Ogilvy & Mather
The Singapore-born, New York-based Tham is co-chairman and worldwide chief creative officer of advertising giant Ogilvy & Mather. He has long championed ‘pervasive creativity’, in which every Ogilvy staffer, regardless of rank, has a responsibility to be creative. Despite early scepticism, the idea has paid dividends, with the firm regularly sweeping global advertising awards. What’s your take on the business of design? We all know how easily ideas are strangled at birth. The more original the idea, the stranger it appears and the more hostility there will be to greet it. It needs defending ferociously. Great design cannot exist without anyone fighting for it. Singapore was designated Unesco Creative City of Design in 2015. How should Singapore’s creative industry live up to that designation? It needs to take on bigger and bolder challenges, use design as a tool to solve business problems, and transform Singapore into a sustainable tropical city. How do you scale urban farming, use more alternative energy, rely less on fossil fuel, cut down on cars and use more bicycles? Singapore has the funds, the ambition and the appetite to answer these questions. What’s the best design you’ve seen in Singapore? For me, it’s the classic shophouse with a shop on the ground floor and residences above. It is an amalgamation of clever, efficient design, and it makes terrific business sense. ogilvy.com