Old is Gold

Former No. 1 AMC Agency Veterans Hold 30th Reunion.

More than 70 management and staff members of Malaysia’s former largest and most award-winning agency – AMC – got together this past Thursday night for their 30th reunion.

The reunion was again held at a McDonald’s, the family restaurant group AMC helped launch for its first eight restaurants in Malaysia from 1982 to 1987.

The then AMC agency – owned by Melewar Corp., Tan Sri Rahim and co-founder Austen Zecha, and for a brief 3 years also MBF – simultaneously had, among others, the ASEAN Tourism, Bata, Celcom, Esso Malaysia, J&J, KTM, Malaysia Airlines, MBF, Pan Pacific, (Perwira) Affin Bank, P&G, Proton, Singer, Sterling Drug and Tourism Malaysia accounts.

Most of its current staff have since retired but a handful of them became and some still head leading multinationals in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.

Melewar Group Chairman and then co-owner and Director of AMC, Tunku Datuk Sri (Dr) Iskandar, Datin Rose Ahmad who then was working on AMC’s Tourism Malaysia account, Ng Chiew Ping who was then one of 4 AMC Group Account Directors and in charge of the Tourism Malaysia account who later became Austen Zecha’s General Manager at AMC’s successor TBWA-ISC joint venture agency, Datin Yasmin Merican — daughter of RTM’s iconic Tan Sri Ahmad Merican — and who assisted Zecha in setting up three of his Malaysian agencies (PTM Communications, AMC and ISC) and AMC’s other partner and its Deputy Chairman Tan Sri Dato (Dr) and former Senator Abdul Rahim of Rahim & Co.

Co-founder Austen Zecha, fourth from left, and some of his AMC staff from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Second from left is Zecha’s former AMC General Manager as well as also ex-4As President George Chen.

Former AMC Group Account Director Ng Chiew Ping, CEO Austen Zecha, wife Jannie White Zecha, and Co-Owner and then Executive Director Tunku Dato Seri (Dr) Tunku Iskandar.

Former AMC Group Account Director, Co-Founder Austen Zecha’s Assistant in three of his seven Malaysian agency ventures Datin Yasmin Merican, Deputy Chairman Tan Sri Dato (Dr) Rahim and Melewar Co-Owner and then also Director Tunku Dato Seri (Dr) Iskandar.

AMC’s successor agency, ISC, was started in 1994 by its common founder Austen Zecha, and has won more than 120 international creative and marketing effectiveness awards, since then, many for its “Malaysia: Truly Asia” work since conceiving it in 1999.

And Zecha has in his now 51 years of agency start-ups, and managing and selling, has done so with 11 agencies he founded and then sold to the likes of DMB&B, JWT, Landor & Associates, DFS, Edelman Public Relations, Saatchi & Saatchi and TBWA Worldwide.