The Way I See It: Jureeporn Thaidumrong

Jureeporn Thaidumrong, AKA ‘Jeh Ju’ or Judee, is one of Asia’s most respected and awarded advertising figures. Starting as a copywriter in-house at a department store, during her illustrious career she has worked at several Bangkok agencies including DY&R, Leo Burnett, Far East DDB, Results/Ogilvy&Mather, and Saatchi & Saatchi, where she was ECD, winning Asia’s Agency of the year in 2003. She is now creative chairwoman at nudeJEH Bangkok. Here she talks to Joe Lancaster about bumps on the head, stripping employee wannabes and one-winged pigeons.

I was born and raised in the medium class in an up-country province not far from Bangkok called Chachoengsao, or ‘Pad-Riew’. My parents ran many businesses frequented by locals – an animal farm, a restaurant, a small casino and a kickboxing camp. I am the youngest child with two older brothers.

One of my earliest memories was singing and jumping in a field nearby my house. I was about three or four. I loved running and jumping so much until I had an accident when I fell from a coconut-tree bridge and my head hit a rock quite badly. Then I stopped jumping around and started to walk normally. I still have the scar.

I’ve loved watching TV commercials since I was about six years old. To me, TVCs were very entertaining. The length of them was perfect for my short concentration. They always had funny stories, nice visuals, good music and clever messages. I thought whoever made these TVCs must be very smart. They must have lots of ideas in their brains. I wanted to be one of them.

I went to university in Bangkok to study business and finance because at that time advertising was very new in Thailand and nobody really knew how to make a career out of it. I picked something that I thought could be related to advertising and majored in marketing.

I never studied anything related to art direction, copywriting or graphic design but my mathematics teacher, who had a very strong character and was very special to me, used to say that, ‘there is nothing that we can’t do, we can only hold ourselves back’. I have always remembered everything she said.

My first job was working at an in-house agency at a department store. It gave me a rounded view of the entire selling process. I was effectively the client, the agency and the retail environment combined. It allowed me to use all of my potential and my business training helped. A knowledge of business and marketing is helpful to creatives because you know what you are meant to be having ideas for.

In Thailand, I never experienced unfairness based on gender at any of the many companies I have worked for. The opportunities are the same for men and women, even to an extent for transgender/transvestites. I have seen many women MDs and CDs and it seems like there are even more women in top positions now.

I can’t really speak about gender equality in other countries but, based upon my impressions from attending the many global award events, it seems that the rest of the world is still male dominated in this industry. I do see that right now there are more and more women in top positions in America and Canada, but it is still a man’s world in Europe, Australia and South America. At least it appears to be that way from my limited perspective.

Neil French [former WPP worldwide creative director who resigned after making allegedly sexist comments about women] is one of my biggest inspirations. He was Ogilvy’s Worldwide CD when I worked at Results Advertising [an O&M offshoot in Bangkok] and he was huge in Asia. He always encouraged the creatives to be the leaders within the agency. Neil is a very intelligent and funny person and he loves to twist things and play with peoples’ minds.

When Neil said that ‘women are crap’, it was like he was writing a headline and everyone wanted to read the rest of the story to sort out what he meant. To me, essentially what he meant was that it is hard for a lot of women to put the job (advertising) before everything else, including family – which is more important than any job, but it can also limit one’s potential. 

When I was a CD at Results Advertising I received a job application from a graduate who had included a naked photograph of himself. I told my assistant I didn’t want to meet him but a week later he walked into my office and took all of his clothes off. I laughed, walked out and asked someone to tell him to get dressed. He said he wanted to show me that all he needed was his creativity to work for me and nothing else, not even clothes. I don’t think he would have done it if I was a man and no, he didn’t get a job.

In 2005 I decided to start my own agency, JEH United. I had been working in advertising for many years at several multinational agencies in Bangkok and I felt like it had the same pattern. There were so many processes and I believed that these processes always destroyed great ideas and at the end you come out with very boring and typical solutions on creative work.

I started my own agency to focus on creative work and cut out all the unnecessary processes that make the creative work weaker and weaker, so it was just me, the client and creative producers and project managers, but not, planners, client service, research or media people. I was very busy at first.

