IDEAS: The Hotel Equatorial Shanghai story

Edward Ong is on a quest to discover and create Malaysia’s best ideas. He is an award-winning Writer and Creative Director and can be found at IdeasAreBorderless.com

Objective

“Hotel Equatorial just opened a branch in China!” exclaimed the suit.” And we were like, “Ok, that’s great,” said Dharma Somasundram, then a copywriter at DY&R, the agency handling advertising duties for said hotel. Until we realised that was the brief. The suit didn’t have further information about the new hotel apart from the fact there’s a structure in Shanghai with presumably a decent number of empty rooms and a large sign that read ‘Hotel Equatorial’, or its Mandarin equivalent.

Challenge

Dharma had about 4 years copywriting experience at the time. Even then, she knew that a creative brief, despite being called a brief, needn’t actually be so brief. “We have to make this work,” said Dharma. Of course, most creatives in a similar situation would either A) Ignore the request, B) Demand the account director write something more substantial, or C) Tear up the brief and burn the remains in a huge bonfire.

Not Dharma. We called the hotel. Thankfully, the receptionist or whoever picked up the phone was pretty clued-in. Having not prepared for this call, we asked whatever came to mind.

Truth

After a few minutes, we had several thought starters. I don’t remember what they were, but the one thing that stood out was that it was a new 5-star hotel. In 1992, 5 stars was pretty much a big deal. Especially for a Malaysian brand. 1992 would also be remembered as the year McDonald’s opened their first outlet in China, Windows 3.1 was released, Bill Clinton won the US presidency, Monica Lewinsky celebrated her 19th birthday, and Malaysia invaded France. But more on that later.

Solution

A quick and easy solution would be something like: ‘Introducing Hotel Equatorial Shanghai. A 5-star experience,’ and then show the hotel. However, we didn’t even have pictures of the place. And flying a photographer over to take pictures was out of the question.

“We sat, and stared at each other,” recalls Dharma. I asked my Art Director David Sin: ‘How many stars are there on the flag of China?’ “Five,” he replied. And that was it. The art direction came naturally and everything just sort of fell into place. We’d normally show Rick (then Creative Director at DY&R) several ideas. But this time, we were so confident of the work, we showed him only one. He gave us the go ahead.

Rish, as he is wont to do, was walking up and down the creative department (Rishya Joseph was the MD at DY&R). He saw the ad, picked it up, called the hotel owner and sold the work almost immediately. After that, it was a matter of presenting it to Jann Majid (the client at Hotel Equatorial).

The ad ran as per in the major newspapers. It was daring in its simplicity, and created – or perhaps reinforced – the brand’s bold and confident stance.
The agency also submitted the work to the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival, where it picked up two Bronze Lions, one each in the print and poster categories.

“This was Malaysia’s first Cannes Lions award,” said Dharma.

When we found out it won I felt I could finally compete in this mad industry. It was a coming of age of sorts for me. All great campaigns start with a great brief. Except in this case, it was a total lack of. But that didn’t stop the team – suits included – from rallying behind and supporting the work.
It also took a brave client – somebody willing to run an ad for a new product without showing the product – to make the idea happen.

In 1992, Malaysia mounted her best shot against the world’s best in France. After several rounds of judging, we were awarded two Bronze Lions,
the first of many to come. A few years later, the country would win her first Gold Lion and following that, the Outdoor Lions Grand Prix. But that’s another story for another article.

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