An Interview with Eugene Cheong
Eugene Cheong is Blitzworks’ Asia Pacific region ambassador, and is widely recognized as being one of the creative forces that drove the ‘Asian Creative Revolution’ that started in the 1980s. With Cheong at the helm, Ogilvy Asia Pacific was recognized as the Cannes Regional Network of the Year in 2018, and won Campaign Brief Asia’s Creative Network of the Year a total of seven times.
Cheong has over thirty years of industry experience and has worked for Ogilvy Singapore, Ogilvy London, Batey Singapore and Euro RSCG Singapore, among others.
Building Profitability
In terms of leading creative projects, Cheong cites the DBS Black Card produced for Amex a decade ago as one of the most fruitful of his career to date, noting the beauty of the campaign and its market positioning — which resulted in the Black Card being the most successful launch of an Amex gold card.
Cheong goes on to explain that, more than the financial success of the product, the trust and respect given to his team made the assignment an incredibly satisfying experience to be a part of.
Choosing a Blitz Squad
In his role at Blitzworks — the creative and strategic consultancy agency founded by Marcus Brown, Ajab Samrai and John Pallant in 2017 — Cheong works closely with the Blitz Squads assigned to clients’ projects. The Blitz Squads are task forces of multi-disciplined creative professionals from around the world, who generate solutions and ideas based on the client’s requirements. A number of these are then developed with the client to find the most suitable option.
Eugene Cheong, when speaking about the Blitz Squad of his dreams, says he would choose a fifty strong young team to generate between two hundred and three hundred ideas. He would like to work with freelancer Juggi Ramakrishnan and Ogilvy SG Nic Courant to pick the ten best concepts and fine-tune them. The entire process could be completed in three days, Cheong states — although he would prefer the luxury of five.
A New Agency
In January 2020, Cheong opened up his own creative agency called ‘e’ based in Singapore. When asked what advice he would give to those who are starting up their own creative agency, Cheong suggests that, for him, making sure you have a first class accounts manager (Cheong references Fiona Gordon of Ogilvy UK) and an innovative planning lead (mentioning Benoit Wiesser of Ogilvy SG), both with creative flair, is crucial.
