CEO MONTHLY Ι GLOBAL CEO EXCELLENCE AWARDS 2024 29 Brand & Packaging Design CEO of the Year 2024 (China): Angela Sy The 25s provides an array of services from Brand Strategy to Packaging design, E Commerce design to Retail design, and Point of Sale design. With its team’s many years of experience, the company has been growing exponentially in the last couple of years since its inception. We applaud the company as it has become the “fastest growing international design agency in China, and a Top 3 player in its industry”, and we’re pleased to introduce its CEO Angela Sy. The 25s is an innovative idea born from Angela’s revolutionary approach to the most integral aspect of design agencies: creative talent. All staff at The 25s own 25% of the company’s profits, with 25 days of vacation per year, and 25 weeks of parental leave for any new mother or father. The strategy critical for building a successful agency is to bring in the most talented people she can find, “High-performing, high-agency people want to work with equally talented people. Our clients only want the best, and stay with us for a long time because our delivery and quality never wavers. There is no space for mediocrity or lax attitudes, and it’s my job to create a studio that finds, breeds, and nurtures the best talent in China.” By cultivating an environment where people feel involved and valued, Angela has built a strong foundation for The 25s to truly flourish – together. When we asked Angela how she reached her position as CEO, she told us that her career began when she was very young. At 19, Angela secured her first job as an editorial assistant for a newspaper in The Philippines before she moved up to Editor in Chief for a lifestyle magazine. Her very first steps in the creative industry were fuelled by her passion for writing and telling stories, but her heart pulled her towards pursuing her MBA in Fudan University in China in 2012. As Angela felt she didn’t want to “reach the ceiling” in her twenties, she explored the world of business in China. She began to learn the “ins and outs of building trust and leaning into relationships,” before getting her first job in branding and design. By joining H&M packaging design as their first Account Manager in 2014, Angela worked hard to help develop a team of 8 which grew to a strong team of 70 while inevitably aiding H&M in becoming a household name as one of the largest packaging design agencies in China. She tells us, “It was invaluable being in the fray of real organic growth, I’d experienced all the mistakes, the temptations, the pivotal decisions that would make or break an agency. I’d lived through it across different economic times, and grown with it until it became my own playground. I live and breathed success and knew how to replicate it. So when the time came to do my own thing, I learned how to take the best parts and combine it with even better innovative ideas for an agency – that is, extreme people-centricity and uber efficiency.” Armed with this experience, Angela has built a business where everything flows in a natural, organic, and streamlined way. She says, “I’m most proud about the culture of our agency, where everyone speaks and everyone is heard. I try my best to keep hierarchy flat, as at the end of the day we’re all consumers, and it’s not all about ‘work experience’ that allows you a voice at the review table.” With regards to the success of The 25s, Angela shares, “We have done packaging design successfully, and we evolve our ways of working here and there. But there is a new spin to packaging design work that we’ve been successfully exploring since last year, when we started working with Aldi in China. It’s a thrilling partnership and Aldi China has been making waves since the launch of our work with them last year, lauded by Aldi global and looking to China for inspiration. It makes us immensely proud of having spearheaded that kind of collaboration, and we couldn’t have done it without the incredible trust and inspiration the Aldi China team has given us.” The future is looking exceptionally bright for The 25s with Angela steadily at the helm. We’re proud to award Angela with her title of Brand & Packaging Design CEO of the Year 2024 (China), and we’re positive that her impact will continue to exceed expectations. Contact: Angela Sy Company: The 25s Web Address: https://www.the25s.com Jul24092 Established in 2022, The 25s is a prominent brand agency based in Shanghai. Collaborating with brands such as Nestlé, Aldi, PepsiCo, P&G, Colgate, Mondelez, and many more large FMCG companies, The 25s boasts years of combined experience in strategic and creative design. Here we talk to Co-Founder and CEO Angela Sy as she wins her title in our Global CEO Excellence Awards 2024.
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