Gwyn Humphreys

Strategic, insight led, analytical marketer with over 17 years’ experience in UK, APAC & USA.  Proven success launching an agency in APAC, growing a global agency through winning new business and increasing spend from existing clients through relationship building, development of a new digital platform and adapting to local market needs.

November 2022 - Present

Dentsu 

Head of Business Growth

We team together to help brands predict and plan for disruptive future opportunities and create new paths to growth in the sustainable economy.  We use insights to connect brand, content, commerce and experience, underpinned by modern creativity.

I am the head of business growth - total responsibility for growth across the 3 service lines in the business (Creative, Media and CXM).

My role includes:

• Identifying growth sectors to target new clients within that will deliver stable long-term growth
• Hunting new business opportunities with selected brands, obtaining meetings, presenting to clients and obtaining briefs
• Working with each service line to identify opportunities to cross-sell within existing clients
• Introduced new digital platform as a product to sell to clients that also enabled multi service line business
• Monthly financial reporting to highlight current situation vs target for each service line with information on key growth initiatives to ensure targets met
• Working with regional teams when new business opportunities involved multi-markets across APAC
• Managing growth members who were focused on only one service line to ensure a clear growth strategy, and that all comms spoke with a clear ‘One Dentsu’ approach
• Key part of pitches for new opportunities I brought into the business to ensure all knowledge and insight is passed on and for continuity with clients
• Established events to sell each service line to potential new clients, including development of the content and delivery (one event per quarter for each service line)
• Identify which external events to attend to promote dentsu, what level of attendance should be delivered
• Work with each service line on the content they should produce to promote the business and keep us front of mind with potential clients
• Member of the Singapore Executive team alongside the CEO, MDs of each service line, CFO 
• Work with HR to curate job description roles for new growth positions, interview and hire people to be part of the growth team

September 2018 – October 2022

Because Singapore 

Business Director

At Because we weave together the power of live brand experience, creative tech, digital, content, and influencer marketing to deliver integrated campaigns that help grow brands through big ideas made real. We are also at the forefront of helping brands use our new digital platform to enhance campaigns and engage audiences anywhere in the world.

I was the head of the APAC office - total responsibility for successful launch of global agency into new region.

My role included:

• Analysing local market insight & data to create agency positioning to generate standout in a saturated market – success seen via new business success (see below)
• New Business lead in charge of strategy, insight and creative – 50% pitch success rate in first 2 years in the market delivering $2m of new client business
• Hunter for new business opportunities; identify key sectors, what need the clients have, how our offering can help solve business challenges, knocking on doors to get a meeting, then pitch opportunity
• Developed and launched new digital platform resulting in over $2M worth of new business globally in 2021 alone
• Increased business rate card to reflect our value to clients & negotiated supplier discounts using local market intel increasing average project GP from 38% to 42%
• Financial planning and forecasting of the business – monthly financial reporting to global CEO, achieving financial breakeven after 18 months of operating and grew the business from 2 people to 7 in 3 years
• Leadership and development of team – Upskilling of team via in-house and external training, established clear workflow processes, clear culture built to balance work and play, mapped out the structure we needed for success and worked with HR to recruit the right team
• Talent recruitment and retention – implemented new hiring process, sought out the best of the best, recruited the right people for the culture we wanted, developed employee engagement plan to retain best talent and build a culture people want to be a part of
• Established new project management system for Client Services to increase efficiency and maximise campaign savings - success seen by increase in existing client spend of 25% across first 2 years
• Curating content for our outbound marketing, including thought leadership pieces and blogs
• Clients include Changi Airport Group, Manulife, Zespri, FWD, Temenos, Carlton & United Breweries

2:1 degree in American Studies - University of Wales, Swansea (including 1 year at CSU Long Beach)

3 A-Levels 

10 GCSEs