Former R3 principal consultant Penelope Siraj appointed senior partner—planning at Brainlabs APAC

Penelope Siraj has been appointed as senior partner—planning for APAC at Brainlabs. Her new role will involve leading and expanding the planning and strategy teams across the Asia-Pacific region.

Siraj brings a wealth of experience to Brainlabs, having previously served as principal consultant at R3 APAC for three years. There, she worked on agency reviews, media audits, optimisation and effectiveness projects, and led digital initiatives for clients such as L'Oréal, Abbott, Samsung, and P&G. Before her time at R3, she spent seven years at PHD Singapore as group business director, managing global and regional clients including Volkswagen Group, Singapore Airlines, LG Electronics, and Google. Her strategic expertise has been recognised with multiple accolades, including two global WARC awards.

Founded in London in 2012, Brainlabs has expanded its presence across Europe, North America, Latin America, and APAC—with particular growth in the Asia-Pacific region where the team has more than doubled in size over the past 12 months. The acquisition of Sparro, one of Australia’s largest independent agencies in January 2024 has further bolstered its presence in the region. Brainlabs’ client portfolio includes major brands such as Estée Lauder Companies, Adidas, and Walmart.

In her new role, Siraj will be responsible for driving the agency’s strategic vision in the APAC region, working closely with global counterparts to deliver innovative and effective planning and strategy solutions for clients. Her focus will be on building and expanding the planning and strategy team, enhancing Brainlabs’ product offerings in the region.

"I’m most excited about joining a great team with the cultural DNA to succeed. They have the passion and talent to support me in making a real difference in bringing to life our high-performance planning products in APAC," Siraj told Campaign of her new appointment. She aims to collaborate with the global team to continuously raise the bar on client planning, with the goal of achieving significant business results for clients. "From an internal development and people perspective, I look forward to getting to know my colleagues better while empowering our team to own the delivery of high-performance media agency planning," she added.

When discussing the key challenges clients face in the digital media landscape, Siraj highlighted several issues: "There are big expectations that marketing be accountable to the business for the budgets being spent, the sheer amount of marketing data from all partners that are measured in similar but not identical currencies, and the increasing scope of media teams as new platforms and influencers add more fragmentation to the media mix." She noted that traditional agencies are increasingly challenged to deliver expertise across new specialties while maintaining the quality of established media channels. 

Looking ahead, Siraj emphasised the importance of integrating AI and new technologies into strategy and planning. She believes that while the fundamental principles remain, they will be enhanced by the right implementation of technologies that accelerate speed-to-impact, sharing that "media and creative need to be seamlessly connected to use the insights from data to inform the conceptualisation of content for the best possible formats and platforms that are able to deliver business impact."