Family and Kinfolk

No lah, we didn’t really do anything but actually for us I do not think that when we celebrate, it is linked back to any creative things, but it's more like we just really want to spend time together. It will be good that you know, we sit down and just chit chat some more and have a meal together then later we went to ... I can't remember where, I think near Jurong? We went to a fish farm to do prawning. We went there to prawn. Some of us have done it before. A lot of us have not done it, so it was just a group activity, actually it’s more about teamwork than being creative, to be honest,

Yeah, but we also don't purposefully call it team building, because for us we do things quite naturally, so our culture in Kinetic is, I would say, quite unique and strong. We don't particularly need to purposefully go and do something. But when we get together, things just happen... we just enjoy and laugh together, you know? I think it's very nice to hangout, like what you do when you have a bigger family, with more brothers or sisters.

What kind of staff, as in people?

I think most important for us, it's about a gathering of like-minded people. I think that is the first point. Then the other thing, which is very important for me is, are we getting a person with the right attitude to come in to join us? They can be a designer, they can be an art director, they can be an account manager, project manager, they can be an account director; any role that has transferable skills in our industry, we welcome all actually.

Of course, it will be quite impossible for me to hire an interior designer for the matter because we don't touch that much on interior spaces. Occasionally we do, but it does not warrant someone that is full time on it because we just don't have that kind of jobs that are coming in consistently. So in hiring, we are actually looking at creative people who can design, art direct and conceptualise very well. These are the skillsets that we need but I think above the skillset, it's attitude. I think that's the part that is 1,000% important.

I always reckon our space now currently, our kinetic family, I call everyone a kinfolk. Whoever you bring in, should be able to complement everyone; doesn't have to be like everyone. You should not find someone that is like everyone, we should find someone that can complement everyone. Then our family can grow in a unique way, but when we complement it means that the person coming in must be a team player, must be humble, must be hardworking and must be always there to help others. Then we can truly build a culture of brothers and sisters. Actually, that's the part that is the most important thing.

Yeah, so if I see someone's portfolio that's very good and during the interview process, when we chit chat, we find that the person is a bit, I don't know, maybe, you know, is like a rock star and you know, quite vested into their own fame ... I don't know. They are just full of themselves and then I’d rather not. Because none of us inside this office is like that. To be honest, if any one of the guys here are, I use the word cocky, I'll be very disappointed. And frankly every single one in the office is multi award-winning, to be honest. And I always tell them, if you become full of yourself right, that's the day that you'll lose everything. Because end of the day, humility is not even like a virtue or whatever; humility is mandatory in Kinetic. It's mandatory. If we don't know how to live humbly, right, we actually have nothing to offer.

To me, remember at the very early part of the interview, when we talked about how clients feel, will they feel intimidated if we are a multi award-winning agency. They should not because we have never approached anyone saying “hey, we've won awards so please take this idea and not do that”. No, we should not. No one should do that. No one should say "I know better because I'm an award winner. You do not know better; I know better and please go with this." What we will do is, if we feel that a client is taking a wrong turn, we will be there to advise them because end of the day they will still be the one who decide what their fate is. And I will do it in writing. I won't do it verbally, I'll do it in writing, I'll do it in email to let them know that our advice is to go with this, our recommendations are that, but the free will is still for them to decide what to do.

To me, that has always been our way. We do not feel that we are like a doctor, I prescribe you a medicine so please just take it. We're not doctors to be honest. Unfortunately, we are not. In a way, this has always been our method.

I don’t think the process is very different from most places because end of the day when you get a project brief, you have to brainstorm, to problem solve. So this is to me, if I distil it down to the simplest, is that. Of course, when we get a project brief, whatever that we are not clear, we will keep checking back with the client until we know what they are talking about, and we also know very well what they need. Then, of course, with all these KPIs or the needs and wants and objectives, we'll take it from the project planning and accounts and after being synced, we strategise and whatnot, then we will bring it to the creative teams. Then again, we will sit through one more round of discussion. And from the discussion, with all the questions there, if we need to go back to the client, we'll go back to the client to ask some more, if not, then we'll proceed to tackle it.

We do not have a star team that works on it. Everyone who's available is always welcome to join our project, even if someone is busy, but they want to take up the challenge, they are all welcome to participate in it. To me, I do not have this idea where only the senior team gets to do the fun things and the junior do all the rubbish work. No, we don’t have that. Everyone is kind of equal as long as you do not have too much on your plate. Because sometimes when a new project comes in, it's in the middle of another person's busy period. Then unfortunately that person cannot take on more. But I do have guys who are always hungry to do stuff. So even though they are busy, they will just say it's okay, they don't mind working late on their own. So, it's not that I ask them to work late, rather, sometimes, they want to do more. There's no discrimination if you want to do more and you want to learn more and you want to get better and you want to have more interesting things in your portfolio. I don't think it's my duty to stop them.

