Tay Guan Hin

Branding and Creativity

Categories: Asia, Business, Communications, Creativity, Digital, Marketing, Singapore, Strategy

Tay Guan Hin is the Founder and GCCO of TGH Collective and the Creative Change Catalyst of the APAC Global Advisory. Recently as a Global Chief Creative Officer in J Walter Thompson, he has helped Shell, Johnson & Johnson, Abbott, P&G, HSBC, Unilever, and other global brands improve market share and solve complex business challenges. He operates well within this complexity, always matching flawless execution with inspiring creative ideas, staying true to the DNA of the brand. Guan is the right collaborator, a profound alchemist of innovative success in a team working in the most creative agency worldwide networks, like JWT, Saatchi & Saatchi and Leo Burnett. Guan’s role continues to evolve: delivering insightful creativity that builds on digital and innovative engagement to increase brand preference.

A recipient of over 300 international/regional/local creative awards to his name, Guan was fortunate to be recognized in Cannes Lions as a Jury President where he was the first Asian in SEA to receive such an honor.

He was also the first Asian to lead a prestigious global show called Design & Art Direction together with Clio and regional award shows like Asian Effies and Adfest as their jury president.

He has spoken at TEDx, a global keynote speaker in many industry events like Spikes Asia, AdStar in Korea, Adfest in Thailand, Brand Magic Summit in Mauritius, One Show in China and NY and Cannes Lions in France. He has been known to be a creative innovator, delivered keynotes to blue-chip clients like US Grain Council, Tencent, NTUC FAIRPRICE and Unilever.

Guan devotes the same passion that goes into his work by mentoring young talents. Setting up the first student awards in Singapore. Spoke and trained students at early 2004 One Show China and again in 2018 where he served as a judge and spoke at the One Show Greater China Creative Summit.

Staying creative in a data-driven era
– Stay ahead of your competition in today’s disruptive world of digital transformation

Is data driving creativity or is creativity inspired by data?

Have we given in to the assurance of data and given up taking a risk? Are we more driven by fear to deliver measurable growth? Less driven to create big ideas that create an impact?

Great creativity comes from having the right data, but the word data-driven suggests that data is in charge.

If data can deliver the precise message at the right time to the right people at the right moment on the right location, is there still a role for creativity to surprise and delight us?

About 67% of marketers discover that digital growth in advertising has come at the price of the quality of creative from a survey conducted by Adtech company, Sizmek. Even though there’s a significant emphasis on data, AL and VR, many are now looking for opportunities to incorporate more creativity into their campaigns. Approximately 81% of surveyed say that improving digital campaigns to boost their creatives more effectively is a critical priority.

Let’s learn from inspiring data-driven creative examples to see how data, when used as a component of creative development, can give birth to strong insights.

Insights are what delivers award-winning big creative ideas that resonate in the marketplace.

Find the right connection
– Brands who don’t connect using insightful and heartfelt stories will lose their consumers

In a world where we are more connected than ever before, there is still a significant disconnect between consumers and the brands that are trying to reach them through data.
Human connections are the heart and soul of every brand.
Does your brand resonate with their consumers?
Do you think your brand should always look for new ways to tell stories?
Do you agree there is always a more creative way to increases your market share?
Brands that tell stories successfully are the ones that increase the percentage of their market share, develop connections both off and online and grow their consumer’s relationships that are meaningful.

The Future of Storytelling is Vertical
– Video Mobile Content Marketing in today’s world

Brand can tell wonderful stories when the video screens are horizontal but do have the same impact when we narrate their stories on mobile phones.
This year alone, vertical video format will take up 80 percent of all internet traffic.
The traditional horizontal 16:9 format is turned on its side, 9:16 vertical videos will be the new normal and is developing as an innovative form of storytelling.
50% of the time people spend online is on a smartphone.
9 out of 10 mobile users will share videos with others.
More than 75% of worldwide video viewing is mobile.
(Source “Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2016–2021)

Vertical Storytelling on your mobile screens is vital in increasing the market share of your brand on social media.
Learn how to create content designed for the vertical format as we hold our phones upright 94% of the time when viewing content.
In the age of people-led storytelling, vertical fit the frames of our bodies. Vertical videos were made to capture personal moments – sharing powerful stories which resonate with your audience watching them.

Discover the five creative VS principles that will increase your online presence, grow your brand’s visibility so you can stay ahead of your competition.

This session you will learn how to:

1) Design “edge to edge display” video content, by optimizing the full frame of your mobile screen.
2) Create thumb stopping vertical stories that stand out from the saturated mobile content clutter.
3) Conceptualize creative executions that fit the vertical format, so you can deliver maximum engagement and impact for your brands.

