Born: Belfast, Northern Ireland
Lived in: London, Hungary, Singapore
Worked in: Central & Eastern Europe and throughout the Asia Pacific region-- overseeing media operation in 13 countries with 26 total offices
Barry Cupples consistently delivers.
Throughout his career at Omnicom, he has developed some of the top-performing media agencies throughout the various markets he’s served. However, 2011 Barry has set a new milestone, largely due his strong belief in driving innovation.
Under his leadership as CEO for Asia Pacific, Omnicom Media Group had its most successful year to date in the region with an extraordinary 196 new business wins totaling a $1 billion dollars in additional billings.
Barry launched three new industry leading offerings across the region - Fuse, a branded content and sponsorship division; Ignition Factory, a high level strategic ideas company; and Flow, a digital marketing company. Given the importance of advanced training programs, he also championed both PHD University and U@OMG in order to insure that the agency’s talent is “best in class.”
He also re-engineered the way OMG operates by establishing a new Category Champions structure to develop shared leadership across the group in the areas of Digital, Trading and Accountability, Integration and Business Development, Branded Content, Insights and Public Relations. This move has inspired teams to think differently and deliver on a more integrated and highly-developed level.
And that’s not all.
Other Omnicom Media Group initiatives included a project with the Singapore Government to pioneer the next development of Neuro Marketing. PHD launched MIND, an industry leading investment optimizing tool, and published two thought leadership books, Fluid and Thread. OMD launched Getting Social, a study on the latest trends in social media; Client Partner Centers, an automated client management tool; and Goal, a study on the benefits of World Cup sponsorship.
He also manages to understand and test new media metrics in his spare time.
Dictionary definitions aside, how would you characterize innovation in the work you do?
“Innovation has to show imagination. A mind fueled by driving change and performance will paint bright colors if allowed. The freedom to create must be encouraged to align with the open architecture in today’s communications.”
Any other interesting aspects to your international background?Cupples says he never had any intention of joining the media industry. In his late-teens, together with four other friends, he spent two years traveling throughout North America, Canada and the Caribbean islands.
“The travelling became my education. We were just a bunch of five young lads that did not have much money. We lived on wits, common sense and a lot of good will. We were well taken care of wherever we went. It gave me a great sense of community and an appreciation of the good side most people have.”