Born in Hong Kong, grew up in Taiwan, been living in Singapore for the past 20 years, Shu Yau (SY) is quite acclimatised to the weather in Southeast Asia.
Since he joined the industry more than 14 years ago as a Flash banner designer, SY has been lucky enough to enter advertising through the non-traditional route. Along the way, he worked with some of the most talented creatives, planners, techies and clients. He was naive back then to believe in doing more with no regrets. He is still pretty naive today, but focuses on doing less while delivering the punch.
Now he runs a team of eclectic, multi-disciplined creatives of mixed nationalities in IRIS Singapore. Dishing out campaigns that do not fit the normal definition of advertising. A firm believer in achieving effectiveness through creativity, he enjoys close working relationship with the brave marketers who entrusted their brand with him, shaping and local and regional accounts including Guinness, FairPirce, Starbucks, Philips, Shell and Netflix.
Always viewing the work through the lens of ‘why would people care?’, it’s working pretty well for him somehow.
On weekends, he attempts to cook and tries hard not to poison his friends. But mostly he spends his time attempting to please the two other most important clients in his life. The 5 years old lady boss is a tough one.