DP&CO’s Phil Huzzard named global president of independent agency network AMIN Worldwide

Independent agency network AMIN Worldwide has appointed DPR&Co co-founder and agency principal Phil Huzzard as its global president overseeing a membership base of 59 agency brands with more than 5,000 employees. The appointment is for a 2-year period.

Current chairman of the AMIN Americas Board and co-CEO of Kansas City agency Signal Theory Ali Mahaffy  said that the appointment of an APAC-based president was indicative of the importance of this region to the global economy: “We’ve been thrilled to see the AMIN APAC network grow in recent years to the point where it now provides our members with the ability to represent their clients in almost every APAC nation. Phil led the development of our APAC division and DPR&Co has been a vibrant member of our global community.”

Says Huzzard: “It’s a genuine privilege to lead a network that is now almost a century old.

“This is an amazing group. Many of the agencies are genuine industry leaders, but every member is passionate about the power of independent agencies to deliver value for clients without the constraints and financial imposition of a holding company parent.”

“My presidency will focus on two clear strategic priorities.

“The first is to extend the value of AMIN Worldwide to every level of our member agency teams. I want to enable our members’ most junior staff to benefit from the experiences of their peers in other countries as well as the best practice of other members agencies. This will strengthen the benefits of the network as a training and learning resource, while we continue to fiercely advocate for the benefits of independent agencies that are deeply ingrained in their local business and cultural environments.

“The second is to further sharpen AMIN Worldwide’s value proposition to fuel network growth.”

Huzzard was effusive about the value the network had delivered to DPR&Co: “AMIN has given us a window on the way things are done in other major markets around the world. Over time, we’ve built genuine friendships with some amazing agency leaders, shared learnings and benefitted from millions of dollars of referred business through the network.”

During his tenure as the head of AMIN APAC, Huzzard worked closely with other member agency heads to develop cooperative international and regional partnerships with clients including Caterpillar, JD Sport, Carrier, Alison Transmission and Val Venosta (Italian Apple Co-Op).

Further reinforcing the value of the APAC division to AMIN Worldwide members is the staging of this year’s Global CEO Conference in Bangkok (Peninsula Hotel, October 8-11) with a speaker line-up including UK behavioural scientist, Richard Shotton, Japan’s Web3.0 guru, Motoki Tani, and Jasper AI’s head of enterprise marketing, Samyutha Reddy. This is the first global conference to be hosted outside the US or Europe.