Y&R adds planning director in Malaysia

Chia joins the agency from JWT, where he led the planning team across clients such as HSBC, Nestle, Unilever, Listerine and Shell. Having started his career at the agency, Chia is credited with building up the planning department from scratch and was appointed planning director after only six years. He has also run training programmes for both staff and clients.

Commenting on Chia’s appointment, Robert McBrain, CEO, Y&R Malaysia, said, “Pi Wo is perfect for the role; a smart local guy who intuitively understands local clients’ needs and wants, who also brings lots of international experience to the table by virtue of his previous experience with global clients; the perfect blend. We are rolling out a number of new initiatives this year including ‘Innovative Tools’ (a suite of bespoke workshop systems to help solve clients marketing problems) and Pi Wo will be driving these important new offers to our clients”.

Hari Ramanathan, regional planning director at Y&R Asia, said, "We're really happy to get Pi Wo on board in Kuala Lumpur. It’s an important building block as we develop planning across Asia as a core discipline in every office. With many regional initiatives set to roll out over the next few weeks, Y&R is all set to drive innovation for our clients."