Thomas Yang departed DDB Group Singapore after 16 years to join Leo Singapore in a senior creative role, marking one of the year's few intra-Omnicom lateral moves at the executive creative director level in Southeast Asia.

Yang held dual titles as Executive Creative Director and Head of Art at DDB Singapore, a tenure that spanned the agency's regional AOR wins for Singapore Airlines, Volkswagen Group, and McDonald's Singapore. His move to Leo Singapore—announced without transition overlap—comes as the Leo Burnett network rebuilds its Singapore studio following the 2023 consolidation of its APAC hub operations into Sydney and the quiet departure of two group creative directors in Q4 2024. Leo Singapore currently retains Ministry of Health and NTUC FairPrice but lost Singtel's brand work to TBWA in August.

The departure creates DDB Singapore's first ECD vacancy since 2019 and removes the last creative leader who predates the network's 2016 merger with Track Singapore. Yang's 16-year run is rare for the market: the median Singapore ECD tenure across holding-company agencies is 4.2 years, per Huang Goodman's CMO Appointments desk data. His art-direction background—he began as a senior art director in 2008—gave DDB's output a visual consistency that survived three regional CEO changes and two network rebrandings.

For Leo Singapore, the hire is an external signal that Publicis Groupe's regional creative consolidation is reversing. The agency has operated with interim creative leadership since October and lost pitch invitations for two government statutory board reviews in Q1 2025 due to the vacancy. Yang's arrival gives Leo Singapore a credentialed lead ahead of the Ministry of Communications and Information's expected agency review in Q3, a S$18 million annual account that last moved in 2021.

Operators should watch DDB Singapore's replacement timeline: if the ECD search extends past 90 days, expect AOR renewals for Singapore Airlines subsidiary SilkAir and Volkswagen Singapore—both up in H2 2025—to face internal scrutiny. Leo Singapore's first pitch under Yang will likely surface by June, with the StarHub media-and-creative review already in market. Allocators tracking Omnicom's APAC creative spend should note that lateral moves between sibling agencies typically precede holding-company studio mergers by 12 to 18 months.

Yang's LinkedIn profile updated within 48 hours of the announcement, listing his start date as April 2025.