Weber Shandwick Malaysia names Blake Hoo GM

Weber Shandwick Malaysia has named Blake Hoo its GM. In his new role, he looks after the day-to-day operations of the business including key client management, new business development, HR and finance matters. Hoo (pictured) reports in to Rozani Jainudeen, who remains the MD of the firm. She will be transitioning to a more senior advisory role for key clients and projects in 2022, he told A+M.

At the same time, he will also work closely with Joanna Ooi, EVP (healthcare) and Adli Abdul Karim, EVP (corporate). As the senior leadership team with a diverse set of expertise and experience, Hoo said they will be working closely to oversee the management of the agency's clients and growth of the firm.

"The past two years have been challenging for us due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other external factors that were beyond our control. It is not business as usual anymore, especially for us in the communications business. We essentially had to adapt or die," Hoo said.

Not only has the agency managed to adapt to the new normal in the business, it also took the opportunity to accelerate its goal to become the communications agency of the future that Weber Shandwick was aiming to be.

"My immediate remit as GM is to ensure that we continue to do well in what we do best in the traditional PR space, and also to ramp up strategy, advisory and digital services for clients and prospects in their increasingly challenging business environment," he explained. The other key challenge that he hopes to solve is to also ensure that Weber Shandwick continues to have the right mix of talent across different skillsets and experience levels to deliver the best quality of work for its clients.

He was more recently EVP at Weber Shandwick Malaysia and has been with the agency since 2013. Before that, he was with Text100 Malaysia and Compass Communications as account manager.