Основатель агентства GGC переименовал компанию после отказа бренда DDB, сделав ставку на людей

MOST people, on their birthday, look back. Gil Chua looks at what’s next. He has spent more than four decades building a company, and the past year, he had to rebuild it. When Omnicom decided to retire the DDB brand globally, the agency he’d nurtured for 33 years lost the name it had long worn. It would have been reasonable for him to feel that a piece of his life’s work had been taken from him. Rather than asking, “what do we call ourselves now,” he asked a better question, “who are we, really, underneath the name?” He didn’t hire a branding consultant to answer that question. He asked the people who worked for him. “Who do you work for?” he asked across the organization. The answer came back the same way, again and again: “GGC.” Not the network. Not the holding company. It’s him — or rather, what his initials had come to mean inside those walls. That’s how DDB Group Philippines became GGC Group Asia. If you ask his daughter what people will actually remember about her father, it isn’t the plaques or the awards Chua received. It’s that he made other people believe they could lead, too. Chua’s legacy is never going to fit neatly into revenue or awards. It’s in the numbers that took decades to build quietly: women now make up 68 percent of GGC Group Asia’s workforce, 70 percent of its senior management, and 53 percent of its Board. Today, GGC Group Asia employs 7,700 nationwide.