Women to Watch 2022: Hajar Yusof, Naga DDB Tribal

Hajar Yusof

Head of digital experience
Naga DDB Tribal
Malaysia

With over 12 years of experience working across a variety of clients, Hajar Yusof has gained a reputation for championing innovation and being relentless in her pursuit for excellence. During her five-year stint at Reprise Digital, her work for KFC won 21 award nods globally 2017 and 2018, including the Best Advertiser Award and the Golden Kancil in 2018. She was awarded Campaign Asia-Pacific’s Southeast Asia Account Person of the Year, a testament to her ability to navigate between craft and effectiveness to ensure clients’ and the agency’s objectives are met.

To be able to work on brands that would give her an opportunity to make a lasting impact, Yusof moved to Naga DDB Tribal as a brand integration director to lead the Astro account. After eight months, she was elevated to head of digital experience after demonstrating a deep understanding of digital platforms and showing strong collaboration with the agency’s Content Studio unit.

For example, she expanded the existing client base for social-media management and opened new revenue channels such as social-first content creation and influencer marketing to complement the agency’s existing suite of end-to-end marketing communications services.

This allowed the agency to secure clients such as Luno and Genting SkyWorlds. She also won multiple ad-hoc projects from the likes of Tik Tok and Astro which saw total year-on-year billings grow by 282%. Overall, out-of-scope revenue also grew by 200% which included an expansion of scope to LinkedIn and TikTok for Himalaya Vajomba and Prudential.

Yusof regularly conducts team-building sessions to build trust and familiarity with an emphasis on respecting the strengths and weaknesses of her team. She does this monthly via sharing sessions, where her team is encouraged to present an in-depth analysis of any subject from TikTok trends to decentralised finance to NFTs. To combat the danger of burnout, Yusof has introduced a monthly reset block with her team which allows them to take one morning in a month to explore their passions.

Outside of work, Yusof gives back to the community by giving talks and lectures at YWCA Vocational Training Opportunity Center (VTOC) on subjects such as social customer care and video editing. Plus, she kickstarted an all-female after-work networking series called She Speaks Power. In the first installment, she invited guests from different industries such as advertising, tech and fashion.