Leo Burnett Singapore senior digital hires

Leo Burnett Singapore made two key digital appointments hiring Martin Loo as Digital Creative Director and Waheed Bidiwale as Head of Innovation and Digital Resources.

Loo joins Leo Burnett from EURO RSCG Singapore where he was associate creative director. During his tenure, he played a key role in helping the agency win four consecutive pitches for Carlsberg, Abbott Labs, Electronic Arts and MDA within the first three months. He also spent five years with DDB as part of the core digital team, and subsequently returned to Tribal DDB as digital creative director for two years spearheading integrated and digital campaigns for DBS, RSAF, Starhub, McDonald’s, HPB, Ion, Uniqlo and Johnson & Johnson.

A 16-year veteran in the digital field, Loo began his career during the dotcom era where he made his mark in Los Angeles by developing the world’s first ever websites for movies like Independence Day, Ailens and X-Files. Before returning to Singapore, he also spent five years in Shanghai, two of which with Wieden + Kennedy, where he was a key member of the team that won the Nike business. Before that, he oversaw concept and production for Sony’s blockbusters and highly successful flash games for movies like Stephen Chow’s cult hit, Kung Fu Hustle.

Most recently as Managing Director for Interakt in Asia-Pacific, Bidiwale ran the entire Asia-Pacific operations, managing key global accounts, developing strategies and developing new products and service lines.

Bidiwale has close to a decade of experience in delivering strategies and solutions related to online marketing and media. With a proven track record in developing marketing strategies, and managing global and regional campaigns, he has achieved high returns on marketing investments for clients including HP, Cisco, Polycom, Singapore Airlines, Symantec, P&G, Johnson & Johnson, Levis, Citibank, Lenovo amongst others. Having worked in APAC, North America and EMEA markets, Bidiwale is also experienced in positively turning around overall business indicators for business units served.  Prior to Interakt, Bidiwale clocked a long and successful stint at Blue Interactive, where he led the company’s operations in Americas as General Manager.

John Kyriakou, Deputy CEO, Leo Burnett Group Singapore said: “With digital becoming a way of life, it is crucial that we continue to augment our competencies in this area. More crucially, it is also how we harness this set of capabilities, to arrive at the most creatively-effective, integrated solutions for our clients. Martin and Waheed represent the leading left and right brains in this field, we are excited to have them on board with us to drive this.”

On the back of an extremely successful year, Leo Burnett Group Singapore grew the size of the agency’s headcount by over 50% over the past 12 months. Across the region, the agency-network also recently added digital heavy weights including Neil Hudspeth, Regional Digital Director; Suresh Ramaswamy Director, Digital Business for Singapore and Malaysia and Gavin Cranston, Head of Digital Communications in Japan.