The recipe to creativity
VIJAY Anand has more than a decade of advertising experience in renowned agencies like TBWA\, Ogilvy & Mather, Cheil Worldwide and Creative Juice.
He now holds the position of executive creative director at BBDO/Proximity Malaysia. His recent visit to The One Academy is a mutual effort with the institution to educate young creative potentials about the world of advertising and the paths to achieve success.
As a Bachelor of Science in Digital Media holder, Vijay took his first steps into the industry as a web designer.
Not a known fact to many, he designed the first Maxis website, which used to be only a web portal back in 1999. After about 5 years in multimedia design, Vijay decided to venture intoadvertising because he ‘wanted to do ideas’.
Since then, he has took part in countless through the line advertising with international agencies.
As someone who not only has the talent and experience, but had also grown alongside the revolution of media, The One Academy was pleased to host Vijay as a very suited local advertising professional to tell the Advertising & Graphic Design students to ‘Don’t Stop Playing’ as he revealed his own working history and updated industry practices.
“People pay us to have fun, play and do stupid things”, Vijay said to students during the master forum.
He added that being creative requires one to be stupid and playful as he explains how his team fools around in the office.
However, he stresses that in addition to those traits, hard work must never be neglected. He compared the creative traits to children, adding that while they are indeed naïve, they also happen to be very creative. This observation holds water and is also similar to the view of iconic artist Picasso: “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up”.
Vijay also mentioned the likes of Queen, Elon Musk, Hiroshi Fujiwara and Dominic Wilcox who have all broken boundaries and excelby going against the norm. A fully-integrated advertising agency consists of different departments with distinct responsibilities that support each other. Departments handle the aspects of accounts (handling of business), strategy (planning), creative (advertising), technology (developers and programmers) and social media.
All these work together and act as a ‘magnet’ between brands and their respective audience.
To get brandscloser to the audience, advertisers need to be a commercial artist whereby creativity is used to solve a business or marketing problem.
Vijay presented some of the techniques he adheres to for his work such as telling stories, creating new experiences, adding value to lives, empowering the people, making life easier, and also not forgetting, doing stupid things. Undoubtedly, contemporary advertising has become a 2-way communication that is personal rather than traditional methods, and brands are going to people who recognise this and leaving agencies that are stuck with old-school ways.
Therefore, Vijay is constantly working on many different multimedia creations with his team. He told The One Academy students that although innovation and technology are crucial, emotion, creativity and people should always be their main focus.
For further enquiries, contact email enquiry@toa.edu.my or visit www.toa. edu.my.