PETER LO's CREATIVE EXPERIENCE IN BANKING

PETER LO’S ADVERTISING EXPERIENCE IN BANKING AND FINANCE AS AN ART DIRECTOR, COPYWRITER, CREATIVE GROUP HEAD, AND CREATIVE DIRECTOR IS COLLATED OVER 25 YEARS. HIS APTITUDE, AND A HEALTHY RESPECT, FOR THE BANKING WORLD HAS LED TO A PREFERENCE FOR HIS COPYWRITING SKILLS IN THE ADVERTISING FIELD. TIME AND TIME AGAIN, PETER HAD BEEN CALLED UPON TO WORK ON BANK AFTER BANK THROUGH TWO DECADES. HERE'S HIS BRIEF STORY ABOUT HIS BANKING EXPERIENCE:

It’s a fair assumption that a writer needs to acquire a certain depth before being able to write well on business, banking and finance portfolios. Selling a bank is no different from selling another brand but there are certain disciplines and perimeters unique to banking and finance.

Money is serious business and bankers are serious people. So take both the business and the people seriously. By and large, bankers are the Peaceful Phlegmatics (there's a book called "Personality Plus" which I strongly recommend) who do not want to walk off the beaten track. They are also the Perfect Melancholics who are analytical to the core and will never gamble away their future. So, it’s little wonder many creative types fall by the wayside of banks and financial institutions.

Through the decades I have worked on numerous banks as a COPYWRITER and CREATIVE DIRECTOR. I do confess each had been a uniquely different experience from the next.


SABAH DEVELOPMENT BANK (SDB) 1980

The Sabah Development Bank had been set up through the Berjaya government as an engine of development for Sabah state after toppling Tun Mustapha’s USNO in the late 70s’. Syndication of loans was apparently the key role for the bank. As a development bank, there were no consumer products. The annual report and quarterly reviews were my first taste of banking as a young art director. Every little piece of design work was done with great pride for a small local ad agency called (KAS) Kinabalu Advertising Services (JV subsidiary of JWT).


SABAH FINANCE, SABAH LAND & DEVELOPMENT BANK (SLDB) 1981

The work done for Sabah Development Bank earned KAS a reputation for having high professional standards in design for banking and finance. This helped our team at KAS to beat several ad agency contenders from Peninsular Malaysia to handle Sabah Finance. Soon, Sabah Land Development Bank also appointed KAS to handle its advertising needs.


THE CHARTERED BANK 1983

In 1983, I joined Leo Burnett at the tail end of a great TV production. Most of you would be too young to remember the “rolling… rolling… rolling…” campaign. In this TVC the central idea was a rolling coin which gathered in size as it rolled along a road to the bank counter, from the family car to the home, from work to social activities, business to pleasure. The rolling coin finally ends up in the child’s savings coin box. The Chartered Bank tagline in those days was “Big, Strong & Friendly” as the smiling, turbaned security guard was featured.

This was the early eighties, a time of restructuring from Chartered Bank to Stanchart. The key consumer products at the time were fixed deposits, current and savings accounts - hardly challenging for a young copywriter… until something much bigger came along that required strategic brand development and planning.


ARAB-MALAYSIAN BANK / ARAB-MALAYSIAN FINANCE 1983 - 1984

I could be the only creative person who had two spells of working with the Arab-Malaysian Group. The first time was as a copywriter at Leo Burnett from 1983 to 1985 and the second spell as Creative Director at JWT from 1989 to 1993.

Leo Burnett, 1983: Tan Sri Azman Hashim had high regards for the late Peter Beaumont, as Leo Burnett did very well with MAS when Tan Sri was a director. Now he had his own bank which was perceived as too Arab (Kuwait). The agency task was to change consumer perception, make Arab-Malaysian Finance a friendly Malaysian bank. We proposed a jingle using a Zapin beat, the melody of which is still used today. We also proposed to retain the camel as a mascot, and the use of Lat cartoons in the advertisements to “Malaysianise” the bank personality. And Tan Sri’s preferred tagline was “Strong and Dynamic” which he decided to have on the spot. I will never forget what a humble man Tan Sri Azman was at the time of our first meeting. He was sporting a Malay Baju on a Friday afternoon and he apologized for not being dressed for a business meeting. Subsequently, I discovered he had a glass eye. His right hand man Datuk Malek Marican had a slight speech defect. And they were the financial whiz kids of Malaysian banking!


HONGKONGBANK 1985 - 1989


My work on Nescafe, Carlsberg and Arab-Malaysian for Leo Burnett got noticed and there were ad agencies offering not just more money but bigger challenges. I decided to join Ted Bates as Senior Copywriter because they had just hired a new young Australian MD and Creative Director team.

