Career change for Bruce Watt as he joins JKK Executive Search as creative headhunter

Former Y&R regional creative director Bruce Watt has joined James Kenneth Koh Executive Search (JKK) as a headhunter specialising in the creative area.

With over 25 years worth of creative experience Watt will work together with Merwin Chew placing mid to senior level creatives in the region.

Watt (pictured rear centre) has worked in London, Hong Kong and Singapore for Saatchi & Saatchi, FCB, Publicis and Y&R. Prior to joining the team at JKK, he was Regional Creative Director with Y&R Singapore working on Caltex Asia Pacific and the M1 account, amongst others.

James Koh, CEO of JKK said, “We are super excited to have Bruce join us.  He has the stature, the respect of the creative community and he will know what clients are looking for as he has been a practicing creative for the last 25 years. On top of that he is a super nice guy.  We are looking to own the creative patch – now that we have both Bruce and Merwin working on it.”

Watt said, “I’m very excited to be working with James, Jasmine and the rest of the JKK team. After 25 years in advertising agencies, I’ve spent the last couple of years trying to think of what to do next.  I think the skills I’ve learnt over those 25 years are going to come in very handy, when I’m trying to match the right creatives with the right agencies, where both parties come out winners. I see this job as a chance to help creatives at all levels, find opportunities that will help their own personal career progression. Having chatted with James, Jasmine and many other members of JKK over the last few months, I know they are all passionate about what they do and they do it with integrity and humanity.”

Nicole Ong joins as Practice Lead | Account Management & Digital Technology. She comes with 10 years of experience having worked on both sides of the fence, and joins JKK from StarHub where she was Social Media Team Lead. Her agency credentials include We Are Social, Bartle Bogle Hegarty and Publicis Singapore. At JKK, she reports to Jasmine Eng, Director | Advertising, Branding & Digital Technology.

Eng said,”Nicole’s career started at Publicis with me as her mentor, so it feels surreal that after 10 years, we are working together once more.  The account management portfolio is one of the key pillars in JKK, having Nicole come in to take over the reins from me allows the company to do more quality work for our clients & talent.  Thereby continuing our deep heritage within the advertising circle”

Ong said, “I’ve enjoyed the last decade of my career as a practitioner and it’s been exciting, but what’s most rewarding is when I build up a team of great people and see them grow their careers over time. So when I was looking for a change, this next move came naturally to me. I’m hoping to use my industry experience to add value to both talents and clients alike.”

Grace Yeo joins as Director |Corporate Sector. Her focus is to expand JKK’s footprint in the corporate sector locally and in the region. With more than 10 years of experience in executive search and talent acquisition within corporates, Yeo is perfectly positioned to build this side of the business for JKK.  Her network spans acorss the APJ and Middle East region.

Koh said, “We have always been known to be a player in the agency space and in the last 3 years have started placeing within corporates. It is now time for us to activate our collective network beyond the agency world and start placing mid to C suite roles in marketing organisations based in Singapore and beyond.  Grace is perfect to turn this vision into reality having worked in executive search and talent acquisition for MNC companies like HRnetOne, McDonald’s and Philips.

Yeo commented, “Having experienced both sides of the recruiting space, with 6 years of agency experience, partnering with C Suites and building their talents within the organisation, coupled with another 5 years of experience as talent acquisition within organisations, it has given me great insights in the end to end exposure of a talent’s journey. It is now time to garner all these knowledge and learnings in my new role to consult, diagnose, partner and engage with clients who are going through the different phases of talent acquisition, talent management & development within their organisations, bringing a true sense of business partnering value to them”.