OUTSTANDING CATEGORY
Darien Mah
Founder & CEO
FOREFRONT International
Lot D9-3A, Dana 1 Commercial Centre,
Jalan PJU 1A/46, 47301 Petaling Jaya, Selangor.
+603 7842 8226
www.forefront.international/my
Darien Mah is the founder and CEO of FOREFRONT International (FOREFRONT), a full-fledged specialist creative group with presence in Kuala Lumpur, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia and Canada. Darien possesses a Degree in Software Engineering with Business from the University of Birmingham, UK.
Darien started his career in the education technology industry in Singapore involving e-learning project management, educational product development and client servicing. Upon returning to Malaysia, he founded FOREFRONT—a digital marketing agency with a team of four members, which has subsequently grown into an over 100-strong, award-winning team—over a mere time span of 13 years. Today, FOREFRONT provides end-to-end creative solutions including advertising, digital & interactive technology, CGI visualisation & animation, video production, holistic branding and strategic communication counsel.
Thanks to Darien’s perceptive positioning, FOREFRONT developed a niche expertise in the advertising and marketing of premium products and services, tailoring bespoke programmes to reach high-net worth, high-income growth individuals. To date, the firm has worked with some of the Region’s most prominent brands including EcoWorld, China Fortune Land Development (CFLD), Prudential, Gamuda, CapitaLand and many more. Reaching beyond the nation, FOREFRONT also handled international projects including Battersea Power Station in UK, Feliz en Vista in Vietnam and Lavon in Indonesia.
In today’s ambitious property marketing world, Darien constantly diversifies FOREFRONT’s product offerings to stay relevant. To achieve this, he invests heavily in the company’s R&D efforts to enrich the clients’ sales and marketing experience. Coupled with constant research on communication trends, FOREFRONT developed its first proprietary and patent-pending technology—Multi-Flip—a system that takes advantage of the iPad’s capability to send content to multiple larger screens simultaneously.
Following that was the birth of FOREFRONT’s integrated technological solution known as the Integrated Digital Multimedia System (IDMS), a platform that allows access to information in real time. This offers an all-in-one solution for the clients’ sales gallery experience.
The system consists of the Digital Multimedia Display (DMD), a standing interactive display, the Online Price Chart, the patent-pending Multi-Flip system as well as a Virtual Reality (VR) system. Even with the completion of the IDMS system, the agency is dedicated to develop more technological products for clients in diverse industries, extending the company’s competitive edge.
Darien takes an active role in driving the company’s performance, getting involved in all stages of key projects, even from the earliest stage of conceptualisation. By doing so, he can better understand the client’s requirements and expectations from the get-go, monitor the project development every step of the way and guide the team to make better decisions. He also encourages the team to listen to the market in order to create the best solutions for clients. His passion towards the company in turn creates a positive work culture at FOREFRONT, where teamwork, open communication and good leadership is an integral practice in the workplace.
As far as Darien is concerned, the employees are the agency’s most important resource. Thus, he makes an effort to constantly communicate the company’s strategic directions to the people and build a family-like culture in FOREFRONT in line with its four core values, F.O.R.E, which stands for Fanatic, Open, Responsible and Energising.
Darien also looks at the well-being of the community by pledging 10% of the agency’s profit to various charitable causes. He encourages FOREFRONT employees to be actively involved in the company’s CSR projects to give back to the community, involving partnerships with NGOs such as World Vision Malaysia and Mercy Culinary Malaysia.
Darien is hands-on in developing such a culture within the organisation. To form a culture, he spearheaded a series of human resources initiatives that cultivate a workplace and environment that are not only conducive, but exceed expectations. Having talents from a variety of specialisations and cultural backgrounds, he encourages the team to work together as a family.
As the people are the driving force behind the agency’s success, Darien also invests heavily in recruiting and retaining talents through benefit and remuneration packages, technology as well as social activities and programmes. This eventually morphed into FOREFRONT’s core talent retention strategy where employees’ satisfaction and engagement within the company are highly emphasised.