Quickly establishing myself as a prolific creative award winner at Bates, I was soon put in the new business pitch team, and got to work on most of the cream accounts. HongkongBank had just launched Malaysia’s first ATM card. The ETC was “the bank teller in your pocket”. The campaign picked up Gold at the Kancil Awards. Promoted from Senior Copywriter to Creative Group Head by the Executive Creative Director, the late John Machado, I wrote on the HongkongBank account for the next five years. Most memorable of all was probably the prep campaign for HongkongBank to become “Malaysianised”. An award winning TVC with the theme “the future begins here” spearheaded the campaign. This theme would be used for the next three years till HongkongBank evolved into “the world’s local bank”.

When I left Ted Bates in end 1988, I had worked on HongkongBank’s Hexagold and “marine coral” Classic cards launches, which again picked up creative awards at the Kancil Awards. The winds of change were blowing in, signaled by the arrival of a new CEO and the departure of some key personnel who had become friends, such as the gentleman named Chin Kek Ming, and another fellow at Cardcentre named Suresh Nanu.


KWONG YIK BANK 1989

Through the years I have been really fortunate to meet so many of Malaysia’s banking luminaries. Meeting the late Tun Sir Dr Henry HS Lee was certainly the privilege of a lifetime. The opportunity came briefly in 1982 as one of the JWT subsidiaries was eyeing the business and went in through the back door. The "presentation" had been set up through some privileged connection. Throughout, the old man didn't say a word but he was paying good attention. And in the end, he didn't buy the campaign.

Fastforward eight years to another ad agency called Lintas: Deja vous. The same building, the same room where I had met the old man eight years ago. Here I am, back again with another ad agency. The team had developed and presented a radio campaign I had written for a Home Loan. The strategy: flexible Home Loan which had a built-in renovation facility. The creative idea: would you buy a home fully furnished, or would you rather buy an empty house? The commercial was bought by Kwong Yik Bank, and went on to win a bronze at the Kancil Awards.


ARAB-MALAYSIAN BANK GROUP 1990 - 1993

Within a decade, the ARAB-MALAYSIAN group had grown to become one of Malaysia’s largest banking conglomerates. From merchant banking to insurance, consumer products to corporate fund management. Now relocated from Bangunan Dato Zainal to its own building along Jalan Raja Chulan. As the creative director anchoring the group, we worked closely with Ali Mohamad (now retired), the advertising officer who had become the group director for PR and A&P. (Datuk) Azlan Zainol (currently CEO of EPF) was then MD of Arab Malaysian Finance, who would later head the merchant bank.

With a shareholding stake in JWT, the Arab-Malaysian Group treated the agency like its in-house advertising department. The creative team comprised two senior art directors, two copywriters, one designer, one visualiser and a team of proof-readers who worked 12-hour shifts. With more than twenty annual reports to produce for the group each year, two creative groups rotated 24/7.

It was also at this time when Arab-Malaysian went through a re-branding campaign. Creatively, Tan Sri Azman approved the theme which replaced “Strong and Dynamic” which had been used for a decade, : “Together we can do anything”. Then in November 1993, the bubble economy burst and the rest became history.


AFFINBANK 2006

In mid 2006, AFFINBANK called Magicmakers to work on the launch of its MasterCard PayPass Credit Card launch. Working closely with the AFFINBANK team at the credit cards division and several key people from corporate communications, the positioning was adopted to reflect the unique positioning for this new swipeless credit card: The world’s first MasterCard PayPass touch card Credit Card at a petrol station. This campaign was developed in a very short period of time, and though the pressure on the ad agency to deliver was intense, the team at magicmakers came through the mill looking very good. And thus, the campaign was awarded to Magicmakers without a pitch being called.

The smoothness of the campaign rolling out had augured well for the ad agency being ready and tested to handle banking and finance products for banks and financial institutions.

Working with a young team of designers, all copywriting for the campaign comprising press ads, point-of-sale material, application form, product leaflet, banners and other below-the-line material, had been solely handled by myself. This has always been the advantage of Magicmakers when dealing with short deadlines - I'd roll up my sleeves and work on it myself becase at the end of the day, time is of the essense and I always know what the bank is looking for.

Check out for details:
http://magicmakersprint.blogspot.com/2007/03/branding-affinbank-mastercard-paypass.html

Peter Lo's Award Winning Work

As a copywriter with multinationals J. Walter Thompson, Leo Burnett and Ted Bates, Peter Lo wrote many award winning ads for print, TV, radio, Point-Of-Sale and Posters. Peter has been one of the few prolific award winning copywriters, picking up creative accolades through eight consecutive years before his appointment as a creative director. Some of them include the famous Arab-Malaysian jingle and signature tune (1983) which is still used today, MACH 5 motor oil brand name and concept for Petronas, ads for HongkongBank, Dutch Lady, DHL, Volvo Cars, Toyota land Cruiser, and quite remarkably, a CLIO award for an Electrolux sales kit.

Here is a small selection of Peter's print collection.