McCann Philippines Chairman Raul Castro has announced the promotion of Mitzie Lim-Nacianceno to Chief Executive Officer and Bambi Reyes to Chief Operating Officer, effective May 1. If you have worked with McCann, you have already worked with its next leaders.
Lim-Nacianceno and Reyes are not imports. They are McCann-built inside the agency through years of real work, hard pitches, and earned trust. Between them, they know the agency’s clients, how the work gets made, and what the place actually stands for. Castro has been building toward this moment for years.
“McCann has always been about the long game-in the work we do for clients and in how we build the agency from within. Mitzie and Bambi didn’t just rise through the ranks, but they have also helped define what those ranks mean. I have full confidence that under their leadership, McCann Philippines will not just sustain what we’ve built, but it will also build something even greater,“ says Raul Castro, Chairman, McCann Philippines.
A Giant Through the Years
McCann Philippines has been a fixture of Philippine advertising since 1963, when Coca-Cola, Del Monte, and Nestle Espresso were among its first clients, and the agency quickly established itself as one of the country’s most formidable creative forces. In the years since, its presence has only deepened.
There has not been a decade in which McCann has not helped shape Philippine pop culture. In the 1980s, San Miguel’s “Iba ang may pinagsamahan” rewrote what advertising could feel like. The 1990s brought Sprite’s defiant “Magpakatotoo ka” and the Globe Handyphone campaigns that made technology feel human. The 2000s delivered Biogesic’s “Ingat” and Coca-Cola’s “Beat Game”. The 2010s saw the “Kwentong Jollibee” series move the country in ways that transcended advertising entirely.
The creative record has a corresponding business record. Across more than six decades, McCann Philippines has served Nestlé, San Miguel Brewery, Coca-Cola, Globe Telecom, Jollibee, BPI, Philippine Airlines, and Unilever-some of the longest client relationships in Philippine advertising. The agency has been named 4As Agency of the Year five consecutive times (1998-2003), Campaign Asia-Pacific Digital Agency of the Year five consecutive times (2012-2016), and has accumulated metals at Cannes Lions, APAC Effies, Clio, New York Festivals, Spikes Asia, and Kidlat, including a landmark Gold Cannes Lion in 2017 and the distinction of being the only Philippine agency to win at the APAC Effies in 2019. Lim-Nacianceno and Reyes inherit that legacy and the mandate to extend it.
Meet the Women Taking McCann Forward
Lim-Nacianceno’s tenure at McCann has been defined by one consistent quality, and that is the ability to make clients feel like partners rather than accounts. She has built San Miguel, Jollibee, Nestlé, and Unilab into four of the agency’s most enduring and commercially significant partnerships-not through a single breakthrough campaign, but through consistent, creative work over years. That quality, the willingness to stay in the room and keep delivering, is what she now brings to the whole agency.
As VP/Managing Partner and Director of Client and Business Leadership, she has led the agency’s shift from single-channel executions to fully integrated campaigns, earning recognition at APAC Effies, Spikes Asia, Kidlat, and Tambuli. As CEO, her mandate is to deepen the agency’s creative ambition while growing the business that makes that ambition possible.
“I didn’t just grow up in this agency-this agency shaped how I think about brands, about people, and about what great work actually means. What changes now is the speed and scale at which we can act on it. We have the right clients, the right people, and now the right structure to do the most meaningful work of McCann’s history. That’s not a boast, it’s an obligation,” says Mitzie Lim-Nacianceno, CEO, McCann Philippines.
Reyes is the architect behind one of McCann Philippines’ most differentiated specialist models. As one of the agency’s Managing Partners, she has built a future-forward business defined by continuous innovation, thoughtful iteration, and a constant drive to evolve-doubling net revenue from 2020 to 2025, growing multiple accounts, and expanding the agency’s regional footprint through Asia-Pacific projects. Named the #1 account manager in the 2017 Adobo Creative Rankings, she has the rare ability to drive operational excellence without sacrificing creative quality, helping deliver McCann Philippines’ first Gold Cannes Lion, with additional metals at Clio, London International, and New York Festivals.
As COO, Reyes brings to the entire agency what she has built at the unit level, which is a high-performance operating model that does not sacrifice culture for efficiency, or efficiency for culture. She and Lim-Nacianceno have worked closely enough and long enough that the handoff between creative vision and operational execution is already second nature.
“The best operations don’t feel like operations, they feel like momentum. When teams have the clarity and the room to do their best work, the results follow. My job is to make sure nothing stands between our people and that,” says Bambi Reyes, COO, McCann Philippines.
Truth Well Told was the promise. Truth to Impact is the proof.
Under Lim-Nacianceno and Reyes, McCann Philippines is not pivoting away from what it does well. In fact, it is doubling down on it. Brand building remains the agency’s core and clearest competitive advantage, reinforced by Truth to Impact, the agency’s operating system that connects creative directly to measurable business outcomes.
At the same time, the agency is accelerating its evolution from simply having digital capabilities to operating with a digital-first impact-driven mindset, a structural shift, not an additive one. This enables McCann Philippines to create connected brand experiences across touchpoints and deliver platform-native, always-on content at the speed modern consumers demand.
Castro, for his part, isn’t stepping back and remains Chairman. Instead, he’s making room.
“The industry is changing faster than it ever has, and that’s exactly why this moment matters. Mitzie and Bambi understand where things are going, not just for McCann, but also for the brands we serve. I am genuinely excited about what the next 10 years look like with them at the helm,” quips Castro.
For current clients, this means the same McCann they trust, now built for where the world is going. For new ones, the door is open.
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