Yan TV

Client-Side
Experience Sharing

Context
Yan TV is a music TV channel for youth (like MTV but exclusively broadcasted in South Asia). A position of Creative Director was available because of maternity leave of the current one.

Challenge
Same same but different. There are some similarities between a Creative Director in agency and in client-side. There’s someone who leads a Creative team. And instead of clients, job requests come from a Marketing team.

But actually, it’s really different. Being a Creative Director in client-side, challenges you to quickly understand the brand’s culture. So it’s all about adaptation. About the performances, when in an advertising agency you have some commercials to handle per year, that number still be the same, but it’s per month (sometimes it’s per week). A lot of stuff needs to be produced and be broadcasted on time on every channels. Makes sense, because being in client-side, it’s like being in a head quarter. All business decisions are made there, timing and speed are keys, regarding what the competition is doing and where the market is going. So you have to be extremely reactive. That’s why most of the Brands have their own Creative team in house and when the workload is too high or needs a specific expertise, external agencies are hired.

The real challenge for me, as Digital Creative Director, was the fact I didn’t have that much knowledge like a Creative Director working in TV field does. When I was at Yan TV, my boss told me: “forget everything you know about advertising, TV field is another planet”. He was right. I also had to learn tone of new words, it was a new world. Something that made me surprised was, you don’t have too much budget in order to realize a set for a new TV program. To be honest, it was very challenging experience. But through difficulties and struggles, you grow up. It was both difficult and awesome. I will never forget that amazing experience, allowing to understand how a TV channel works, how a TV program is designed, and all the talented people involved. After that experience at Yan TV, I never watched TV program the same way.

photos by mynkao

Making a TVC requests to plan the tasks in advance. But in real life, there are many unexpected elements that could happen on site. And it does. It’s your job to deal with. You have to quickly find solutions because the shooting must go on, you have to make decisions and help to save the day. And the best is, sometimes you must anticipate. In the video above, even a storyboard was done by the Art Director, you know one character dancing will not be exciting enough for the audience, especially where in the original clip of Michael Jackson, there’s a bunch of zombies, dancing around. So the initiative was to ask for some additional shoots in advance. So we had more materials (videos) of the character. Then in post-production, we could duplicate and integrate more “dancers”, giving the illusion to the audience that there were many dancers, making the content more exciting for the audience.

I always feel lucky to be able to work in the advertising industry. And when you work in the entertainment industry, it’s even more exciting. An anecdote I would like to share is, being a CD in TV field is a kind of jobs you get paid for… watching TV the all day long. There’s a TV in the middle of the working place and everyone watch it. But watching TV means different things for different people. For Yan TV members, it means being able to see how the end product looks like.

There are some similarities about designing a channel look and a website. A look & feel of a site may look different depending of the device (laptop, table, phone). There’s a large range of TV screens. A content is like water, it should look good on any medium.

Working for a TV channel company, is quite like working for an event one. It means, when you work for an advertising agency, most of the time, you can negotiate and delay some due dates. But when you work for a TV channel company, TV programs must be on air, on time. The air time cannot be delayed. So being on time is crucial.

Channel B

Launching of a new TV channel

Behind the scene

Lovely team for having adding a photo of me (the child on the left)

In this digital age, a whiteboard is still effective for a collaborative and engaging teamwork

Credits
Creative Director: mynkao
Art Director: TBU
Copywriter: TBU