As part of an ongoing series highlighting young talent in the industry, Branding in Asia presents “One Under 30” – a special feature that focuses on up-and-coming talent in the ad world, one person at a time.
This week we talk to Chloe Lim, Account Director at DSTNCT in Singapore.
Over the course of our conversation, she talks about how she got her first break in the industry, what she loves about the work, what she doesn’t like about it, and more.
The Basics
Name: Chloe Lim
Age: 29
Agency: DSTNCT
Position: Account Director
Hometown: Singapore
Current Location: Singapore
Education: Singapore Management University, Bachelor of Laws (LLB, 2015)
Seven Questions
How did you get your first break in the industry?
I would say my first break would be Dear Covid-19, a campaign I led during the earlier part of my career. Dear Covid-19 was a national memory project DSTNCT co-created with the National Youth Council during Singapore’s first-ever (and thankfully only, fingers crossed) circuit breaker. It aimed to collect our personal stories, experiences, thoughts, feelings, hopes, fears and aspirations to preserve that historic period in our history.
Many of us were cooped up at home during that period and took to social media to voice their reflections about the lockdown. We thought: if people were already sharing so genuinely about their lives during circuit breaker, how do we consolidate everything under one platform and in so doing, inspire even more to share?
We curated 100 Singaporeans across different backgrounds and invited them to pen letters to “Dear Covid-19”. These letters were displayed alongside photos taken within their homes through virtual photography – all photoshoots were taken through FaceTime/Zoom!
This kind of documentation was the first of its kind back then and many mainstream publications reached out to us for content syndication. It even caught the attention of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and he posted about the campaign on his social media platforms.
What is your personal mantra?
People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.
It reminds me of the type of leader I try my best to be.
From what person, place or thing have you drawn your greatest creative inspiration?
I wouldn’t say that any singular person, place or thing has become a “go-to” source of creative inspiration. To me, staying constantly inspired is all about being constantly curious. It helps that I am naturally a curious person but a key part of ensuring I don’t lose that is to always surround myself with the right company that fosters my curiosity instead of killing it. My latest podcast obsession is Armchair Expert by Dax Shepard – this has really helped in fostering my curiosity as well. On the books front, I just finished reading the Airbnb story.
What do you love about the job?
Being able to solve meaningful problems. We have a good number of government clients and when it comes to government, objective-wise, because it’s government, there’s almost always an element of social good involved (as opposed to just driving sales). I love it.
What about your job are you not so crazy about?
I’m not naturally inclined towards numbers so the number-crunching/analysis part of what I do… Not my favourite.
What is some work you’ve done that you’re most proud of?
Dear Covid-19 – as mentioned above.
Another really meaningful project we launched with the National Youth Council as part of the 2021 National Day celebrations was SGMoji. The brief started off with collecting sentiments about our Singaporean identity. When we thought about how we could stir conversations about our Singaporean identity and the current climate of human behaviour, leveraging on the massively viral Memoji trend made so much sense.
Everyone wants to create a personalized version of themselves but the uniquely Singaporean flavour was lacking. Enter SGMoji – our very own Singaporean Memoji. SGMoji was a representation of what you think makes a Singaporean and a reflection of what you’re proud of in being a Singaporean. Rather than asking for outright pledges (done in previous years), we subtly drew our Singaporeans’ love for Singapore through something that they were interested in – creating an SGMoji of themselves.
We housed all the created SGMoji’s on a microsite, providing an organic platform for expression about our Singaporean identity done in a really unique and novel way. The campaign was massively successful, garnering more than 3000 submissions in just over 1 week.
If you had to choose another career what would it be?
Actress! Singer! Writer! News anchor! Multi-hyphenate!