In his efforts to continuously innovate FOREFRONT’s community engagement efforts, Darien conceptualised the Foremula Café, a fresh spin-off from FOREFRONT’s main business and a window to the firm’s infectious vibes. Staying true to the brand promise of “Eat, Drink, Laugh”, Foremula Café promises a space with a difference. This is where collaboration and sharing of ideas between agency and clients, or even creative professionals of all specialisations take place—all coupled with finely handcrafted drinks, a carefully designed menu and a creativity-centric experience.
With Darien’s leadership, FOREFRONT has been encountering healthy growth over the years, in both new business and financial contexts. Not only is this growth a result of the increase and retaining of human resource capacity, but also due to reaching marketing and sales targets, and speedy work turnaround to maintain clients’ satisfaction.
Having most of the industry major property brands in its list of clients further testifies the agency’s reputation and quality of work—FOREFRONT has a policy of not reusing any creative concept for different clients, and does not employ loss-leader pricing strategies; all projects are landed purely based on innovative works and strategies.
Above all else, Darien also looks at the well-being of the community by pledging 10% of the agency’s profit to various charitable causes. He encourages FOREFRONT employees to be actively involved in the company’s CSR projects to give back to the community, involving partnerships with NGOs such as World Vision Malaysia and Mercy Culinary Malaysia.
FOREFRONT has also been a patron of Promise Home—a children’s home dedicated to helping Orang Asli children to gain access to modern education and basic modern needs—for five years now. Besides providing monetary support, the company holds events to allow employees to interact and engage with the children.
For its progressive work and cutting-edge solutions, FOREFRONT has received media recognition and awards over the years like the Agency of the Year Awards, Print Awards and Kancil Awards. As a passionate entrepreneur, Darien has also been awarded several accolades such as the Star Outstanding Business Awards (SOBA) for three years consecutively, SME100 Awards and Human Resources Excellence Awards.
OUTSTANDING CATEGORY
Darien Mah
Founder & CEO
Darien Mah is the founder and CEO of FOREFRONT International (FOREFRONT), a full-fledged specialist creative group with presence in Kuala Lumpur, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia and Canada. Darien possesses a Degree in Software Engineering with Business from the University of Birmingham, UK.
Darien started his career in the education technology industry in Singapore involving e-learning project management, educational product development and client servicing. Upon returning to Malaysia, he founded FOREFRONT—a digital marketing agency with a team of four members, which has subsequently grown into an over 100-strong, award-winning team—over a mere time span of 13 years. Today, FOREFRONT provides end-to-end creative solutions including advertising, digital & interactive technology, CGI visualisation & animation, video production, holistic branding and strategic communication counsel.
Thanks to Darien’s perceptive positioning, FOREFRONT developed a niche expertise in the advertising and marketing of premium products and services, tailoring bespoke programmes to reach high-net worth, high-income growth individuals. To date, the firm has worked with some of the Region’s most prominent brands including EcoWorld, China Fortune Land Development (CFLD), Prudential, Gamuda, CapitaLand and many more. Reaching beyond the nation, FOREFRONT also handled international projects including Battersea Power Station in UK, Feliz en Vista in Vietnam and Lavon in Indonesia.
In today’s ambitious property marketing world, Darien constantly diversifies FOREFRONT’s product offerings to stay relevant. To achieve this, he invests heavily in the company’s R&D efforts to enrich the clients’ sales and marketing experience. Coupled with constant research on communication trends, FOREFRONT developed its first proprietary and patent-pending technology—Multi-Flip—a system that takes advantage of the iPad’s capability to send content to multiple larger screens simultaneously.
Following that was the birth of FOREFRONT’s integrated technological solution known as the Integrated Digital Multimedia System (IDMS), a platform that allows access to information in real time. This offers an all-in-one solution for the clients’ sales gallery experience.
