Life at Near: JR’s Standard on Next-Level Campaign Execution

In every high-performing creative agency, someone has to keep the gears turning seamlessly, strategically, and with empathy. For Near, that person is JR De La Cerna.

As Client Operations Director, JR’s job is to ensure the company doesn’t just deliver campaigns, it levels them up. With over 12 years of experience across both agency and client sides (including Ogilvy, ABS-CBN, Kantar, and PalawanPay), he brings a unique lens to operational leadership in the creative industry. His background spans process design, stakeholder management, and performance strategy, allowing him to bridge creative ambition with business performance and drive scalable, people-centered solutions.

He joined Near in May 2025, but in just a few months, he’s already left his mark: aligning internal systems, building structure with care, and helping scale the agency while preserving its most important asset: its people.

This is his Life at Near.

Leading Campaign Operations in a Creative Agency

JR leads the Client Operations team, often described as the “service engine” of the agency, overseeing everything from resourcing and timelines to cross-team coordination for campaign delivery. With a macro view of how everything moves, JR plays a pivotal role in ensuring the agency’s operations run smoothly, on time, on brief, and always pushing for better.

What he values most about the role isn’t just the systems or metrics… It’s witnessing growth in real time. Near has expanded rapidly in the past year, but JR is proud to say it hasn’t lost its core value: taking care of people holistically. That, to him, is a rare achievement in an industry that often prioritizes output over balance.

Strengthening Client Relationships Through Operational Excellence

One of JR’s most memorable moments was meeting Near’s Spotify and Dyson clients in Singapore alongside the Accounts team. Beyond just being a productive business trip, it gave him front-row insight into how much trust these global clients have in the Near team. Sitting across from them in the room—coffee in hand, laughter exchanged between slides—he saw the genuine respect and confidence they had in the team’s capabilities. It was a moment that felt both energizing and affirming: proof that the relationship wasn’t just professional, but personal too.

Having worked on the client side himself, JR knows the difference between an agency that treats you like a partner and one that treats you like a pipeline. His mission at Near is to ensure clients feel the former through personal investment, clear communication, and consistently elevated creative execution.

He says it plainly that we feel the pressure to level up. But the way every Near team member personally shows up for our clients? That’s what makes us different.

What keeps JR grounded in his role is his belief that no great campaign happens in isolation. Collaboration, openness, and shared responsibility are the real engines behind successful projects. In a creative agency, this mindset is key for sustainability.

He also brings a fresh lens to operational creativity, often blending structure with storytelling. As he jokes, he may not be the best at drawing but he can definitely paint a compelling narrative through Excel. It’s this mix of humour and insight that reflects how he approaches data-driven decision-making: not just as a numbers game, but as a way to build strategies that serve both the business and the creative vision. More seriously, he sees his role as enabling the brilliance of others, removing roadblocks so creative minds can do what they do best.

And while the work is rigorous, JR holds firm to one principle: don’t forget to live a life outside of it.

“There’s no greater enemy to creativity than burnout,”

He says. “Near’s culture of healthy work-life balance keeps me motivated to keep building and innovating.”

Inside Near’s People-Centric Agency Culture

What surprised JR most when he joined Near was humanity. Coming into a creatively driven environment as an ops lead could’ve felt daunting, but instead, it felt refreshing. He never saw himself as traditionally “creative,” but learned to appreciate how creative thinking applies just as much to systems and process design as it does to campaigns. It showed up not just in how people spoke to one another, but in intentional practices like “Real Human Days”, dedicated time for people to rest, recharge, or simply step away from the screen without guilt. In an industry known for burnout, seeing a creative agency actively protect its people’s well-being was both refreshing and inspiring.

He’s also found growth not just in operations, but in leadership. As someone who values people management, he sees every one-on-one, every challenge, and every success as part of his own development. In turn, his team has taught him just as much: to take things in stride, drink less coffee, and remember that joy and productivity aren’t mutually exclusive.

JR’s advice to jobseekers? Don’t overthink it, just go for it. “The perfect candidate doesn’t exist,” he says. “Read beyond the job description. Your value is always going to be more than what’s written on a LinkedIn post.”

He encourages applicants to focus on their potential, not just their credentials. It’s about bringing something meaningful to the table and being open to learning. For JR, Near brings him a step nearer to a long-time career goal: helping build a creative agency that takes care of its people while delivering award-winning work. It’s about finding that balance between creativity and consistency, speed and sustainability, ambition and heart.

And while there’s still work to do, he’s proud to be helping lead a team that chooses both: creative impact, with care.

—

Do you want to be part of a creative agency that builds with purpose and with people at its center? Take the next step: nearcreative.co/careers