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exclusive face-to-face interview, the first in TSLA ' s nine year history.
Even before the sight of any signage comes to view and before any warm greetings are spoken, the fresh fragrance of flowers welcomes visitors. The Secret Little Agency possesses an in-house florist, an idea of a former partner. The writing on the wall proclaims,“ Be daunted.” Work desks overflow onto the lobby, too many for the office proper to accommodate. It ' s a symptom of rapid growth and success. The cheery banter millennials energizes the atmosphere. TSLA truly is a young company. The office has a functional maker laboratory with power tools and a 3D printer where TSLA technologists actually innovate devices such the balloon drones used in the Evian campaign. This is where they change the world, one advertising campaign at a time.
THINK LOCAL, BE GLOBAL
As seemingly ironic as TSLA ' s name may be, it nonetheless still rings true today and even holds a clue to their runaway success. Their secret is to think small, no matter how big they grow. By“ small,” that means they speak the same local language, culture, wit, and pathos as the myriad nations that comprise TSLA ' s diverse and ever-increasingly sophisticated Asian market.
“ There’ s so much potential in Singapore, Thailand, in the Philippines and Indonesia. When I say potential, I mean cultural potential. But Asia’ s very bad at articulating its creative value or its cultural value to the rest of the world. So why isn ' t adobo or sinigang eaten in more restaurants? Why don’ t we export what were good at doing, from music, food, fashion? We got great products, in many ways sometimes better than the rest of the world. We’ re just really bad on articulating it. And I think the same could be said of our advertising,” Ye confides in an exclusive interview with adobo ' s editor-in-chief Angel Guerrero, noting,“ Sometimes it just looked like a Westerner’ s take on an Asian brief. Or sometimes it just looked completely devoid of anything authentic to Asia. Everything was a clever pun and not based on
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any kind of real Asian insight.” He observes,“ Audiences in Asia are getting more mature. They are getting more evolved. They are getting worldly. You find that they’ re looking to brands to communicate to them that way as well. That’ s only reason why our business today is so good is because brands are beginning to realize that audiences are faster than them, smarter than them. They are more connected than them. And they don’ t want to be spoken through a Western lens or through some adaptation.”
Ye reveals that from insights they had into the advertising industry, they derived three pillars to TSLA ' s continuing success. And it involves pissing off people and getting involved in none of their business:
HALF BREEDS EVERYWHERE“ The first thing we’ ve been trying to do is struggle really hard to find a middle ground that was relevant to the average local but was executable on the global level or executable in world class craft level,” Ye reveals. Fortuitously, as TSLA clientele becomes increasingly more global, so has its Asian audience become increasingly more worldly and cosmopolitan.
Eleanor Yang, TSLA ' s marketing manager, adds,“ We’ re trying
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We are an agency that handles difficult briefs,” reveals Ye. Clients come to them when other agencies fail.“ That’ s usually the phone call I get:‘ I’ m working with these guys, I love them, but they simply can’ t crack it. |
THE FIRM
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July- August 2016 | adobo magazine |