Leo Burnett Singapore bolsters strategy team with three key leadership appointments

Leo Burnett Singapore has appointed Nigel Tribe as head of strategy for Singapore and global planning director for SKII. This appointment follows the agency’s recent new business wins including MBT, Skyscanner and Diageo Smirnoff assignments.

Commenting about the appointment, Josh Grace, Managing Director, Leo Burnett Singapore said, “The brief was pretty simple. We wanted an incredibly smart business leader who was also nice to work with. With Tribe we got that guy. He has a key role leading our strategy offering in the agency. With his background you will be hard pressed to find better strategy credentials – groomed in the London planning scene, stints in creative and media agencies, experience in Europe, US and Asia, running global accounts like XBOX and local accounts in all these markets. Tribe is the full package and he has now got a great team to lead across all our key disciplines.”

Chaitan Rao, Global Business Director on SKII elaborated, “Tribe’s background made him a perfect choice to lead the SKII business globally. He gets global business, he understands Asia and he gets luxury. SKII is a brand with wonderful purpose, Tribe is the perfect strategy leader for it.”

Tribe’s appointment dovetails the agency’s addition of two other senior strategy leaders to its team recently. Ramesh Kumar was appointed as regional planning director for Samsung and Tulika Sahai as regional planning director working across a spectrum of the agency’s clients, including MSIG and Skyscanner. The agency now boasts a strategy team of nine with specialists in shopper, eCommerce, social and UX.

“We’ve made some great additions to our strategy offering in recent months. Kumar and Sahai met the same brief as Tribe – both incredibly talented and both a pleasure to work with. In my experience this is the winning combination. I am proud of the team we have assembled and the future the agency has with all of them at the heart of it.” said Grace.

Tribe started his career sixteen years ago in London where he saw advertising from both the creative and media agency sides working at at Leo Burnett, Roose & Partners, MindShare and McCann Erickson.  There he created business-changing solutions across a diverse range of brands including Kleenex, Bodyform, Kellogg, John West, Heinz, the BBC, Nike, Clearasil & Nurofen.

Running the European planning for Xbox at McCann, he became heavily involved in the global business and helped launch the award winning Gears Of War “Mad World” and Halo 3: Believe campaign. He then moved to San Francisco to lead the global planning for Xbox at McCann/agencytwofifteen, helping to transform the Xbox business from a hardcore gamer console to a broad entertainment platform including industry recognized campaigns for Kinect and all of Xbox’s game titles.

After moving to DOJO where he helped pick up the global businesses for Logitech and Ultimate Ears, he moved to BBH in Shanghai – there he focused on the Sprite and Ice Dew businesses in mainland China, as well as new business for the agency. During his career, the work he has been a part of has led to multiple effectiveness and creative awards including the Grand Prix at the Effies, APG and Cannes.

Kumar has been in the business of building brands for nearly 18 years now, working across FMCG, Consumer Durables, Technology, Fashion & Lifestyle, Media & Entertainment, Financial Products and Education.

Kumar moved from Ogilvy Singapore, where he was the global strategy lead on Castrol [Magnatec and Power One] and the ASEAN strategy lead for Philips. Prior to this, he was with Ogilvy in Bangalore, where he worked on a range of leader & challenger brands in the Indian marketplace.

Kumar is a multiple winner at the EFFIES – the gold standard for effectiveness of communication – in Singapore and India. He is deeply interested in the consumers of the moment – the youth – and has led many thought leadership projects to understand this very elusive segment. He spends his spare time trying to understand more about behavioural economics, retail therapy and luxury brands.

With an extensive career that spans both the agency and client’s side, Sahai started working in advertising at Leo Burnett 12 years ago. Prior to that, she had spent a few years as a client working at Citibank and Johnson & Johnson. Over the years, Sahai has worked across 13 categories of businesses for brands that include Fiat, Air Wick, Mortein, Dettol, Jaguar, Zurich, Libero, Tempo, Plenty, Vicks, Nivea, and Eucerin.

While at EURO RSCG (now known as Havas Worldwide) in Italy, she spent a large amount of time functioning as the managing director of Fuel, the bespoke agency for Jaguar Italy which she had set up from scratch to service the local client on Jaguar. While there, she grew the business from zero to being the first market to be awarded a full-service agency status. Her role also impacted the global campaign that put Jaguar back on the map for luxury car brands following many years of silence.

Following that, she went on to lead major strategic shifts for NIVEA brands globally with a major focus on Thailand where she gained deep knowledge of the Southeast Asian culture.

Having the experience of living across five countries conditioned Sahai (who is of Indian descent but born and raised in Italy) to bring a global outlook to her work. An MBA holder from SDA Bocconi in Milan, Sahai had taken her passion for brands to Istituto Marangoni, a university for fashion and design, where she taught Brand Management to third-year students.