire agency organization within GroupM. He builds on himself, constantly. He creates learning moments that allow him and his team to improve their capabilities together, effectively levelling up to meet bigger challenges. There’s a reason why Maaz elevated quickly from Business Lead to GM of his own agency within the group, why he has consistently won new business pitches and established and led one of the most awarded planning teams in Malaysia the past 5 years. The reason is fundamental: Maaz Khan builds.

What’s Special about You & Key Achievements
1- Maaz won THE pitch, bringing Nestle home. He led end-to-end the planning assignment for one of the most critical pitches in GroupM Malaysia history, the Nestle account pitch, a gruelling 6-month “fight” for the business that in the end saw Maaz and his team successfully win the RM120M account, a commercial value larger than the entire portfolio of many established agencies. He then effectively onboarded the business by creating his own agency within GroupM called OpenMind, a Nestle-dedicated organization built from the ground-up, talent-sourced and led by Maaz himself. This monumental achievement was not “lightning in a bottle.” Working off the momentum of successive new business pitch wins he led – highlighted by 3 consecutive wins in 2017 – Domino’s, PLUS and Nespresso, Maaz worked to earn the right to lead and champion at the next level, so that when Nestle came knocking, he was ready. 2- He brought the future of planning forward. Maaz created “Campathon” – a system for planning and launching campaigns within 24 hours for jump que projects, currently used locally for various MediaCom clients, and is being rolled out globally, effectively fulfilling what was deemed impossible: agile media planning and execution at warp-speed, often demanded of agencies by clients to match today’s dynamic marketplace. Beyond agility, Maaz believes in open learning and open source, building up his Python coding capabilities to develop a media planning package released under MIT license. He then parlayed his built-up knowledge, to work with and speak the same language with future-forward media owners, creating one of the most innovative and sustained campaigns in Shell Malaysia history. Working with media owner’s digital developers, Maaz created dynamic and real-time customized billboard messaging, informed by an image-recognition learning algorithm developed using TensorFlow. The AI/ML models established for customize billboard ads first trained on Maaz’ campaigns are now part of the industry standard in the Malaysian advertising landscape.

Leadership Skills
1- Maaz invests in people. As a Business Lead and later as Head of Product and Innovation, Maaz set up working teams from the ground up at MediaCom, developing people from widely different backgrounds without any media planning knowledge, and training them to be media professionals, carving out their own unique niche: • A junior writer from a small publication was trained by Maaz in 4 short years towards being named Planner of the Year in Malaysia. • A luxury industry PR event coordinator for small-scale clients trained up to lead planner for 3 accounts, doing regional work for Southeast Asian markets. • A doctor by profession, but not by personal calling, was trained by Maaz to successfully pivot into the media industry as a planner, all in 3 months. Maaz’ team enjoyed 80% retention rate, twice the industry standard, because of his commitment to their personal progress. To successfully onboard the newly won Nestle business, Maaz had the vision to create a dedicated agency for the account: OpenMind, putting the entire 43-strong team in place in just 2 months, sourcing, and casting talent, and collaborating with Nestle and GroupM to develop the work systems and practices to get the agency fully onboard and ready to roll. At a time when agencies are experiencing massive resignations, OpenMind has maintained 0% attrition! 2- He drives his team with thought leadership, then gives them the stage. Maaz’ direction drove his business unit to the creation of some of the most innovative and well recognized campaigns across markets, becoming the highest awarded and most recognized team at MediaCom Malaysia five years straight: • 15 medals across local, regional, and global awards, with 8 golds in 2018 alone, and 11x a finalist, with Maaz showcasing every planner on-project by name. • A Planner of the Year gold recipient for a direct report in 2020. • And a Shell campaign that created a bespoke footfall attribution framework named under WARC 100 most innovative media campaigns of the world, previously known as the GUNN report.

Background
The universe is changing, times are changing, and media is changing. With changing times, one needs to adapt, grow and foster the challenges. The rise of media, the rise of NFT and the rise of the “apps world” has made media more challenging. That is what keeps Zohair apart from the rest. He fosters the new challenges, growths, and the expansion of media universe through clutter breaking strategies A hard-working individual driven to sweat for the work he passionately loves that is communication and brands. He has been associated with the advertising and media industry for over 9 years now including depth of multiple markets (Pakistan, Malaysia, and Singapore). Having worked on some of the dream brands like Oreo, Cadbury, Coca Cola, Durex, Dettol, and Child Nutrition, Zohair has been the driving force behind the media campaigns that these brands have done over the years. Besides his professional contributions, Zohair also advocates knowledge sharing and empowerment through which his team has acquired multiple skills from digital to media planning and client servicing. He has himself also decorated his profile with multiple certifications in Facebook, Google, Media Audit and Media Planning. On personal front Zohair thrives on new challenges, sports and travel. He has travelled across more than 10 countries till date to quench his thirst for exposure and culture exchange

