Joji Jacob: Green with Envy

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Joji Jacob: Green with Envy

Which ads make you green with envy? A simple question Campaign Brief Asia is putting to some of the region’s most talented creatives and creative directors while they’re all working from home during these Covid-19 times. Here Joji Jacob, Co-Founder & Creative Partner at BLK J Singapore details the campaigns that have touched him.

 

What’s your favourite campaign globally from the past decade?
There’s so much work out there that I’m envious of, but I hate the guys that made Proctor & Gamble’s ‘Thank You, Mom’ campaign. It’s a work of art for what I imagine was a very difficult ‘show the whole range’ kind of brief.

I’ve shown this film at some of the talks I give now and then to poor unsuspecting captive audiences and each time there’s not a single eye that’s not moist. Including my own.

VIEW THANK YOU, MOM

Joji Jacob: Green with Envy

What’s your best or your favourite campaign that you have personally been involved with over your career?
This is a young team’s work for the Ministry of Communications and Information. I was in the room adding a comma here and a period there and using up the oxygen at the pre-production meetings. The guys wrote a lovely little story, Ross of Freeflow Productions worked his magic, and the country loved the spot.

VIEW BIRTHMARK. A CHINESE NEW YEAR SHORT FILM

Joji Jacob: Green with Envy

Best campaign out of Singapore?
It’s got to be BBH’s Nike’s ‘Unlimited Stadium’. For the launch of Nike Lunar Epic and ahead of the Olympics, they created a giant running track smack in the middle of Manila. With the project, they brought the virtual and physical worlds together with LED screens, where runners could engage in a virtual race against avatars of themselves. They came back with a planeload of very well-deserved Cannes Lions for their efforts.

NIKE UNLIMITED STADIUM

Joji Jacob: Green with Envy

What’s keeping you busy right now? What’s the best thing about being in isolation and working from home? What’s the down side?
I do miss the energy of the office, the jokes, the arguments, the laughs, the people most of all. But to my surprise (and to that of my colleagues and clients, I’m sure), I’m finding myself more productive than I’ve ever been.

As an agency we are proactively trying to help our clients navigate these very uncertain times. The briefs have an urgency to them, and I’m getting work out faster than ever before. I guess this is partly because during this time clients don’t expect 40-slide decks to sell an idea. More often than not, they’re responding to the simple sketches and word documents that I inflict upon them. And that’s all that was ever needed!

In between I’m also finding time for some doodling. It keeps me out of the wife’s hair. (See below and @jojijacob)

JOSY PAUL’S GREEN WITH ENVY
TED LIM’S GREEN WITH ENVY
GRAHAM FINK’S GREEN WITH ENVY
MERLEE JAYME’S GREEN WITH ENVY
JUREEPORN THAIDUMRONG’S GREEN WITH ENVY

Joji has spent over 20 years with some of the biggest and best agencies in India and Singapore; agencies like FCB, Ogilvy, JWT, BBDO and DDB. Before co-founding BLK J, he was Group Executive Creative Director of DDB Singapore for nine years. Under his watch, DDB Group Singapore became one of the most awarded agencies at every important award show. DDB Group was also judged Agency of the Year at the Marketing Awards, at the Singapore Hall of Fame Awards and by Campaign Magazine. Joji himself has been named Singapore’s Most Influential Creative Director by the Institute of Advertising Singapore and South East Asia’s Creative Person of the Year by Campaign two years in a row. Joji also headed up DDB’s Creative Council in Asia and has judged at Cannes, D&AD and Spikes. He was the President of the Print & Publishing Jury at Cannes 2016.

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