dentsu SG bolsters team with slew of hires across CXM, creative, media

Dentsu International has bolstered its bench strength with Singapore-based appointments made across its creative, CXM, and media service lines. As part of its people-focused investment in future-ready talent across the business, the appointments further anchor dentsu as a strategic partner to help its clients to thrive in a world of accelerated change.

To support the growth and maturity of its CXM service line in APAC, dentsu has appointed Rachit Dayal as chief marketing officer, Merkle APAC. Reporting to Zhengda ‘Z’ Shen, president, Merkle APAC and Erin Hutchinson, global CMO, Merkle, Dayal is responsible for helping clients to discover and harness the full spectrum of Merkle’s customer experience offerings as well as of dentsu’s alliance partners including, Adobe, Amazon, Google, Salesforce and Microsoft. Following Dayal’s transition into Merkle’s leadership, Sanchit Mendiratta now helms Happy Marketer as managing director in addition to his current role as data lead for dentsu Singapore.

Zhengda ‘Z’ Shen, president, Merkle APAC, remarked, “I am incredibly excited to have Dayal take on the role of chief marketing officer, Merkle APAC. Dayal created one of the region's most unique brands, client portfolios and team cultures at Happy Marketer. Since joining us in 2019 after dentsu’s acquisition of Happy Marketer, he has shown immense leadership and vision for how marketing and customer experience can be in a digital age. In the five years that we have been in the region, Merkle APAC has made incredible progress. Thousands of talented Merklers and hundreds of ground-breaking clients across the region need their stories told, and I cannot think of anyone better than Rachit to lead us to our realise our full potential.”

Creative service line

As part of its evolution to deliver ideas-led experiences designed for the digital age, dentsu’s creative service line has further augmented its team in Singapore with people investments made across the breadth and depth of client leadership, business growth, brand and integrated strategy, creative, and experience strategy and design.

Its client leadership and growth team will continue to partner clients to drive growth through integrated solutions with Prema Techinamurth joining as senior business director alongside Adeline Tan who takes on the role of media director. In brand and integrated strategy, Brien Alexandar Daniels has joined as strategy director responsible for identifying and translating consumer insights into meaningful communications ideas.

The service line’s creative team has also taken a boost with Steve Kyriakou and Maurice Wee appointed as creative directors to push the creative boundaries and deliver solutions that build brand salience and drive growth for clients. In addition, its experience strategy and design unit has welcomed Vera Justina Li as experience director to deliver unified design experiences that surprise and delight customers.

Media service line

In the Media service line, dentsu has reinforced its client and product and strategy leadership to deliver thought-leadership as well as world-class products that will achieve both cut-through and efficiency for its global, regional and local stable of Singapore-based clients. The agency has appointed Jonah Brown and Toby Ruddock as client presidents to drive end-to-end delivery of its strategic product for clients to achieve their business growth and transformation ambitions. Leveraging Carat’s “Designing for People” framework, Brown focuses on driving brand growth through agile design thinking principles for the agency’s global network clients and local clients, while Ruddock takes on a global remit on a network client.

At the same time, Pankaj Nayak has joined as president, product strategy and delivery, to lead product and capabilities and to ensure quality delivery of services for clients. In addition, Sonya David has transitioned into the Media service line as Strategy Lead after five years in strategy with dentsu’s creative service line. Both Nayak and David will be responsible for defining the areas for future growth as well as new offerings for current and new clients in Singapore.

Commenting on the strengthened people portfolio out of Singapore, Prakash Kamdar, CEO, dentsu Singapore, said, “Our people are the heartbeat of our business and a core building block of our go-to-market proposition. It is, therefore, our strategic priority to invest in critical people capabilities at all levels of the business, including fortifying bench strengths across our service lines. This means empowering our existing talents to grow into senior leadership roles while welcoming the best human capital from the industry into dentsu.

“Our people strategy forms a significant part of our overall transformation journey to ensure that we always have our front foot forward to champion meaningful progress. As seismic shifts caused by the global pandemic continue to rumble under our feet, a stronger dentsu puts us in good stead to work collaboratively with our stakeholders to create new frontiers and emerge stronger together. More than ever, our clients can have further confidence in us as their key partner for growth through the dynamic external landscape”, Kamdar added.