iProspect’s Ken Lam on Investment, Innovation, and the Qualities that Define a Good Leader

Having been at Amplifi ANZ from its inception, Ken Lam is an experienced head within the dentsu landscape. On his way to becoming the national head of investment at iProspect he survived, and ultimately thrived during, some turbulent times.

Today Ken is a post-merger expert, who’s leadership lessons emphasise and prioritise team culture amid change management.

Reflecting on pivotal projects that have challenged his approach to media investment, he discusses the evolution of media investment and its total impact.

Ken delves into standout campaigns like Ford's 'Secrets and Lies' sponsorship, highlighting the success born from innovation and audience insights.

LBB> In your current role as national head of investment at iProspect, you're responsible for ensuring investment solutions are best in class. Can you tell us about a particularly innovative or challenging project you've led in this capacity and how it impacted your approach to media investment?

When we first merged, we had a team of fantastic digital performance experts who didn’t know what Investment and Trading were, nor had they worked with media owners outside of setting up platform performance campaigns. So part of our journey to become a true end to end Brand and Performance agency was to integrate the different skills that we had and the different ways of working to a cohesive and holistic investment approach, making sure that all media channels from brand to performance to owned are considered and equal, which was challenging yet very rewarding.

Leading this process with other craft leaders helped me understand more in-depth the relationship, the influence and importance of investment to not only performance media but even non-paid channels like SEO and our total search approach, which constantly reinforced me to think about investment more holistically and the total impact other than costs and value.

LBB> You've worked with renowned brands such as Walt Disney, Medibank, and Ford. Could you share a standout campaign or project you were part of and explain the strategies that made it successful? 

From traditional value-led investment opportunities from my time on Mazda sponsoring Packed To The Rafters, which was launching post the Beijing Olympics, so it was guaranteed a considerable audience cost-effectively, to big ideas executed brilliantly like on Disney including a water projected ghost pirate ship on the Sydney harbour to promote the Pirates of The Caribbean theatrical launch.

But one that stood out was an integrated sponsorship of a crime drama on Network 10 called Secrets and Lies for Ford back in 2014. It was like the Netflix whodunit movie Knives Out. Still, an enormous appeal of the show was to leverage the proliferation of ‘second screening’ at the time by prompting viewers to explore additional content which Ford owned and surrounded off the main screen, for audiences to further immerse with the characters and their backstories to help solve the murder mystery. 

Whilst it didn’t draw in huge audiences like other programs on-air at the time, I still think back to it fondly and see it as a success because we pushed boundaries with the client to innovate, and not just for innovation's sake as the activation was based on great audience insight and changing consumption behaviours, supported by great content and that we were willing to test and learn.

LBB> You have worked at Amplifi ANZ, where you led a team to deliver media solutions to clients like Medibank and Walt Disney. What leadership lessons did you gain during this role, especially in navigating change management during the inception of Amplifi Australia?

Ken> Amplifi was a massive business restructure that set out to create an investment centre of excellence by reassigning teams with those who predominately work and trade with media owners day to day into a new umbrella agency where I led a sizable group of 20+ people who were all fantastic, but each with different skillsets and level of experience.

While I have fewer people to manage daily in my current role, it’s still a significant value I share with my team.

With a fresh challenge every day ranging from trying to embed new processes, defining clear roles and responsibilities, and setting new culture, amongst many others, I made a conscious effort to focus on people and culture, from investing in my team’s development, prioritising their issues and helping them solve day to day challenges, and the overall team culture and happiness. Being a people-first leader paid off, as we could maintain client and team happiness scores despite such a challenging time.

LBB> Over your career, you've transitioned from roles like media assistant to national head of investment. What critical skills or experiences have been most instrumental in your professional growth?

Ken> Our industry moves so fast that if you’re complacent and not pushing yourself to learn new skills, try new ways to approach things or take on new challenges, then your role becomes quite stale and boring or, in some cases, redundant altogether.

So, I try to stay curious, never wanting to get bored or useless, which helps me learn new skills. I also say yes to new challenges as much as possible to grow my experience, which has always served me well throughout my career.  

LBB> In a recent interview with Paul Murphy, you were mentioned as someone with enduring qualities of friendliness and approachability. How have these qualities benefited your career and relationships with colleagues and clients?

From my leadership cohort to someone who’s new to the industry and who has joined the team recently, I take the same approach to everyone I meet and happen to work with. This goes back to the fact that I’m naturally curious, so I want to learn more about others, their situation, what drives them and why (but not in an overly psychological way!). And so, I try to be friendly and approachable to chat, share ideas and learn in a mutually beneficial way. And in return, I make others comfortable to approach me as well. 

I can’t count the number of times this has benefited my career. Still, it’s been helpful to get different perspectives and learn other ways to tackle challenges and learn to do it better next time. 

LBB> As someone with extensive experience in the media industry, what trends or changes do you foresee shaping the future of media investment and advertising, and how is iProspect preparing for these developments?

So what traditionally have been viewed as top-of-funnel or awareness channels can now perform almost the same function with similar smarts and sophistication to lower funnel or digital performance channels and vice versa, so there’s a real opportunity to maximise every investment opportunity and every dollar by leveraging the right capabilities from data and analytics, audience segmentation and personalisation, signals and intent-based targeting and optimisation, automation and measurement, etc to make it as effective as possible.

At iProspect, we already do a lot of these or sometimes test some of these capabilities with our clients. Hence, it’s about learning and scaling to help underpin our holistic investment approach.