Women to Watch Greater China 2023: Dephin Lim, EssenceMediacom

Dephin Lim

Managing director and OpenX from WPP Greater China OU media lead
EssenceMediacom
Shanghai

Blessed with great foresight and a knack of taking on tough projects that most leaders would shy away from, Dephin Lim has consistently delivered outstanding business results for EssenceMediacom, resulting in a promotion to managing director and head of the Shanghai office in 2019.

With her future-forward thinking, Lim has been instrumental in integrating a new marketing ecosystem by consolidating creative, social, media and shopper scopes into one organisation. She has built her team from zero to 100 employees in greater China and has consistently delivered disruptive and quality work in the past 12 months. This has included creating an industry disruptive agile marketing performance mix model that helped a major client to redefine and succeed with their performance marketing efforts. 

The iconic new business deal win from her was The Coca-Cola Company in the past 12 months, the project covered Greater China markets, which led her to take on the new role of OpenX from WPP Greater China OU Media+ Lead, who runs in a brand-new model, providing end-to-end integrated marketing solutions under the WPP group. 

As a leader, Lim encourages dropping the masks of perfection and superiority to instead nurture a culture of supporting and uplifting one another. She has scored high approval ratings among both employees and clients, including breaking the record for the highest approval score by a client across the entire agency. 

A keen advocate for DEI, Lim has driven multiple initiatives across the company. This has included introducing KPIs for senior leaders to hire more diverse teams, as well as encouraging team members to share their stories from different backgrounds, life stages, genders and age, to foster and bring greater awareness and support for diversity, equality and inclusivity. 

Armed with in-depth understanding of the industry across Greater China, a genuine passion for brands, leadership as well as empathy, Lim has spearheaded disruptive and transformational projects that continue to deliver impressive results and drive change.