Cheil SWA appoints Sungkyoon Kim as President and CEO

Cheil South West Asia (SWA) has announced the appointment of Sungkyoon Kim as the President and CEO of the Cheil SWA group.

Sungkyoon Kim will operate from the agency’s headquarters in Gurgaon. In this capacity, he will oversee a team of 1,000 professionals across the agency’s offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata, spanning multiple disciplines such as creative, data, technology, retail, media and experiential.

Sungkyoon Kim brings more than 30 years of expertise in marketing strategy, data and analytics, and consumer psychology. Before taking on this role at Cheil SWA, he served as Head of Digital Platform Business, managing Samsung.com, and also led the DnA (Data and Analytics) Center, guiding the agency’s CRM and data initiatives at Cheil.

He has led data-led digital transformation programs at Cheil, strengthening CRM, media, marketing and AI capabilities across the organisation. His work has included designing and deploying a real-time digital media optimisation platform that integrated cross-channel spending and performance data to enhance investment efficiency and ROI, as well as developing and launching LLM-powered AI agents for real-time analysis and automated insight generation. He has also driven marketing automation initiatives as an Adobe Experience Platform expert, unifying customer data to enable real-time, personalised cross-channel campaigns.

He additionally played a key role in establishing Cheil’s Global Data Center in India, boosting its offshore R&D capabilities and global operational efficiency.

“I am thrilled to lead Cheil SWA during this pivotal shift in the advertising landscape. As AI continues to reshape marketing, I believe our future success lies at the intersection of human psychology and data-driven technology. My goal is to drive an AI-led transformation that goes beyond the surface, embedding innovation into the very fabric of our business functions. Alongside our incredible talent, I look forward to delivering the kind of dynamic, high-impact marketing solutions our clients expect in this new era,” said Sungkyoon Kim.