FleishmanHillard, Ketchum, and Porter Novelli Come Together in Key Asia-Pacific Market Integration with Omnicom Group
Omnicom Public Relations Group announced that Shafaat Hussain has been named Managing Director/Market Leader of the agency in Singapore.
The new entity brings together global agencies FleishmanHillard, Ketchum, and Porter Novelli, leveraging their collective power to offer greater growth, collaboration and learning opportunities for talent and a wider and deeper base of services and expertise for clients. Hussain will report to David Gallagher, President, International.
Shafaat joined FleishmanHillard in 2010 and most recently served as partner and managing director for client service for the agency in Southeast Asia.
He has more than 20 years of experience in corporate, technology and lifestyle communications in India and across Asia. Prior to FleishmanHillard, Hussain held a regional role at Text 100 Singapore.
“Building on the success of our partnership model in France, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, we determined that Singapore is a growth market where this strategy could benefit both talent and clients.
“Shafaat is well known amongst our agencies in Singapore as an experienced leader wholly committed to client service, teamwork and close collaboration. He is enthusiastic about the opportunity and we are delighted to have him in this role,” said Gallagher.
Hussain’s appointment, effective 1 June, kicks off an integration process that will include consultations with clients, agency teams and other business partners in Singapore, with the aim of aligning the three agencies’ systems and processes over the rest of the year.
A transition management team drawn from the agencies will oversee the integration, reporting to Hussain and Gallagher.
The team includes John Bailey, Jon Chin and Tan Lee San from Ketchum; Khoo Yin and Mary Czarnecki from FleishmanHillard; and Kelvyn Foo of Porter Novelli.
“Singapore is an important hub for doing business in Asia, and by bringing our teams together here we can create the scale and wide expertise that our clients require.
“We are already working together on a number of important assignments and the benefits are clear for our clients and people alike,” said Shafaat.
WPP, another leading communications agency, has acquired full ownership of Y&R and Wunderman joint venture agency assets across Southeast Asia and Taiwan, and Dentsu Sudler & Hennessey in Japan, following a share swap transaction with Dentsu Inc.
