From Taiping to London: How VJ Anand Ended Up Global

VJ, a Malaysian creative, culture hacker, change agent, influencer and Executive Creative Director of VaynerMedia Europe, Middle East and Africa, has been based in London for the past two years.

This Taiping-born lad VJ Anand is one of Malaysia’s finest creative exports and he is now raring to return home.

This gentle bear credits his sneaker obsession to Will Smith in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and describes his style, loud, vibrant, heat on feet, as an extension of himself.

Did you always want to work overseas?

Not really, I just enjoy coming up with ideas learning about advertising and creativity. Growing up, our family wasn’t really well to do. We were ok. Not OK enough for my dad to send me overseas for studies. I studied locally in Malaysia and paid for my own education.

What was your first shot at working abroad?

After a few years as a web designer and coming up the ranks in the ad industry, I got my first shot overseas in a small boutique agency in Bangkok. As a head of art, I got a chance to be in an activation agency that did projects across Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

That was an eye opener to me, just how mad open clients in that area (especially in Thailand) were. We had clients like IBM, Tiger beer and banks that were so open to disrupt the market in the on-ground activation space.

My partner in crime then, GM Joe Wong, gave me this shot along with our bosses Pick and Warwick who were just mad mad blokes. And my ex ECD Chris Howden was there as a mentor. But I partied way too much, ended up in hospital way too many times, that the doctors told me it was time to go back.

My second stint was just short of one year, in Singapore. It was an internal agency on the client side. It was rigid, bureaucratic and creatively stifling. Had an MD who took the glory during good times and played the blame game when it was bad. But I got the chance to launch some interesting products, and also got to work with Henry Golding before he got famous.

After that, creative icon Sa’ad Hussein came to my rescue and got me into Creative Juice, where I managed to get on all those popular Nando’s social media hijacks. Social was my thing. After winning awards with CJ and the TBWA Group, I got my third chance to go abroad….

What was it like to work in Indonesia and with a founder who became the Minister of Education in Indonesia?

Indonesia was just amazing. I felt the freedom and openness from everyone in Gojek, right from the founders to the designers and content creators and engineers. Everything was “Bisa Pak”!

As a creative person with ideas, the possibilities and bisa-ness of Indonesia was so liberating. From my interview with founder Nadiem Makarim, to working closely with him in rebranding Gojek, I could see he was a man of the people and a visionary.

Back when he was leading Gojek I thought to myself, man this dude would be the President one day. Would call me at 1am and tell me he had a vision and an idea and I would sketch it out.

And he gave me an ultimatum, “This product is amazing but make my brand cool”. Make it a cult brand. So going in and helping to build Creative Labs, Gojek’s internal agency and turning the brand into the most talked in Indonesia, plus picking up Creative and Media Agency of the Year in the local awards was one of the milestones in my career.

I wasn’t not used to having a whole nation talking about my work (Nando’s was the first that got to that level) but turning a brand into a cult brand with the work that we did was an adrenaline rush!

The last project I did there was a Rich Brian (Indonesia’s most famous rapper who lives in LA) hijack. I remember the Gojek CFO was so angry that we spent USD 200k on this project. “Why pay a 19-year old that crazy money?”

But when we did, we got on the news, it went gila viral. If you head to the music video where we embedded the logo for 3 seconds, you can see the comment thread of everyone just talking about the brand.

On the day it launched, it got so much traction, that Nadiem wrote an email to all the C levels and SVPs and spoke about how no money can equate to the cool factor that this campaign  hijack received.

And Gary Vee…

Oh yes, that’s when the opportunity to help VaynerMedia came up. I was honestly reluctant at first, never heard of the agency, but I remember asking a few others and I think it was Ronald Ng who was NYC who mentioned to me, “They’re growing, go and try it.”

And what a crazy 5 years it’s been. First, growing the APAC office from 4 to 288 in 3 years. Setting up offices in Japan, Thailand, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia. And shooting a music video with John Legend. That’s when I got a proper shot of doing global work.

Back in my previous agencies we were forced to push for awards, but in Vayner it was all about doing what was trending, working on Social and staying ahead of the curve. Quite liberating for a Creative, when you take trophy KPIs off the table and do what’s right for the audience and brand.

Gary is another visionary and an amazing boss who took care of his people. He once asked me “I notice you get headhunted a lot, what can I do to keep you here beyond 3 years?”

I was humbled.

Talk about London…

Back in the day when we were in agencies, we always had the Ang Moh boss come in usually from the UK to be our boss in Asia – never knew anything about our culture, would come in fire everyone and bring his people in. I never wanted to be that kind of boss.

So I listened and analysed to see how I could make a difference. I came into an agency that was doing TikTok dance videos in the UK, and when I left we had done a seven-market European Visa Olympics campaign, a global playbook and campaign for 7Up across three  different continents and a DigitalBank London activation event with Charli XCX.

I remember coming into London and feeling small. We have all grown up to see famous campaigns from Mother, BBH and the rest. Coming into this market and being the only “Asian” judge in UK creative shows was also pretty daunting. In the UK and Europe, their eye for design, art direction and film is solid. The copy craft especially in the outdoor work for KFC and Uber is unprecedented.

But I soon realised, we are as good as anyone else. I really believe, especially as a Malaysian, we are so open to different cultures that we are not just understanding and sensitive to other cultures but we are able to learn and assimilate into different cultures easily.

Working in creativity and this industry, culture is our weapon to make work that actually matters. We are the best mediators of culture!

I really want to help Asian brands go global and show the world that we have what it takes to be international. I really have no idea if I can achieve this but as Nadiem and Gary Vee have taught me, dream big and find others that share that dream and hustle to make it happen.

BRAGGING RIGHTS

• I placed Gojek’s logo for three seconds in a Rich Brian music video.
• I worked on a music video with John Legend.
• I worked on a children’s storybook that won a Cannes Silver Lion.
• I led a team of 4 and grew it 288.
• I fired myself from an agency to cut costs.
• I sang in pubs and bars.
• I’ve done all of the above with some of the most talented people across the globe.