Page 92 - myanmar

SPOTLIGHT ON
With a thirst for adventure, a growing bank of international experience and intense curiosity about a market emerging from isolation, Jamie Macfarlane opted
to spend a year of his WPP Fellowship in Myanmar. He landed in the Land of Golden Pagodas knowing no one, with a mission to apply his planning capabilities to this new market.
“It was an unbelievable opportunity, to be in the country at a time of incredible transition,” he says. “It was a chance to work in a country that had been closed to the outside world for years, with a pioneering agency, growing a business and shaping how major global brands entered the market.”
Macfarlane, now 27, arrived in Myanmar in mid-2013. A history graduate, he had worked in the UK House of Commons and in the US with Native American tribes before joining the three-year WPP Fellowship scheme. The Fellowship took him to Blue State Digital in Washington and J. Walter Thompson in Singapore before his posting in Myanmar. His new role was as head of strategy with Mango Marketing Services, which had just become affiliated with J. Walter Thompson, to build Myanmar’s first planning department.
As Macfarlane got to know the country and its people, his department grew from just him to a team of five. He balanced meetings with multinationals looking to enter Myanmar, with chats beside paddy fields with farmers about how technology might affect their lives.
OUR MAN IN MYANMAR
A year on WPP’s Fellowship scheme – an experience for life
92