The system consists of the Digital Multimedia Display (DMD), a standing interactive display, the Online Price Chart, the patent-pending Multi-Flip system as well as a Virtual Reality (VR) system. Even with the completion of the IDMS system, the agency is dedicated to develop more technological products for clients in diverse industries, extending the company’s competitive edge.
Darien takes an active role in driving the company’s performance, getting involved in all stages of key projects, even from the earliest stage of conceptualisation. By doing so, he can better understand the client’s requirements and expectations from the get-go, monitor the project development every step of the way and guide the team to make better decisions. He also encourages the team to listen to the market in order to create the best solutions for clients. His passion towards the company in turn creates a positive work culture at FOREFRONT, where teamwork, open communication and good leadership is an integral practice in the workplace.
As far as Darien is concerned, the employees are the agency’s most important resource. Thus, he makes an effort to constantly communicate the company’s strategic directions to the people and build a family-like culture in FOREFRONT in line with its four core values, F.O.R.E, which stands for Fanatic, Open, Responsible and Energising.
FOREFRONT International
Lot D9-3A, Dana 1 Commercial Centre,
Jalan PJU 1A/46, 47301 Petaling Jaya, Selangor.
+603 7842 8226
www.forefront.international/my
Darien also looks at the well-being of the community by pledging 10% of the agency’s profit to various charitable causes. He encourages FOREFRONT employees to be actively involved in the company’s CSR projects to give back to the community, involving partnerships with NGOs such as World Vision Malaysia and Mercy Culinary Malaysia.
Darien is hands-on in developing such a culture within the organisation. To form a culture, he spearheaded a series of human resources initiatives that cultivate a workplace and environment that are not only conducive, but exceed expectations. Having talents from a variety of specialisations and cultural backgrounds, he encourages the team to work together as a family.
As the people are the driving force behind the agency’s success, Darien also invests heavily in recruiting and retaining talents through benefit and remuneration packages, technology as well as social activities and programmes. This eventually morphed into FOREFRONT’s core talent retention strategy where employees’ satisfaction and engagement within the company are highly emphasised.
In his efforts to continuously innovate FOREFRONT’s community engagement efforts, Darien conceptualised the Foremula Café, a fresh spin-off from FOREFRONT’s main business and a window to the firm’s infectious vibes. Staying true to the brand promise of “Eat, Drink, Laugh”, Foremula Café promises a space with a difference. This is where collaboration and sharing of ideas between agency and clients, or even creative professionals of all specialisations take place—all coupled with finely handcrafted drinks, a carefully designed menu and a creativity-centric experience.
With Darien’s leadership, FOREFRONT has been encountering healthy growth over the years, in both new business and financial contexts. Not only is this growth a result of the increase and retaining of human resource capacity, but also due to reaching marketing and sales targets, and speedy work turnaround to maintain clients’ satisfaction.
Having most of the industry major property brands in its list of clients further testifies the agency’s reputation and quality of work—FOREFRONT has a policy of not reusing any creative concept for different clients, and does not employ loss-leader pricing strategies; all projects are landed purely based on innovative works and strategies.
Above all else, Darien also looks at the well-being of the community by pledging 10% of the agency’s profit to various charitable causes. He encourages FOREFRONT employees to be actively involved in the company’s CSR projects to give back to the community, involving partnerships with NGOs such as World Vision Malaysia and Mercy Culinary Malaysia.
FOREFRONT has also been a patron of Promise Home—a children’s home dedicated to helping Orang Asli children to gain access to modern education and basic modern needs—for five years now. Besides providing monetary support, the company holds events to allow employees to interact and engage with the children.
For its progressive work and cutting-edge solutions, FOREFRONT has received media recognition and awards over the years like the Agency of the Year Awards, Print Awards and Kancil Awards. As a passionate entrepreneur, Darien has also been awarded several accolades such as the Star Outstanding Business Awards (SOBA) for three years consecutively, SME100 Awards and Human Resources Excellence Awards.