PHD APAC’s James Hawkins: ‘Cut us open and you’ll still see bits of strategic planning’
After four years, PHD APAC CEO, James Hawkins’s plan is coming to fruition. Speaking to Mumbrella’s Calum Jaspan, Hawkins talks about pushing connectivity across the 16 markets within his remit, and why the variance in social norms in each market can throw up some challenges.
Almost four years after shifting across from Dentsu to lead PHD across the APAC region, CEO James Hawkins’ plan to push a connected network is coming to fruition.
“When I first arrived, I put a four-year plan together about how I wanted PHD in Asia Pacific to be run, and my big thing is creating communities because I felt that there were pockets of brilliance across the 16 markets that I’m responsible for, but I felt that we needed to be greater than the sum of our parts,” Hawkins tells Mumbrella while on a recent visit to Australia,” Hawkins says.
He calls Australia, alongside New Zealand the “absolute standout and the jewellery in the crown of our network” (I wonder if that’s what he tells all the markets…), but says that the question was “how do we take those learnings and share them across the tiger economies of Southeast Asia?”.
