Y&R Malaysia’s Nicole Sue Tan + Cassie Ng win top honour for Young Creatives at Kancil Awards

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Nicole Sue Tan and Cassie Ng.jpgY&R Malaysia’s Art Director Nicole Sue Tan and Digital Art Director Cassie Ng were together crowned 2017’s Young Kancils, Malaysia’s top honour for young creatives, at the recent Kancil Awards. This marks the first time in the competition’s history that a team from Y&R has clinched the award.

For this year’s Young Kancils competition, teams from several of Malaysia’s top creative agencies had just 24 hours to develop a Hari Raya social media campaign for Prudential BSN Takaful’s Syariah-compliant PruBSN Warisan plan, which allows policyholders to leave a legacy in the form of hibah (gift) should the worst happen. As their prize for emerging as the top young creative team, Tan (pictured left) and Ng (right) will go on to represent Malaysia in AdFest 2018’s Young Lotus competition.

This isn’t the first time that this unlikely Art Director-Digital Art Director pairing has made Y&R proud. Tan and Ng were part of the young creative team that won a D&AD New Blood Pencil in 2016. Ng, previously Digital Art Director at Y&R Singapore, was also part of the team named overall global winners for Young Glory, dubbed ‘Advertising’s Tour de France for young creative professionals’, in 2015.

“Being challenged to work on an Syariah-compliant insurance product – something we had zero experience with prior to this – was both intimidating yet interesting at the same time. Equally scary was the radio that switched on by itself after midnight in our spooky hotel room. The room to look out for if you’re afraid of spooky things or if you’re trying your luck at the Toto 4D lottery is Eastin’s Room 1204,” shared Ng.

“We knew we had our work cut out for us, so we spent time learning more about Islamic insurance and the local Muslim community from speaking to kind strangers in a nearby shopping mall. We definitely came out of this experience learning a lot. We’re both glad that luck was on our side and that we managed to pull through. Hopefully luck stays on our side when we go to AdFest next year!” shared Tan.

Commented Y&R Malaysia Executive Creative Director Emir Shafri said, “When Nicole and Cassie were named winners, our entire table screamed for joy as if we won Agency of the Year! All of us are extremely proud of their impressive win. Watch these two rising stars, I’m sure there’s more great things to come for them. I just hope they’ll remember to give me a job when they make it big in the future.”