Oh, yeah. Because you see, everything starts right at the beginning, the hiring process. Whoever that you bring in: their attitude. If you bring in someone who feels like "Hey, I've done my job already, why would I want to stay late? I’m going back first". Because usually anyone who's done, they will just say: "Does anyone need any help? I'm done with this.". So if someone takes on another extra bit to help another friend, everyone can go back maybe forty-five minutes earlier. So, this way of working has been quite natural. Of course, there are times when someone finishes early because they have a dinner then of course they won't pretend to say: "Anyone needs help? But I need to go off in five minutes." That's ridiculous then. I don't know how to explain this, but so far, the glove fits well and so far, it's been quite pleasurable to watch how everybody works together.

I don't know whether is it difficult to find young or … hmm what’s after young?

Young or medium, middle weight. At any level, it's always hard to find like-minded people, at any level. It's always hard to find like-minded people. But once you see one that is like-minded... I don't think it differs in age group. But I think when you meet one, you will know that “Oh, this person really truly likes the culture like that.” Then that is the person.

Is it harder and harder to find? I think what we find harder these days is that in this current day and age, a lot of creatives might not be going into design studios or advertising agencies anymore. They are also going into different corporates that want to build their own in-house team. That is a fact. There is no denial of this.

A lot of great talent might be going into in-house teams for big corporations. And if you ask me, I wouldn't say it's bad for us because there are also a lot of graduates every year. And my wish as an educator is for every single one of them to find something to do. Find a job that they love to do. If it's not a 100% job that they love to do, then at least still get to do something using the things they have learnt. That's of course what I wish for. But because of that, sometimes we do lose quite a number of strong candidates to not just the different studios, but they are absorbed into other corporates.

So yeah, I think it's sometimes harder to find people but when we find someone and the attitude fits, yes, it's quite okay... I cannot use 'rare', as 'rare' seems like it's almost impossible to find. But yeah, it's harder to come by, but when you find that someone who is connected to the culture we have here, we know that they will very likely join us, even at the beginning of that 30 minutes of chit chat. You will kind of know. They are already interested in what we do. We are not talking about those who kind of like what we do, and they follow us like for every single project we have done. We don't expect our candidates to do that. But for those who already follow our work closely, it's quite natural for them to want to join us.

But those who know a few projects that we do, but they do not know us very well, then during the conversation we will share with them our culture and we see whether they are suitable for this culture. Because some people that we meet like to work in a big machine, you know, they like big companies. And there's nothing wrong with it, because it's just an issue of taste, right? Like Western food, or Chinese food, or Malay food. To me it's just a matter of taste.

I think to start a studio or agency, it all really depends on the size you want to go into. Do you want to start with just yourself or you want to have a business partner or so and so forth? So, for me, to be frank, I've been so blessed to have a very good working relationship with all the business partners that I started with. Like for instance, with my last business partner - Carolyn, who is so instrumental in actually building the foundation of Kinetic. Four to five years ago, she had to take over her dad's business and unfortunately, she can't run two things. It was a huge loss for me. Huge loss. And that is because we had a very strong partnership together. While she runs more of the business aspect of things and I run the creative aspect of things, we might not see eye to eye all the time, but we both understood that we were all doing our job, to get the best thing for our client and the best outcome for Kinetic.

Yeah, yeah. So, in a partnership, that is actually what's the most important. I will caution people who start their business because in your first three months, everything is nice. Everything is nice. Partnership is nice, but when you hit a roadblock where both the needs are different; because at some point, right, you start the same because you're working out of your parent’s home or something and later, one of you decide to, you know, maybe I don't know, get married or something. Your needs become different. And your other business partner, maybe is still single and still happily being single and his or her needs are also different. Just based on needs alone, it's already a challenge. Don't even talk about whether the moral compass, the way of working or the principle is the same, about agreement on whether to take this project or not, or whether this project is worth taking, even though the margins are very low. All these are challenging things that we don't even talk about.

So, to me, I always feel if anyone wants to start any business and have partners, you guys really got to sit down and discuss every aspect as detailed as possible. So that we know. It may not be anything contractual. I'm not saying we're going to draft out a bloody contract, no, not that. It will make the start unhappy already. You just need to sit down and talk frankly, like if next time, our lives change, what is the thing that we will do, and agree on something.

Yes! Open the can of worms and agree to something and when the day comes, always remember that you all had this talk, because I also know there are people where when the day comes, they pretend that they didn't have the talk before. You see, again, these all come back to whether you are with a like-minded person.

Like for me, I've been so blessed, and all the business partners have been well principled. Whenever we have challenges, we sit down and talk. We will always decide what's best for the whole outcome. Not for yourself, not for himself, not for anything but for everyone. So yeah, I think that part is critical to me, critical in a business. And that's on top of 'can you get any business', that's another thing. I'm not even talking about whether business is good and whatever. I am just talking about the foundation of this.

It's just like two persons getting married, right? It's very easy to fall in love but is it very easy to be in love all the way? That is the question. Falling in love is one thing, getting married and getting a place is one thing, then later staying in this place together forever, happily, is another thing. For me, what I'm trying to say is, from day one, try to iron out all these differences first and be frank with each other before you want to start something together. Yeah, this is pretty much what I can think of, which is very important.

You can hear from my answers, it's really more about family things than anything else. That is really the backbone of Kinetic culture. It's really just about taking care of each other. Because when you take care of each other, right, the whole environment will settle itself.

