The associate creative director at Virtue on wild memories in Portugal, a huge rebranding he worked on for Korean Air, and advice he would give his younger self.

Places lived/worked: Lisbon, Portugal; Shanghai, China; Singapore

Associate creative director, Virtue, Singapore, 2020-present Associate creative director, BBH, Shanghai, 2019-2019 Associate creative director, Ogilvy, Shanghai, 2017-2019 Creative copywriter, LolaMullenLowe, Lisbon, 2014-2017

1. How did you end up being a creative?

This is not one of those stories of people kicking a rock and finding out about being an advertising creative. I guess I was always somehow creative. I remember telling jokes and stories to my grandma’s neighbours, from her backyard downstairs. I would always be entertaining people around me, just trying to be funny. Later in life, while attending high school, I thought of being an engineer. But somehow my mother directed me into marketing (thanks mom). Then going from marketing to advertising was a clear move for me.

2. What's your favourite piece of work in your portfolio?

It definitely has to be the Go Korean global brand campaign for Korean Air (see video below). Not just for the end result, but for how it made me grow as a creative. It started as a possible two-month freelancer project and ended up being one of the most fun, challenging, life-changing projects I’ve ever been involved in.

Our challenge was to bring Korean Air into the big Korean wave that was happening all around the world, encapsulating not only elements from culture but also giving travellers reasons why should they go Korean and fly through Korean Air. With multiple rounds of late-night revisions, makgeolli and soju shots, and an amazing shooting production in Thailand with the ultra-talented Vallée Duhamel, we created an exciting brand platform and an amazing visual universe that brings everyone on a journey of ‘Koreaness’.

3. What's your favourite piece of work created by someone else?

Too many. But I think the one that encapsulated everything that I cherish the most in a campaign—activation, innovation, culture, and a dash of rule-breaking—has to be the Air Max Graffiti store by AKQA São Paulo (see video below).

4. What/who are your key creative influences?

Tyler Okonma, Tom Sachs, and Daniel Arnold (not by any specific order).

5. What's the craziest thing you've ever done?

Me and a group of friends used to organise DIY punk/hardcore/metal shows in our hometown a couple of years ago. After one show, really late at night, we trespassed a known restaurant in the area, just to dive in their outdoor pool. It was peak summer in Portugal, and it was really nice to have a little impromptu pool party in the middle of the night with a great crew. Plus, the pool had an amazing view over Lisbon.

6. Tell us about the worst job you ever had.

It was an unpaid internship at the marketing department of a big clothing multinational. I had to manually input new customers' personal details into a database—all from handwritten forms. Yes, it was as appealing as it sounds.

7. What advice would you give to 10-year-old you, if you could?

Never stop drawing, write more, and don't spend your entire summer holidays playing fantasy football. Listen to more metal. And don't worry, hyperlinking images in HTML will be much easier in the future.

8. What’s your favourite music/film/TV show/book/other of the past year, and why?

I've been listening to Glow On by Turnstile on heavy rotation. It is the last stage of metamorphosis for Turnstile as a band, breaking away from their Baltimore hardcore roots and unveiling a band that has grown beyond Time and Space.

9. Tell us about an artist (any medium) that we've never probably heard of.

Lao Xie Xie, a fascinating photographer based in China with an extremely raw and provocative style. In multiple interviews, he mentioned how he grew up in an impoverished family in the Sichuan province and worked as a baozi maker before moving to Shanghai and grabbing a camera. Except Lao Xie Xie is not actually a working-class artist from Sichuan. He’s not even Chinese.

9. What app could you absolutely not live without? What app do you wish you could delete?

Taobao. Having lived in China, I feel the algorithm knows me better than anyone by how accurate the suggestions it makes. Plus, you can find everything there. Everything. If I could delete an app it would definitely be Instagram. I feel it prioritises the wrong content now, so it lost a bit of its appeal to me.

10. What makes you really angry?

When people are rude to waiters—it really tells a lot about someone's personality.

Not spending enough time learning how to fix stuff with my grandpa. He was a jack-of-all-trades type of person—car mechanic, carpenter, electrician, and builder. He was the true definition of DIY. So it would've been amazing to learn more from him.

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