Wunderman Thompson Malaysia names Patrick Yap MD

Wunderman Thompson Malaysia has named Patrick Yap (pictured) managing director, reporting to Annette Male, CEO Wunderman Thompson APAC. His appointment comes after former CEO Saurabh Saksena left in August to take on the role of president at WPP's Red Fuse Communications. In a statement to A+M, Yap said he is tasked to build the Wunderman Thompson brand in Malaysia, driving growth both for the agency and for ambitious brands.

This includes strengthening existing capabilities by deepening expertise across data and analytics, customer experience and creative. "Wunderman Thompson is a creative, data and technology agency built to inspire growth for its clients and its people. We look forward to further building out our capabilities to further grow our network strength and our clients' business," Yap said when asked about his vision for the role.

Yap re-joined JWT Malaysia as managing partner in January of 2019, having previously spent seven years with the network in both Kuala Lumpur and Beijing. He has over 20 years' experience in the advertising industry, having worked for a number of international agency networks. According to his LinkedIn, they included Cheil Malaysia, Publicis Groupe Malaysia, and Grey Malaysia. He has also worked across a wide variety of client brands such as Nestle, Samsung and HSBC.

In July last year, JWT combined resources with Ogilvy in Malaysia under a single leadership team while having separate P&Ls, with the entity being led by Saksena. A few months later, WPP announced the merger between Wunderman and JWT to form Wunderman Thompson. This eventually led to both agencies returning to independent operations in April this year, with Saksena helming the CEO role of Wunderman Thompson Malaysia, and Nizwani Shahar and Campbell Cannon becoming co-CEOs of Ogilvy.