Yeah! No bad mouthing, no nothing. I mean, I'm sure there'll be some gossiping on and off, here and there, which I might not know. But then it's normal to talk shit, but it's just what does it manifest into?

I've not reached my 60s and 70s, so I don't know if my skillsets will last that long, but I think the skills they need is to be able to conceptualise and be strong in an idea. That, to me, is always quite important. The other thing that should match that will be, how do you bring out the correct and applicable beauty of that particular project?

Beauty doesn't mean that a project needs to be beautiful, you know, sometimes there's this thing called ugly beauty - ugly beautiful. And if that particular project needs ugly beautiful, then that is the perfect match. For me, I think skillsets that will transcend time will be understanding conceptual thinking, understand the look of the time, which is what we spoke about just now. You don't want your work to look irrelevant. Understand the look of the time and also remember to hopefully make your project as timeless as you can. Because you also don't want your project to look like crap after one year or three years or five years. Of course, if you can understand that means you will likely understand subcultures and cultures, if you can understand that, at no matter what age group you are at, hopefully.

You can imagine next year I'll be 50, when I enter the 'five' in front of my age and I can still kind of connect with whatever people in their 20s are doing, 30s are doing, I think that part is important so that whatever I work on will hopefully still be relevant at that point in time. To me, I will always advise young creatives to have that in mind. Of course, when they are young, whatever they are in touch with, should be currently in trend, right? But I think that part is not the important part, because whatever they do that is in trend, might not have a very so called ‘in-depth’ thinking.

So, for me at the different stage of your career, you need to beef up certain areas in your arsenal. Of course, if they are young and they are strong in conceptual thinking and they are good with understanding what kind of look will match the kind of project, then next comes the most difficult thing, and that's the grit. The grit and perseverance and determination in a project. Because it's easy to be very prolific for the first two to three years of their (working) life, but to keep up with the same energy is another story.

We come back to that topic I talked about - which is consistency. If you don't have that, then after that, at the fourth year, you might not have the energy to continue, and it ends there. Or if it doesn't end there, then it just becomes like 'I just do my day-to-day work', and just get by. For me, I don't enjoy doing that, but I don’t know, some people might enjoy doing that. They just feel that if my day just go by, if I can get past, I'm okay already. So, to me these are a few things.

To also further your question about education, the other thing is attitude. Again, I've come back to that. Attitude is a lifelong learning. Because some people after 10 years, they get good, they kind of become another person. It's possible to become good. They feel that they have arrived and when they have arrived, they behave differently, they talk to people differently. They are no longer the same guy 10 years ago, things like that. To me, I think at every stage, it's a huge challenge.

Now, for me, I will try to un-learn my own projects. Because sometimes I know the process a bit too well, and I plan so ahead because I know the process too well, which I know, could not be an advantage. So sometimes I try to un-plan it because I'm planning 'too ahead'. Because I'm experienced in this area, so I plan too way ahead, which sometimes I might bypass certain important details. That's why self-reflection is important. You need to always look back, to see how you can better yourself. Self-reflection.

Yeah. So, you see, it's almost quite impossible to teach someone how to conceptualise, but you can teach them how to contextualise. For instance, let's say you are trying to put two items together. Let's say in one of the student's works, he used an apple. So, I'll ask the person: how do you contextualise this apple? It could be a few things, right? It could be about gravity because Newton = apple, that's one. It could be apple keeps me healthy because of the saying: an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Or it could be, I know apple has always been used as a representation of the forbidden fruit for that matter. So, this apple alone, if you contextualise it in the way you want; that is closer to the idea that you’re driving it, it means three different things, right? To me, that is also the beginning of conceptualisation.

But sometimes, some students just cannot connect these three things together, then you must find other ways to encourage them. Another way I sometimes get them to do is to be very well versed with all the amazing ideas that is done by some of the best agencies in the world. You can look through the D&AD website where all the years of amazing thinking and executed work, are all there, free for people to look at.

The problem is most of the time students are too lazy to look at it. Most of the time. I can guarantee you they find it too tedious to look at it. I know that if they find it too tedious to look at it, I kind of know that they probably are not the people I am looking for.

The people I'm looking for needs to spend time to think. Many times, people look at works, they say: 'Wow, the work is so nice. How did you think of this?' It's not how do we think of this, rather, we really spend time studying what other people are doing and we try to understand that, wow; to get a good idea, it needs to have good connection, sometimes it must be emotive sometimes, it must meet the client's objective and most of the time, there must be some kind of talking point. Because it must be interesting if not then why do you talk about it? For what right? So, all these little, little factors are actually critical in to coming together as a big picture.

So yeah, again, depending on the particular student’s interest. If their interest is to just do something beautiful, there's nothing wrong with that, it's just it will always be just something beautiful and when you look deep inside, there’s no meat. There's no deeper meaning. There may be craft, but there is no depth. So, to me, I think these two things are equally important. If you have depth but you have no craft, the story is tight, but it just looks terrible. It can't work that way, unfortunately. Just can't work that way.

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me and I really enjoyed the session. Thanks very much.