Grey Group merges SG ops under Malaysia, names new leaders

Grey Group is folding its Singapore operations under Malaysia, with Irene Wong (pictured left), CEO of Malaysia, and Graham Drew (pictured right), chief creative officer of Malaysia, taking on full commercial and creative responsibility for both countries. As CEO of Grey Malaysia and Singapore and CCO of Grey Malaysia and Singapore, Wong and Drew will have equal responsibility across the two offices.

Meanwhile, Singapore CEO Konstantin Popovic will leave at the end of the year to refocus his career on his passion for sustainability. He has been with Grey Singapore for eight years and spent 30 years in the industry. Popovic was handed the Singapore CEO role in 2018, replacing Subbaraju Alluri who left to take on the newly created role of area director - Indonesia and Thailand.

Wong and Popovic as well as their respective leadership teams will work closely over the next three months to ensure a seamless transition. Popovic said: "The planet needs all the help it can get, so creating a positive impact will be my mission for the next 30 years."

The team in Malaysia has 150 employees while Singapore has 45. There won't be any other senior leadership changes at this moment. In fact, Drew told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE that the team is closing out the year and already making plans for 2023. Also, while both teams share a number of network clients, there aren't any conflicts.

When asked how the decision came about, Drew said the move comes after several years of strong performance for Grey Malaysia and is the latest example of the agency's "borderless" philosophy. "This to us means making the very best of the talents and resources that we have available regardless of geography. Put simply – putting Malaysia and Singapore together makes us both stronger," he said.

Although Drew did not share how long this decision was in the works, he said the pandemic highlighted how agile the agency can be with the work they do. "We collaborated on a number of projects and the idea of making this something more permanent and formal has been on the horizon ever since then," he added.

Originally from the UK, Drew arrived at Grey in 2014 and as creative chief, he has led the team to "unparalleled creative success and noteworthy pitch wins", including Carlsberg, Tesco, Telekom Malaysia and WWF, the agency said. Over the past four years, he has successfully led borderless work across the network for clients such as SK-II, Enfagrow, Hong Kong Tourism Board and multiple projects as global ECD for Carlsberg. Drew is also the Chairman of the APAC Creative Council and a member of the Grey Global Creative Board.

Drew added: "One of the better things we learnt over the past few years is that utilising talent shouldn't be dependent on geography. Exposing the Singapore team to the creative talent of Malaysia and vice versa will be inspirational on all fronts and will be reflected in the work."

Meanwhile, Wong is an established figure in the Malaysian ad scene, having previously held posts at Leo Burnett and Naga DDB before joining Grey. She was appointed to CEO in 2015 and has worked with clients including TM, Ministry of Finance, The National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme, SEA Games 2017, P&G, Lenovo, Volvo, HSBC, Hong Leong Bank and Coway. According to Grey, the business has continued to grow year-on-year under her stewardship, with a healthy and stable mix of local and international clients.

Wong said this is an exciting opportunity for her and Drew as well as the teams, and a chance for synergy. "The truth is every studio has things that they are great and not so great at, being able to fill each other's gaps and becoming a stronger unit across the board is what this is all about," she added.

Grey's sister agency Ogilvy also adopted a similar model last year by integrating its Singapore and Malaysia offices to present one agency in two locations. It also created a new organisational structure featuring a newly integrated leadership team. In April, it named Kunal Jeswani group CEO for Singapore and Malaysia, succeeding Chris Riley.

Nirvik Singh (global COO and president international, Grey Group) said: "Wong is an astute leader and her ability to create, build and inspire teams are unmatched. As we turn the page to a new chapter for Grey Singapore, I can think of no one better suited to take the reins. She will build on the strong foundation of our network and drive lasting value for clients in today's disruptive market environment."

He added that Drew's work shapes culture. "Drew has been instrumental in taking Grey's creativity to a global level. He's a natural storyteller whose energy and expertise are great motivators, and his campaigns will be discussed for many years. He avails every opportunity and is always ready to make the next ground-breaking, famously effective work for our clients," Singh said. He also thanked Popovic and wished him great success in all his future endeavours.

Read the rest of the interview here:

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: What type of talents do you plan to bring on board?

Drew: Experience has shown us that chemistry is every bit as important as talent. Egos don’t find much oxygen in our team, everyone here gets their hands dirty, we all share load and when we pick up the metals, there are a ton of dirty fingerprints on them. This industry does a great job of making a remarkable job feel like it is just a bundle of stress and deadlines – in reality what we do is make ideas come to life.

You can sit in a room or a café with your mates, come up with an idea and in a month’s time someone pays you hundreds of thousands of dollars to go make it. When you do that together, where everyone genuinely feels part of it, there’s nothing like it. This is how we have grown the Malaysian team from 40 to 150 people over the past few years and now Singapore is 100% part of that.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: The Great Resignation and quiet quitting are two trends that have impacted the industry. How are you motivating the team?

Drew: If you want a nine-to-five job, then advertising isn’t for you. You need to know that going in – but that doesn’t mean that you can’t find balance. The past few years have shown us all how everyone’s dining table can make a great desk. But we also found that without a physical boundary between work and home it can all get unhealthily blurred. We also found that culture takes a massive nosedive when you aren’t together. We try and help our teams create their own boundaries between work and home, no weekend reviews, no "half day" comments when people go home.

We also encourage them to come to work, just be physically together as much as possible – that doesn’t have to be at the office, just so long as it isn’t always via a black mirror. Ideas happen when you aren’t thinking about them – that never happens on a zoom call, it happens in the bars, cafes, kitchens, lifts, lunch tables – that’s where our people need to be. In the past few years, we’ve become Agency of the Year and won at all the major shows – our motivation for our teams is quite the reverse. They did that, they proved to us that anything is possible.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: What are some advertising trends you are excited about for 2023?

Drew: If anyone else says metaverse I might have to break something...but only virtually. We’re all looking forward to when we truly make useful use of the space. Cannes this year was full of purpose, which is amazing and "solvevertising" is always going to be a key theme. But some of the standouts that I saw were just fun; they entertained, pure and simple. I think, given the way the world is looking – the role of advertising as a bright spark amongst the gloom could not be more important.

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