H+ brings on board Joe Nguyen and Stephen Li as senior advisors

H+, the new strategic group offering from Hakuhodo and D.A.Consortium (DAC), has appointed two industry veterans as senior strategic advisors to the its leadership team. Joe Nguyen (pictured left) and Stephen Li (pictured right) are now working closely with the senior leadership team at Hakuhodo and DAC to define the vision, position, and implementation of H+ group and their constituent companies across the region.

Nguyen is based in Ho Chi Minh City, has spent his career across every aspect of digital media and is the managing director of VieOn and former regional head of ComScore. Li has 20 years of client and agency leadership experience and is the former APAC CEO of MEC (now Wavemaker) and OMD. Li is based in Singapore.

H+ launched this month, has a clear agenda of helping to empower the digital future of client marketers through the creation of “InsightOut” driven brand experiences which evolve as multi-faceted consumer lifestyles (Sei-katsu-sha) are shaped with each passing day and interaction. H+ sits as an umbrella strategic offering encompassing all of Hakuhodo/DAC’s agencies and partners across the region ex Japan.

Nguyen said, “Technology waits for no man, and having a handle on how its impact on consumers develops is crucial. I have spent my career helping clients to understand what this looks like, and I am enjoying sharing that experience with H+. With a strong foundation of clients and partners already in place, there is now the opportunity to bring additional innovation and invention to the equation.”

Li added, “Having the opportunity to be a part of the genesis of any new organisation is always terribly invigorating. Advising H+ on how to create cohesion between all of their existing assets in the region, with a clear digital-first go to market strategy, is already proving to be fun! Their approach to audience understanding and creation - Sei-katsu-sha - has always fascinated me, so it is exciting to help to evolve its client impact further across the region."

H+ is led by Michihiko Suganuma, executive officer, head of global business group at DAC and general manager, Asia DX strategy division, Hakuhodo International.

Suganuma said, “H+ is new, but we clearly want to hit the ground running, so having Nguyen and Li be our advisors and internal challengers is really making a big difference. They are a great yin and yang team of technology and communications experience, because H+ is all about ensuring that our agencies are not only delivering communications plans but more so platform-neutral and consumer-respectful experiences.”

Suganuma added, “We have always believed in the fact that 'consumer insights' can often be just category observations. This is why we pioneered the concept of Sei-katsu-sha in Japan - focusing on the fact that everyone is a different person at different points in their day. This has always given us a distinctive approach to the experiences we create for our clients in Japan, and we are now here to up the ante of how we can also do that for clients across the rest of the region.”

Shuntaro Ito, senior corporate officer, Hakuhodo, and president and CEO, Hakuhodo International, added that it is important for Hakuhodo to always be questioning and improving. "That is also what we want from H+. Having the experience and expertise across the region which can be brought by Nguyen and Li is invaluable. They understand the region’s consumers and partners, and they are always curious about what tomorrow will bring. We are delighted to be working with them.”

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