Women to Watch 2020: Eunice Tan, The Secret Little Agency

Eunice Tan

Partner and head of strategy
The Secret Little Agency
Singapore

Eunice Tan’s list of achievements as a creative and strategist is remarkable in itself, but she also dedicates time to innovation, mentorship and diversity.

Tan first joined the industry in an account management role, and was one of the first Southeast Asian employees of Integer, the shopper-marketing arm of TBWA. In 2009 she joined The Secret Little Agency to found the agency’s business development and strategy departments, and has been loyal to the agency since.

When TSLA and Mother struck a global strategic partnership in 2017, Tan became Mother Shanghai’s head of strategy, where she was tasked with setting up the strategy offering in the new office. She helped the business win key clients such as Lee Jeans, Converse, Airbnb, Nokia, and Bacardi within the year. She is one of four global strategy leaders across the Mother family.

Tan’s work over recent years speaks for itself. She repositioned the troubled Tiger Airways to help bolster its sale to Virgin and subsequently Singapore Airlines; she wrote the brand, user experience, and positioning strategy for GoBear in Southeast Asia to prime it for investor relations and funding (GoBear has secured almost $97 million in investor funding to date); and she has crafted the Singapore Economic Development Board’s North America and Europe B2B strategy across six years. She wrote the launch, influencer and penetration strategy for Netflix when it first entered Southeast Asia, and has continued to build TSLA’s bespoke social and analytics studio for Netflix in Asia. She worked on the launch of DBS PayLah!, growing it into Singapore’s number one payment-to-payment app, and she continues to shape its product innovation strategy today. Most recently, she crafted Singapore’s first-ever unified global brand and led a series of strategic projects over 12 months for the domestic launch of Brand SG in June 2020, and helped steer brand relaunch campaigns for KFC in Indonesia and Mongolia in the midst of Covid-19. KFC Asia marketer Ben Simmons pays homage to Tan’s “curiosity, hunger, and strategic thought-leadership”, saying she stood out from day one.

In addition, Tan has launched several divisions and products for the agency, including an insights and ethnography arm called Junk Desk used by the likes of Tiger Beer, Mandai and EDB, and TSLA Design, which formulates its house style and approach towards branding and design.

While Tan is clearly a remarkable business person, she is described by colleagues as someone who “radiates kindness and humility” and is never afraid to get her hands dirty. She is also passionate about making planning more gender-equal, and has carved out an entirely female team of strategists to achieve this, as well as dedicating her free time to mentoring primarily young females. Her latest venture, Mother’s ‘Make Our Children Proud’ initiative, is focused on making the industry better, more attractive, fulfilling, and fun for young creatives.