Alfa Aphrodita graduated with a Bachelor Degree with Summa Cum Laude from Visual Communication Design, Bandung Institute of Technology back in 2001.
Literally, the very next day, she bid her beloved hometown Bandung goodbye and jumped onto the train to start her career at Ogilvy Jakarta as a Junior Art Director, before being promoted to Creative Group Head in 2006. Such was her clarity of vision for her future at an early stage in her career. This absolute clarity of mind and heartfelt determination would hold in her in good stead for everything that was to follow.
As Alfa was to become a key reason why Ogilvy Indonesia still enjoys unrivalled success, to this very day, as ‘Agency of the Year’ for 3 years straight running during her time there. And for 5 of her 7 years in a row, that is still unmatched and unrivalled to this very day too.
But she didn’t stop there, as she then rose to the position of Creative Director for the very first time with McCann Indonesia in 2012. However, there was about to be a major shift in her career yet again. As her emerging interest and lifelong passion for social media and the ‘digital world’ was identified specifically for her to attend a Regional, Digital Masterclass Training overseas. Where she shined the brightest so far.
This tremendous success was then highlighted and recognized by her representing McCann on a weekly basis at the Coca-Cola company in Indonesia to provide a constant flow of ‘fresh ideas’ to be implemented in social, with immediate effect. And at the same time, Alfa also collaborated with the McCann Digital Team on ideation regularly for clients such as Unilever. Which was actually a great investment in her future, unbeknownst to her at that time, as things would eventually turn out.
Because it was in January of 2014 that Alfa’s journey as a Creative Entrepreneur began, when she embarked on an exciting new venture as Co-Founder & Executive Creative Director of Arcade Indonesia, a branch of Arcade Singapore, Japan, South Africa & Shanghai back then. Alfa and her business partners, Gary Caulfield and Aldo Hutomo, opened Arcade Indonesia in that same January of 2014 and have enjoyed incredible growth and enviable success year on year since. As their founding client of Arcade Indonesia was Unilever Indonesia, and within the first 3 months they were also appointed to launch the prestigious IKEA brand in Indonesia for the very first time. The Global representative for IKEA at that time said this launch campaign idea to win the pitch was the best ‘new country launch’ he had ever seen, anywhere in the world.
The Arcade Indonesia agency started with just 3 people originally and has grown into over a 100 people agency today in just 5 years of operation until now. Making it one of the fastest growing ‘Creative Boutique’ style agencies in the entire world. Handling more than 40 major brands like Unilever, along with other Global Brand’s like Arnott’s, Mars, Djarum, Sosro, and Nestle to name but a few. Plus, IKEA & Coca-Cola, as already mentioned.
But still never satisfied, in December 2015, Alfa changed her role from Executive Creative Director into Chief Creative Channel Planner Officer (C3PO), focusing more on a digital channel planning discipline in order to spread her talents, and work more closely with every single creative team on various exciting digital campaigns plans for every client. And not surprisingly, with her passionate contribution, Arcade won the most Mobile Marketing Awards in 2015 of any Indonesian agency, for brands like Cornetto, Pond’s, Wall’s and Bango, and won another MMA award for the Unilever Festive campaign the following year. As well as a ‘Best of the Best’ award too!
And the one thing Alfa loves so much about digital, is its always-changing landscape, which makes it always exciting and always pushes everyone to learn new things, every day.
Just like in 2015, when Alfa attended one of her Unilever brands (Bango) workshops in Facebook HQ in San Francisco. Which she won in a competition for her performance and success. And she then went on to attend a Publicis Groupe Creative Conference in South Africa in 2016, while helping out her Arcade colleagues there as well, she helped them win the pitch for POND’S to set up the agency there. As they were in the middle of launching another Arcade office in South Africa. And in 2017, she then traveled to Shanghai, China, to attend an internal Arcade network workshop, again to impart more of her knowledge and talent worldwide. While there, she did a ‘deep dive’ learning on the success of eCommerce in China, to be implemented in all South East Asia countries, and most importantly, her home of Indonesia.
So it will come as no surprise once more, that Alfa has been highly awarded at the major International, Regional and Local award shows such as: Cannes Lions, LIA, Smarties MMA, Adfest, Spikes, Citra Pariwara and Adoi Award. To name just a few once more as well. Including being a judge and Head Speaker of a seminar on Creativity for Young Talent in the Advertising Community.
However, Alfa still believes that Arcade Indonesia is by far her ‘biggest life achievement’, that she is most proud of.
To this date, Arcade Indonesia is one of the most successful and fastest growing creative agencies, in not only Asia, the Region and the World. With incredibly strong digital credentials that are currently the envy of the industry. Especially when Arcade Indonesia just celebrated their most successful year of all so far in 2018, in terms of business growth.
And when she manages to find some kind of ‘free time’ after all this, Alfa loves spending time with her husband, adopting pets, watching Netflix and enjoying endless makeup tutorials on YouTube. Not many people know that, or the fact she is actually very superstitious. So she’ll be crossing her fingers and toes for everyone to enjoy success here and for whatever is still to come in her amazing life journey ahead.
https://campaignbriefasia.com/2015/01/20/newsmaker-alfa-aphrodita/