What’s Special about You & Key Achievements
The most profound strength and superpower that Zohair comes with is his ability to adapt to the demands of the situation and penetrate in a way to take control of the situation. Such key strength is what makes him stand out from other planners and resources in the industry. By working on different demands and assignments some at times most turbulent he has proven track record of turning the tides into not only his favour, but also benefit the Groupe and grow the accounts or assignments he has taken over. Some recent examples of such contributions from Zohair are his first assignment of Mondelez Account in Malaysia as Associate Director. The client rating at the point of Zohair joining and leading the team was way below average. The last day Zohair spent on this account, client rating was best in the entire Southeast Asia. Within this tenure he worked out various campaigns getting tremendous accolades on the client side. Another example is his journey on Reckit Benckiser when he was asked to take over the assignment with a completely new team and stabilize it in a space of few months. Client evaluation results showed his team scored better in one wave than his predecessors. His relationship with partners and critical stakeholders is phenomenal through which he has been able to negotiate incremental values for client time and again on critical campaigns or issues. Some of the key high achievement campaigns he has done in last 2 years are Oreo Interest Hack- First of its kind regional Personalization @ Scale campaign with Oreo during the COVID lockdowns, received multiple accolades on client marketing side Oreo Raya 2021 (Post campaign Oreo was the second most favourite brand of Muslims celebrating Ramadan and Raya)- First time in SEA live streaming with influencers was done by MDLZ Chipsmore Monopoly (Driving more than 10K participations in a digital activation game along with double digit market share growth in 2021)- First of its kind gaming execution for MDLZ in 2021 within SEA.

Leadership Skills
Zohair is a kind of leader who thrives on relationships, empathy, and empowerment. However, this does not make him weak professionally. He prefers to inspire rather than make work a duty for his team which is a critical issue in agencies where resources feel the brunt of work and give up on all the motivation to continue to work. He has fostered the kind of culture where his team is empathetic towards fellows and clients but at the same time thoroughly professional. He believes in developing the right skill set amongst his fellows in a way that not only promotes the growth of accounts, but growth of individuals as well. His team retention is close to 100% in last two years so people really want to work for him and under him. Zohair believes in the fact that ownership and pro-active nature are the two critical components that can drive the growth of an individual and he ensures this is translated into his team members naturally as they are seen to take complete ownership of the work they do. Growth of a leader is only possible when his sub-reporters also grow and Zohair ensures who-ever he is working with has the vision to grow on where they need to be and the steps or sacrifices required to achieve that goal.

Background
Pravin embodies a passion for science and numbers, and crafts compelling solutions in addressing clients’ business challenges. As the agency’s Strategy Planning Associate Director, deep-diving into data and analytics is his key to unlocking innovative solutions to wow potential and existing clients. Pravin takes a multidisciplinary perspective – thanks to a career journey encompassing creative agency, digital agency and brand consulting. On pitches, his data-driven holistic approach and creative thinking has ensured the agency does not merely propose media solutions, but well thought-through total marketing solutions, with a powerfully-differentiated idea at the core of the thinking.

