40 Under 40 2021: Brady Ambler, RGA

Brady Ambler

Executive strategy director
RGA 
Singapore 

In his 15-year career in advertising, Brady Ambler has worked in six cities across the globe ranging from San Diego to Singapore and from early on was marked as a leader to watch. In this time, he made a mark at every pit stop in his career, whether it’s getting voted “most pioneering” employee at Grey, being selected for Publicis Groupe’s leadership development programme, or being chosen as APAC Digital Acceleration Leader on the AXA global account.

As a standout leader at RGA, Ambler led strategy on the brand campaign for insurance giant Prudential this year. The ‘We DO Well Together’ campaign focused on helping pressurised millennials do well in all aspects of life by making it fun to get better together through co-wellness. In collaboration with K-pop band SuperM, the campaign introduced an original track, signature #WeDo dance, TikTok challenge, virtual concert and fan-meet, among other offerings. The campaign launched in 10 Southeast Asia markets.

Elsewhere, Ambler led a multi-disciplinary team over five months to help UOB, the third-largest bank in Southeast Asia, to uncover and define its company purpose. Plus, when insurtech company Singlife acquired a majority stake in Aviva Singapore in a SG$3.2 billion (US$2.4 billion) deal, Ambler led the team in defining their client’s brand purpose, architecture and value proposition together with Singlife founder Walter de Oude.

Amid leading large deals, Ambler has gotten elbows deep in RGA’s functioning, recasting the agency’s strategy team to coalesce work across multiple teams into a single unit called Strategic Teams. Ambler put his theory into practice by leading the first team on a global innovation consulting project for a Fortune 50 tech company that eradicated siloes and allowed RGA to maximise diversity of thought, cross-fertilisation and knowledge transfers.

Even as he’s broken down walls within RGA and built up its business, Ambler has doubled his department size with an all-woman team. He also proactively mentored women experience designers outside his team to develop more diverse industry leadership. Ambler also applied his purpose-centric lens as a jury member this year for Creative Effectiveness and Creative Strategy at Spikes Asia and the Effie Awards Singapore.