Women to Watch 2020: Abigail Crosby, Merkle DWA

Abigail Crosby

Acting managing director and client services director
Merkle DWA, Dentsu Aegis Network Singapore
Singapore

In the past five years that she has worked at DWA, Abigail Crosby has made a telling impact on the fortunes of her agency. In the first six months, she used her experience in leading digital marketing campaigns, including for Avis across Europe, to transform DWA’s largest traditional client to become digital-first with around 70% of the client’s billings transitioned from telemarketing to digital B2B demand engines. 

Crosby has been a star at DWA since she came aboard. In 2018, she worked on the largest pitch for what would become one of DWA’s biggest clients. This involved working across 10 different agency brands, from six countries around the region, to deliver the APJC response and client work. Crosby has rapidly become the strong number two leader in DWA and in her role as clients services director, has been responsible for all the media output of the agency and providing robust media and client services.

She has led DWA to double staff size and triple revenue. Crosby has contributed to strong client retention and has played a pivotal role in securing some of its biggest accounts. In November 2019, Crosby took on the role as acting managing director for a maternity cover, just as DWA needed to make an urgent transition within its business. 

Despite the suddenness of this transition, she managed to keep staff turnover below 5% over the past 10 months. In January 2020, Abigail led the onboarding of DWA”s largest regional client ever. To support this, she hired a team of 10 (growing her businesses by 20%) and started up an entire new service lines too—all in five weeks.    

Despite the challenges the pandemic has wrought on the industry, Crosby ensured revenue remained steady if not higher over the last five months. The agency’s own recent client relationship survey results place APJ first with an average of over 20 basis points better than the overall company average. These results provide a sharp pointer to the pace and direction Crosby provided the team, both as an empathetic leader and driver of business growth.