What’s Special about You & Key Achievements
As a media rookie, with no formal digital or eCommerce experience, Pravin was told that there was no way he would make it in media. Fast forward to today, with only 3 years of media experience, Pravin has proved his naysayers wrong. He managed to transform himself into a coveted hybrid planner with a commercial mindset who not only understands his client’s business challenges but uses innovative technology and data to deliver tangible business results via three key strategies: STRATEGY1: LASER FOCUS ON CLIENTS SEEKING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND E- COMMERCE SOLUTIONS – SimeDarbyProperty: Pravin blended established planning skills with brave new world techniques to design and deliver a highly nuanced system of creative assets that could be dynamically tailored and served to property buying audiences in real-time. He developed a mapping tool which drilled deep into data to understand relevant triggers and touchpoints, property preferences, features that resonated with each audience set. The campaign managed to drive high quality leads with 73% of leads leading to sales conversion – a first for SDP. – Pravin explored the realm of E-Commerce and approached unifi to see how TM could position them as an enabler to help out SME’s during the pandemic. This new assignment broke the agency out of the traditional media mould for TM and brought us into the space of consulting and E-Commerce. Pravin successfully launched cari@unifi, an e-commerce market place that brought together 198k buyers to over 2,000 sellers. STRATEGY2: CONSULTING POWERED BY PRECISE INTELLIGENCE Through numerous explorative conversations with prospective clients, he identified opportunities to diversify our revenue stream by providing consultancy services. One such example was with Magnum 4D, a number forecasting company, operating in a highly regulated environment. The challenge was that Magnum primarily depended on sales from walk-in customers. It was therefore difficult to prove marketing effectiveness. As part of their internal transformation journey, Pravin was tasked with providing market sizing and insights into Magnum4D existing and new customers. Leveraging on attribution modeling he ingested three disparate sets of data (Client 1st party data, marketing performance data and footfall data) and ensured there was no loss to audience measurement from the time someone engaged with any form of communication to the time someone walked into a Magnum outlet and bought a lottery ticket. This was a first of its kind solution for both the client and agency. STRATEGY3: PRECISELY UNDERSTANDING THE Malay SME – the underserved market. Pravin identified key SME’s which were in the process of digitalization, that would benefit from our consultancy services. He then deployed a test and learn approach so that he could fine tune the way the agency worked with SME’s. He worked with PTTI, a tuition centre located in Bangi, to strategize its survival during Covid-19 and transform it from an offline-to-online tuition center, setting PTTI on a growth trajectory. Pravin’s Key Achievement’s in 2021- March2022: • Led 15 pitches • 100% pitch conversion • Delivered RM56mill in new business • 16 local awards (10 MediaSpecialistAwards, 6 DAwards) • 1 regional award (2021 CampaignAsia SEANewBizTeam) • Built a proprietary audience precision framework developed for the agency Group • Built sales packages for SMEs • Created IdeaLab – a community of young talents who develop test and learn solutions • Custodian of Agency Happiness Survey since 2020 • Created a new media space – turning festive gift hampers into an awareness channel for struggling single mothers (refer to supporting documents)

Leadership Skills
Building Precisely Human Culture. Pravin believes that the biggest issue plaguing the media industry is high attrition. Today, talents habitually hop between agencies and clients. So, it’s difficult to retain people with the right spirit to service a client’s business. Especially one that requires media talents to live and breathe the brand. This insight pushed Pravin to focus on agency talent wellbeing. Which led him to develop and implement MAGIC (an award-winning performance tool) that automated the agency team’s planning and reporting duties in real-time. This enabled the team to cut down manual day to day reporting, so they could focus on their personal growth by learning and experimenting interesting work in media. Hence Pravin created idea lab – a community of young talents who develop test and learn solutions.

Background
A highly versatile & strategic marketer with over 6 years+ of working experience across traditional & digital media that has worked on key accounts such Sunway , S P Setia , Toyota , Boh Plantation, Swisse, Duopharma, Philips & Many more. Has extensive media knowledge, driven with the support of insights & data to be able to create an integrated marketing solution to achieve client’s organizational goals. Experience includes but not limited to: media buy (Offline & Digital), media management, new business development and strategic initiatives.

What’s Special about You & Key Achievements
Shean demonstrates a strong work ethic and often exceed expected productivity levels which also translates to many good feedbacks from his peers and colleagues as well. He lends support and guidance to employees and is highly respected by peers and partners for sharing concerns, problems, and opportunities. First go-to person when other employees need help navigating a challenge or resolving an issue Shean initiates a number of conversations with his client portfolio to try new things aside of their hygiene buys. There’s definitely room to further introduce ecommerce solutions where applicable in the coming year. He assisted in crafting and compiling materials for award submission and holds himself responsible for making sure the projects he is on is recognized. Although there were several significant challenges this year, he clearly displayed his resilience and commitment which is admirable. First few who always jumps on any training opportunities. Even for Facebook Blueprint certification, he was helpful towards his subordinate and peers guiding them with tips on how to pass the exams.

Leadership Skills
Shean leadership style is very flexible- though- because he would focus more on facilitation than on leading from the front. He try to make sure every team member knows what he or she needs to know to make sure the piece fits. He also put the task and the results before doing things in his own particular way so everyone is comfortable presenting their ideas in their own style- and he encourage people to discuss things until either a consensus emerges or a decision simply needs to be made. Shean have an open, enthusiastic style of leadership. A leader should want to nurture others to their fullest potential. He strive to be an example for others to follow and help guide people to better themselves and improve their career trajectory. By emulating these leadership qualities, he found that teammates aren’t afraid to bring him to their questions or most significant challenges. They know he is there to help them and am always willing to collaborate to find a solution. He able to connect the dots and map-out a realistic plan of action in advance. He have a strategy that serves as the foundation for how the problem will be approached and managed. They anticipate the unexpected and utilize the strengths of their people to assure the strategy leads to a sustainable solution.