Imperfect Beauty
– Real and authentic brands are more relevant and reliable to consumers.

“It’s the imperfections that make things beautiful.”-Jenny Han.

Yes, things should always attempt to be perfect or beautiful, but designing without context or purpose can be meaningless.

What if, some designs are meant to be ugly for a reason?

What if, they aren’t supposed to be perfect?

Perhaps imperfections are indications of authenticity that is beautiful by itself.

Learn how to narrate imperfect brand stories that truly connect with your consumers.

Discover how authentic brands are able to increase their market share.

Understand how unattractive brands can become more attractive and command a premium.

Tencent Social Ads, together with Cannes Lions Creative Festival, organized a top level workshop aiming to deliver training to the top creative and marketing professionals (GM, group director, director level) on how to incorporate technology and data into the creative development. Guan, as our honorable guest speaker session was of top class quality, and delivered in highly professional way. The content was built on amply experience and comprehensive study and thinking. It provided not only enlightening viewing angles, but also a lot of highly valuable practical guidance. The session is also carried out in a highly engaging manner. Guan delivered it with high energy, personal engagement skills and great sense of humor. After the lecture, Guan also chaired a wonderful interactive discussion session, in which he nicely provoked the audience to participate and contribute together. The senior leaders attending the workshop all had high appraise for this training. Some quoted as one of the best such kind of training they had.Guan is a truly resourceful thinker and great presenter. And, his sharing is absolutely world class in its category.
~ Eric Chang, Marketing Director of Tencent Social Ads

Overall your presentation on “How to make food more attractive to consumers” was a complete success. I truly valued the way you executed the different suggestion we verbally discussed at my office prior to you drafting the presentation. The examples you used of regional companies in Asia were spot-on. They helped to assimilated the message and content of your presentation with our specific audiences/customers in the food and feed sector in SEA.
~ Manuel Sanchez,Regional Director for Southeast Asia | US GRAINS COUNCIL

Guan is a true gentleman. His manner is calm and collected, he gives people space and is a kind person. On top of this he is a great presenter. I’ve worked with Guan personally on a big pitch, and he impressed me with pairing attention to detail, with high level strategic thinking. During his period at JWT Guan fulfilled many (regional) roles, leading some of the world’s biggest brands out of Singapore our South East Asia. As an award winning creative Guan is a top man, who pairs his love for mentoring people, with his passion for building successful brands. I welcome the opportunity to work with Guan in the future again.
~ Jacco ter Schegget, CEO, Publicis Groupe Benelux.

Guan and I worked together for a long stretch a couple years back, on the global Lux business. Guan is one of those rare creative leads, who are as willing to listen and educate, as they are focused on maintaining creative sanctity. This inclusive nature of his, allowed the brand teams to seamlessly develop a large global portfolio of brand content and brand strategy work with his team, for varying kinds of cultural and geographic audience, while maintaining the uniformity of brand identity across it. Guan is brilliant at crafting visual material. It was an absolute pleasure to go into minutest of details with him on uplifting the look and feel of a brand, while finding its common visual DNA across various content forms. Guam also elevated the brand partnership with best of talents in photography and storytelling, making the brand look and feel aspirational across the world. Guan’s patient and thoughtful leadership on brand creative strategy and content development was super helpful in navigating tough times on the brand, when a fragmented global brand had to move towards a common content approach, while catering to divergent market needs. Armed with his signature smile, Guan is always ready to work together to make things great. It has been a pleasure to have known Guan and a learning experience to have worked with him.
~ Kartik Khare, Senior Global Brand Director, Unilever Brands, Lux & CloseUp

I have worked with Guan for 2 years as Agency-Client partner. Guan joined my account to bring in Senior Leadership to deliver high performance. Guan understood the business challenge, framed the communication challenges and delivered a roadmap of innovative solutions. Overall, I have a lot of respect to Guan as a seasoned Agency Leader whose strength is not just communication development, rather overall business acumen to deliver superior business results and stronger Client-Agency relationship.
~ Vivek Pareek, Global Brand Manager – Shell Helix and Shell Advance Brands

I worked with Guan across multiple Unilever brands globally, when he was Global CD for these JWT UL brands. Above and beyond his natural flair for creativity and communications, I was especially impressed by his strategic abilities and his strong people management skills. Guan built great teams around him, and it was this together with his intelligence and flexibility that endeared clients to him. Great team leader, and a great team player.
~ Addison James, GLOBAL CEO Holmes & Marchant Design

Tay Guan Hin

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