Kancil Awards

Edmund Choe,
Saatchi & Saatchi (M)

Edmund has over 20 years experience in advertising.

He started off as an F/A artist and rose through the ranks at international agencies like Grey, Batey’s and O&M before moving on to Saatchi, where he has been for the last 16 years.

The first 9 years were spent at Saatchi Singapore where he worked on numerous accounts that included The Singapore Navy, Sony, Visa, Hewlett Packard, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, Tiger Beer, Discovery Channel and Animal Planet.

The work on these accounts have garnered many creative accolades for the agency. Which eventually resulted in Saatchi Singapore attaining the acclaimed Ad Age Agency of the Year award 1997.

In 2001, Edmund moved back to Malaysia, to take up the post of Executive Creative Director at Saatchi Malaysia. In just 18 months, the agency picked up the Golden Kancil and attained Malaysia’s first D&AD silver nomination for a Toyota TV spot.

Since then, Saatchi Malaysia has well established its creative reputation through memorable work done for clients like Procter & Gamble, Mead Johnson, Toyota and Guinness.

These efforts have resulted in many awards for Saatchi Malaysia, including a Gold Cannes Lion in 2006.

Edmund is one of the most awarded creative in Asia, with many regional and international accolades. These include, Media Marketing Awards, Adfest, D&AD, Clio, One Show and Cannes.

He is the first Malaysian to be invited to be a judge at the prestigious British Design & Art Direction awards (D&AD). He has also been inducted into the Malaysian Creative Circle Hall of Fame in 2004.

Rowan began his career at DDB in his hometown of Melbourne, Australia. He quickly established a name for himself by winning campaign of the year for his very first attempt at an advertising campaign. His enthusiasm for adventure and ideas led him to Hong Kong where he worked at Bates, adding more packaged goods, airlines, hotels, automobiles and bank clients to his experience. At the time, Bates built a reputation as one of Asia’s top creative agencies and during Rowan’s tenure there, was named Media Magazine’s Asian Agency of the Year. Rowan moved to McCann-Erickson as Deputy Creative Director for 12 months before deciding to join Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore where he was ranked one of the top ten creative people in Asia by Campaign Brief magazine. Rowan spent 5 years at Saatchi and was an integral part of the team that made the agency Advertising Age’s International Agency of the Year. Rowan continued his good work in various other parts of the world, including Berlin Cameron in New York City, and Young & Rubicam as Regional Executive Creative Director for Asia.

During his career, Rowan has won worldwide recognition for his work at the major advertising festivals including D&AD, Cannes, The One Show, Communication Arts, Clio Awards, New York Festivals, World Press Awards, London International Advertising Festival, Australian AWARD, Asia Media & Marketing Awards, Hong Kong 4A’s Awards and Singapore Creative Circle.

Farrokh Madon graduated with a degree in Commerce, specializing in Accountancy. He has won well over 100 Creative Awards in his career, including a Silver Nomination at D&AD, a Cannes Lion and numerous entries in the One Show and regional awards in Asia. Under his leadership, BBDO finished in the Top 5 at the last Creative Circle Awards in Singapore & won considerable new business including the prestigious Mercedes account, Keppel Corporate and international assignments for Emirates.

This year, he led BBDO to winning Best Of Show (Outdoor), 2 Golds and a handful of other awards at AdFest; 5 Awards at Media, 3 D&AD entries; 5 One Show entries & a Silver at the World Press Awards. Farrokh has recently moved to McCann Erickson in Singapore, where he is looking forward to continuing the good work.

On the eve of South Africa’s first democratic election, April ’94, restless to carve his own idealistic vision, Mike moved on to co-found Net#work with Keith Shipley. Described as a “creative activist” Mike has led Net#work to become acknowledged today as South Africa’s most creatively adventurous agency.His current responsibility as Creative Chief of the BBDO SA group, is to spread this brand of creative activism to 4 other agencies in Cape Town and Joburg. Other highlights include SA Ad agency of the Year in 1999, 2003, 2004 and 2005 (winning their category a record 10 times).

He has also represented SA on the 1998 Cannes Film jury, 1998 Clio Awards, 2006 D&AD, and in 2004 as Clio Chairman - Print: the first South African to chair an international festival. Ranked by creative peers as South Africa’s top Creative Director for the past nine years, he was voted the most influential person in SA advertising in 2004, 2005 and 2006 by the Financial Mail. However, Mike hopes his real contribution will always be beyond the confines of his business: growing or supporting others and fighting for ideals for the industry as a whole. His burning passion is for creativity to make a real difference – enhancing lives, enriching people, uplifting South Africa.

Adrian took on the job as ECD of Lowe Kuala Lumpur in 2004. Over the next 2+ years the agency went from strength to strength. It fast and furiously became one of the top creative agencies in the country as well as in the Lowe network. Adrian was appointed to the Lowe Worldwide creative board as a result. He was responsible for producing the 4th most awarded print in the world (Gunn Report) for Land Rover Owner’s club in 2006. For the last year Adrian has been the Executive Creative Director of Saatchi and Saatchi Kuala Lumpur where he continues to push the creative envelope on regional accounts like Guinness, Toyota, Lexus and Tiger Beer. Adrian has won multiple gold, silver and bronze lions at Cannes. He has also won gold at One Show New York and Gold at the Asian Advertising Awards as well as numerous metals at Clio and Adfest.

This year alone he picked up 1 gold, 1 silver, 2 bronze lions and over a dozen finalists at Cannes.

Since 2000, Edwin has led two agencies to No.1 nationally and Top 20 in Asia. In 2004, he became the youngest inductee into the Malaysian Creative Circle's Hall of Fame after winning South East Asia's first Grand Prix at Cannes. Ranked consistently as one of the Malaysia's top creatives by Campaign Brief Asia, he has won over 300 awards including Gold and Silvers at Cannes., Silvers at One Show, Clios and AWARD, a Silver Nomination at D&AD, Golds, Spikes and Best of Category at Adfest and Media, and 2 local Best of Shows.

His work has appeared in numerous publications including two hardcovers on branding and creativity by prestigious UK publisher Thames & Hudson.

Among his peers and in the industry, Daniel Comar is recognised as a man who takes on great challenges and conquers them. Favouritely known as “Dani” to clients and colleagues, he came to Kuala Lumpur in September 2004 as Executive Creative Director of Ogilvy & Mather Malaysia from Vietnam where he had served a similar role for three years. Key clients under his charge include Maxis, Nestle, Unilever, Pizza Hut, GSK, 8TV, Motorola, Kimberly-Clark, DHL, Singer, Mattel, Sprite and Gillette.

Dani has built up an illustrious record since he first joined Ogilvy & Mather as a copywriter in his native Argentina in 1994. Two years on, he was appointed Creative Director and elevated to Executive Creative Director just before his posting to Saigon in 2001. He has won numerous local as well as international awards.Dani was the winner of a Silver Pencil in the 2000 One Show Festival (the only Foreign Language Commercial category winner) in New York.

Under his creative stewardship, Ogilvy & Mather Vietnam achieved recognition as the Agency of the Year in 2003 and celebrated its first ever bronze medal in the Asia-Pacific Advertising Festival (AdFest) in January 2004.