ASEAN Digital Excellence & Operations Lead

About this role

About WPP Media

WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands. With exceptional talent, trusted data and intelligence, and world-class partnerships – all united by our pioneering agentic marketing platform, WPP Open – we help clients navigate change, capture opportunity, and deliver transformational growth.

WPP Media is WPP's AI-driven media operating unit, bringing together media, data, and partnerships to deliver creative personalisation at scale. Connected through WPP Open and powered by Open Intelligence, clients see exactly where, how, and why their media investment is working.

For more information, visit wppmedia.com.

Role Summary and Impact

The ASEAN Digital Excellence & Operations Lead will lead the digital media excellence agenda for one of our key FMCG clients across ASEAN. The role will ensure that global standards and priorities are translated into practical market action, while improving the quality of digital planning, execution, performance and governance across the region.

The role will also serve as the main ASEAN point of contact for GDS (Offshore), with end-to-end responsibility for the regional operating model, service quality, performance governance, market alignment and escalation management. Success will be measured by stronger digital outcomes, greater consistency across markets, improved GDS delivery and the ability to scale effective practices across ASEAN.

The existing regional digital operations scope has primarily focused on executional governance, compliance monitoring, market follow-up, selected platform coordination and escalation support. As OpenMind’s ASEAN digital agenda expands, the business requires a dedicated regional lead with broader accountability for digital quality, performance, GDS (Offshore) stewardship, platform relationships and market capability.

This role is therefore designed as a strategic expansion of the current operational remit, not simply an increase in capacity. It will create one accountable regional point of leadership to improve the consistency, effectiveness and scalability of digital media delivery across ASEAN.

Skills and Experience

1. ASEAN Digital Excellence and Strategic Leadership

• Set and lead the regional digital excellence agenda for OpenMind ASEAN, providing senior digital counsel on plans, platform choices and investment rationale aligned with client priorities.

• Challenge markets to move beyond cost and delivery metrics, incorporating quality, context, attention and outcome-based measures into planning and evaluation.

• Identify systemic digital challenges across markets and develop regional (not just market-level) solutions, maintaining a clear view of digital maturity, capability gaps and improvement priorities.

2. Digital Standards, Compliance and Executional Quality

• Own regional oversight of Digital Execution Standards (DES), Ad Technology Standards (ATS) and naming conventions, maintaining a scorecard that tracks performance, gaps and required actions by market.

• Move compliance management beyond score reporting by diagnosing root causes, agreeing market improvement plans, and coordinating resolution of priority execution escalations.

• Act as primary point of contact for client and global teams on digital standards, connecting compliance and quality to campaign performance and client confidence.

3. GDS Stewardship and Regional Operating Model

• Act as the main ASEAN point of contact and accountable owner for the GDS (Offshore) relationship, defining and continuously improving the operating model — scope, RACI, service expectations and escalation routes.

• Lead regional demand, capacity and transition planning for work moving into GDS (Offshore), overseeing market onboarding and knowledge transfer with minimal disruption.

• Track GDS delivery against quality, timeliness and satisfaction measures, leading root-cause reviews and consolidating market feedback into a single ASEAN improvement agenda that demonstrates delivered value.

4. Digital Performance Governance and Continuous Improvement

• Establish a consistent regional approach to reviewing digital performance across priority platforms, objectives and markets, identifying trends and opportunities requiring regional action.

• Guide markets on optimization priorities across paid social, search, video and programmatic, developing ASEAN benchmarks by platform, objective and market maturity.

• Create practical playbooks for recurring challenges, ensuring campaign learnings are documented, shared and applied across markets to strengthen measurement discipline.

5. Platform Partnerships and Test-and-Learn Agenda

• Lead regional working relationships with priority digital media platforms and technology partners, translating opportunities and product developments into relevant market actions.

• Ensure platform credits and value commitments are deployed against clear priorities, challenging recommendations to ensure they are evidence-based and aligned to business needs.

• Develop a structured regional test-and-learn agenda with clear hypotheses and measurement criteria, codifying successful tests for adoption across additional markets.

6. Global-to-Market Translation and Market Advocacy

• Act as the regional digital interface translating global frameworks, standards and priorities into clear ASEAN implementation plans, adapting guidance where needed for local maturity, ecosystem or regulation.

• Provide markets with one clear source of truth for digital operating guidance, consolidating market feedback and barriers for relevant regional or global stakeholders.

• Identify strong local practices and elevate them for regional or wider adoption, ensuring global initiatives are implemented consistently yet practically.

7. Stakeholder and Client Management

• Build trusted relationships with OpenMind regional and market stakeholders on digital quality, operations and GDS delivery, communicating complex topics in…