Omnicom Media names David McCallen Asia Pacific chief strategy officer

SINGAPORE: Omnicom Media has done what most holding companies only talk about: it has actually built strategy into the spine of its regional operating model, and handed the job of running it to David McCallen. The New Zealander steps up to Asia Pacific chief strategy officer, a newly created mandate to knit together evidence-based research, cultural fluency and Omnicom Media’s connected capabilities into something clients can actually use in a marketplace that has stopped making sense to most planning decks.

Tony Harradine, chief executive of OM Asia Pacific, was in no mood for understatement. He called the appointment a reflection of the network’s commitment to strategic excellence, pointing to McCallen’s run at OMD as proof of what happens when strategic thinking is taken seriously. The subtext was not subtle: if McCallen could lift OMD’s standing across the region the way he did, there is no reason he cannot do the same for Omnicom Media at large.

McCallen’s own reaction leaned into the moment rather than away from it. He called it a huge honour and said the industry is at a point where it needs to rethink what great strategy looks like and build a model fit for the complexity clients navigate daily. Coming from someone who has spent the past four years running strategy for OMD across the whole of Asia Pacific, that is less a platitude than a job description.

The résumé backing up the promotion is a long one. McCallen joined OMD APAC as chief strategy officer in April 2022, having earned his stripes at OMD New Zealand, first as head of strategy from 2017 and then as chief strategy officer from 2019. Before that, his career ran through some of the sharper planning desks in the business: Colenso BBDO and DDB New Zealand as planning director, RappTribal and Dynamo Communications and Media, and a London stint at PartnersAndrewsAldridge. Earlier still, he cut his teeth as a senior planner at OgilvyOne, a creative planner at Vibrandt and a strategic planner at Tullo Marshall Warren, with a five year run as a category manager at Unilever in the UK rounding out a CV that reads like a masterclass in classic brand planning before strategy became a boardroom buzzword.

What makes this appointment worth watching is timing as much as pedigree. Holding companies across the region have spent the past two years scrambling to prove that strategy is not just a slide before the media plan, but the thing that actually justifies their fee. Omnicom Media’s decision to formalise strategy as a core discipline, and to put a proven operator like McCallen in charge of it region-wide, suggests the network wants to be seen leading that argument rather than following it. For clients wrestling with fragmented media, cultural nuance and a marketplace that changes faster than most planning cycles, that is not a bad pitch to be on the receiving end of.