Omnicom Media agency, Initiative, unveils The Growth Initiative, a two-year CSR program launching today, in conjunction with World Entrepreneurs’ Day, to partner Singapore’s entrepreneurs, founders, and small businesses with the brand marketing expertise and cultural insight they need to grow their business.
The program addresses a critical gap in Singapore’s startup ecosystem. The city-state is Southeast Asia’s densest founder market and home to roughly 3,900–4,000 tech startups, accounting for approximately 45% of all Southeast Asian startups, yet only around 30% of homegrown ventures succeed. While most founders are exceptional operators and product experts, few have access to the brand marketing and advertising craft needed to understand where their brand stands in culture and to leverage that insight to resonate with consumers and drive growth. The result: Visibility goes unseen, opportunity goes unrealized.
“This isn’t charity,” said Chloe Neo, CEO, Omnicom Media Singapore. “Singapore’s SMEs make up 99% of all enterprises and employ around 70% of the workforce. Today’s founder is tomorrow’s employer, and tomorrow’s contributor to shared prosperity. By helping the startup base grow, we’re strengthening the entire economic backbone of the nation, and that’s exactly the kind of systemic impact CSR should create.”
The Two-Phase Model
Year 1 focuses on reach and proof. Initiative will launch The Growth Initiative Blueprint – a self-serve, AI-powered growth tool that helps founders understand where their brand stands in culture, who it resonates with, where momentum exists, and where white space is ripe for growth.
“This is about democratising something that usually costs a lot of money,” said Zachary Lim, Managing Director at Initiative Singapore. “A strategic culture assessment that would normally run thousands of dollars becomes an afternoon’s work for a founder with zero budget. Understanding their position in culture isn’t an exercise; it’s the foundation for real business growth.
Year 2 scales what Year 1 validates. Initiative will partner with entrepreneurs, founders, and small businesses as growth coaches, delivering two sessions per person per year that take them from The Growth Initiative Blueprint’s cultural insights to concrete, executable business growth moves that drive real outcomes.
“What excites me most is the multiplier effect,” said James Wong, Initiative Singapore Executive Director and The Growth Initiative Project Leader. “Year 1 gives founders cultural insight at scale. Year 2 turns that insight into actionable strategy and business momentum. But more than that, our team gets to work on varied, real businesses outside our day-to-day, and that’s the kind of skills-based volunteering that develops the best strategists and growth marketers.”
Why It Matters: Shared Prosperity and Strategic Fit
Initiative has long positioned itself as the agency for finding opportunity in disruption. The Growth Initiative puts that philosophy into action by partnering with founders to understand where they stand in culture and giving them the practical brand-marketing moves to drive business growth and capture that opportunity.
But the real measure of success is simpler. Founders who had no partner now have one, and ventures that might have disappeared into the noise now have the insight and strategy to grow. Furthermore, Singapore’s economic backbone, the very enterprises that employ and innovate, gets stronger.
