CHRO – Integration and Culture — Advertising And Audience Platform

The mandate

This media group is combining regional advertising sales, audience-data technology and franchise partnership teams that were built through acquisitions and separate business models. The commercial opportunity is compelling: advertisers increasingly want coherent access to premium content, audiences, sponsorship and measurement. Internally, however, teams use different customer definitions, incentives, product language and risk standards. Simply placing them under one leader would preserve the fractures and could create new conflicts around data, editorial independence and revenue credit.

The group is appointing a CHRO – Integration and Culture to design and execute the people side of the new advertising and audience platform. The executive will own integration, organisation design, leadership assessment, workforce planning, reward, culture, employee relations and people operations. They must help the business create shared commercial accountability while preserving the professional authority of privacy, editorial, brand-safety and measurement specialists.

This urgent replacement follows an integration phase that focused on structural reporting but left operating tensions unresolved. The new CHRO must convert broad collaboration goals into roles, decisions, incentives and daily behaviour. They will also address duplication and capability gaps openly, avoiding a prolonged period in which employees compete for influence without knowing how future leadership will be chosen.

Scope and operating context

Based onsite in Singapore, the role influences approximately 400 employees and material partners across Singapore and a wider international region. The workforce includes agency and direct sales, sponsorship, audience insights, data science, advertising product, ad operations, marketing, measurement, partnerships and support functions. Some teams have local-market contracts and relationships; others operate regional platforms or centres of expertise.

The legacy cultures differ. Media sales rewards personal revenue and relationship speed. Technology teams prioritise product road maps, reliability and scalable reuse. Franchise groups protect brand and creative coherence. Data and privacy specialists are expected to stop inappropriate use even when a campaign is commercially important. The integration must make these differences productive rather than force one dominant culture.

Employment and reward arrangements also vary by acquired entity and country. Job titles, commission bases, equity, benefits and performance cycles are inconsistent. Harmonisation choices carry cost, retention and legal consequence, and transparency must be balanced with individual confidentiality.

First-year agenda

The first eight weeks will diagnose how commercial work crosses the organisation. The CHRO will trace major pitches, product launches, data approvals and campaign failures, recording who decided, where work stalled, how revenue was credited and which control concerns emerged. Employee listening will be segmented by legacy organisation, role, market and tenure so majority sentiment does not conceal risks in smaller expert groups.

The executive will then define the target organisation around recurring work. Client leadership, solution design, audience product, inventory, activation, measurement and franchise approval will have clear accountabilities and hand-offs. Regional and country rights will be explicit. Committees will be reserved for genuinely shared decisions; they will not compensate for leaders unwilling to own a choice.

Pivotal leadership roles will receive outcome-based specifications before individuals are assessed. The CHRO will use business evidence, track record, capability and future potential rather than legacy title or sponsorship. Where two leaders cannot both retain current scope, the decision and transition will be handled promptly and respectfully. Successors and diverse candidates will be considered for every material role.

Reward will be rebuilt around whole-client and platform value. Individual bookings, team revenue, product adoption, campaign quality, collection, customer renewal and control performance must not produce contradictory incentives. Credit rules for cross-market or cross-product sales will be simple enough to administer and agreed before the period begins. No employee should have to negotiate attribution after delivering the work.

The integration will protect independent challenge. Privacy, editorial standards, brand safety and measurement leaders will have defined escalation and protection from commercial retaliation. Their performance will include constructive speed and practical alternatives, but approval cannot be purchased through seniority or revenue size. Case reviews will help commercial teams understand why a boundary exists.

Workforce decisions will follow the operating model. Duplicated coordination roles may be removed, while audience engineering, product operations or integrated client leadership may need investment. Selection will use relevant criteria, local consultation and documented review. Critical knowledge transfer and customer continuity will be planned before exits occur.

Culture work will focus on observable practices: how a pitch is staffed, who sees audience data, when franchise approval occurs, how disagreement is escalated and how campaign learning is shared. Leadership objectives and meeting routines will reinforce these behaviours. Broad values events will have a limited role unless connected to real work.

The CHRO will also rebuild people foundations across the platform. Job architecture, workforce data, performance cycles, mobility and succession will be aligned enough to support a regional organisation while retaining lawful local terms. By year-end, the platform should have a stable leadership team, fewer revenue-credit disputes, stronger cross-discipline delivery and improved confidence in fair decisions.

Leadership responsibilities

The CHRO will advise the group sponsor and advertising-platform executive as an enterprise leader, not simply programme support. They will bring organisation and culture evidence into monetisation choices and challenge growth plans that depend on unclear authority or unsustainable capacity. Sensitive individual assessments will remain within strict access boundaries.

They will lead local people partners and specialist teams across reward, talent, employee relations and integration. The operating model for HR must itself be clear; leaders should know who can decide a local employment issue and who owns regional consistency. The CHRO will build credible successors and reduce dependency on external integration advisers.

The role will maintain direct employee and representative engagement through difficult changes. Communication will separate what is decided, what is under consultation and what remains uncertain. Rumour will not be managed through false reassurance, and commercial confidentiality will not be used to avoid lawful information obligations.

Measures of success

The executive committee will track integrated revenue and margin, cross-product pipeline, campaign delivery, product adoption, client retention and control exceptions alongside people outcomes. Organisation measures include decision time, role clarity, escalation recurrence, duplicated work and completion of leadership appointments.

People measures include pivotal-talent retention, unwanted attrition, internal movement, successor coverage, representation, employee-relations outcomes and confidence in fairness. Reward effectiveness will be tested through disputed credit, gaming behaviour and whether incentives align with collected, deliverable value.

Candidate profile

Candidates should bring 22–28 years of senior people leadership in media, advertising, technology platforms, data businesses or another acquisition-led professional environment. They must have integrated sales and technical cultures and redesigned incentive systems where revenue ownership was contested. International employee-relations experience is required.

The board will seek examples of protecting an independent control function during commercial integration, choosing leaders across legacy organisations and resolving sales-credit rules before they damaged collaboration. Candidates should understand advertising workflows, data and privacy roles, product organisations, commissions, consultation and cultural integration.

The successful CHRO will combine commercial fluency with principled judgement. They must recognise when cultural language masks a power dispute, make difficult talent decisions with dignity and preserve trust among employees whose future is uncertain. Strong written role and reward design is essential.

Compensation and appointment terms

The indicative base salary is SGD 420,000–570,000, plus annual incentive and long-term participation. Reward will balance integration delivery, commercial collaboration, responsible data culture, talent outcomes and leadership depth. Final terms will reflect comparable cross-border integration scale and verified forfeited awards.

Confidentiality

The group is unnamed because integration choices, client relationships, employee terms and leadership assessments are sensitive. Detailed organisation information will follow identity, conflict and confidentiality review. Applicants must not submit employee records, commission schedules, client plans or individual assessments from another organisation.