In 2011 we merged with NUDE Communications to form nudeJEH Bangkok and now we have over 70 people. We do have planners and accounts people but I still believe the most important thing is to make great creative work happen. I still tell my staff in every position, ‘just think, how can we make this happen? This is our aim, envision the results and the impact that we want to make and the rest will happen. Don’t forget what we want to achieve’. I always inspire the creatives to do great work, not just take the easiest solution.

I won Thailand’s first gold Lion in 2000 and D&AD pencil in 2003, but coming first means nothing unless you keep coming first.

In 2006 my Love Story campaign for beauty cream Smooth E won a number of international awards. It’s my best work to date. I knew it would be when the clients bought the idea.

When we were at the Love Story shoot, I told my team that the campaign would live for 50 years. It took two months of hard work, every day, to make it happen. It will take even harder work for me to ever beat that campaign because if you create a masterpiece, it takes much more effort to make another one.

My 2010 PSA Sorry, Thailand for Positive Network [a group of Thai people who wanted to get to the bottom of what caused the unrest in the country and ‘Battle for Bangkok’ that left 85 people dead and 2000 injured, so it could be prevented from happening again] was controversial and was banned from TV by the Thai Censorship Committee due to its ‘sensitive content’. That was a great honour.

When you’ve spent all your days using your brain to sell products and you’re on your death bed, will you be proud of that? It’s important to use one’s skills and talent to help spread positive messages and change behaviour in a positive way – essentially making the world a better place. This year’s Cannes Grand Prix for Good award winner, Ant Rally for WWF, is a perfect example of what all creatives should strive for.

I am still a member of Positive Network. I used to hope we would achieve something, but it doesn’t seem like we will now.

When I think about Thailand’s sex industry and the way it influences outsiders’ views of the country, I feel sympathy. I want to laugh and cry at the same time. For so long movies have made jokes about Thai women all being prostitutes, it’s now symbolic of the country and we can’t stop that. All we can do is try to show other perspectives of Thailand for foreigners to see, for example in the ad industry I can try to make great creative work that comes from Thailand and have people see Thailand in other ways.

When I get a brief, I like to think about whether it is right or wrong, not jump straight into the idea and execution. When I figure out what needs to be done to change the brief I go back to the client. They always listen, because every client wants more sales or to make people feel good about the brand and maybe sometimes they haven’t seen other perspectives. Sometimes I can convince them, sometimes I can’t, but it is a discussion at least, which is useful.

People call me Jeh Ju. Jeh or Jae is a Chinese-Thai word meaning ‘big sister’. I had been working in advertising long enough and became a senior creative and won some ad awards, so the young creatives started to call me Jeh.  ‘Ju’ is a shortened version of Judee, a shortened version of Jureeporn, so they called me Jeh Ju. I don’t know why other people apart from creatives did the same thing but I kind of like it because when I get older, people will still call me Jeh Ju – not Auntie Ju.

I have quite a friendly relationship with my staff and I socialise with them often. This doesn’t make it hard to criticise their work though. I feel that they want to learn and they always listen to what I say.

One thing that is very important about being creative in advertising is you have to have an open mind and cannot have too much ego.  If you want to be a good creative, you have to listen to and analyse every comment that you hear about your work.

I’ve never fired anyone. I believe that everyone has something good to offer and I like to look at the positive side of people first and figure out how can I bring that out and challenge them to use their potential. Some might think that to fire people is an easy way to get rid of problems or bring in someone better, but for me it would be very difficult to do because their whole life would be affected.

The best days of my career have been when clients bought the ideas for what I knew would be great ad campaigns that people would talk about.

The worst days of my career have been vice versa, when the agency comes up with great ideas and clients don’t have the balls to take the step.

The best days of my personal life have been when I’ve seen animals helped by humans. The worst have been when any animal, especially a pet, died.

I don’t like living in Bangkok. It’s too busy and polluted. When I was younger I loved it because it’s so big and there’s so much to do, but when you get old you want to get out and find a peaceful place to live. Just recently, I was thinking about moving to Hawaii.

I get bored easily and I deal with boredom by walking away. 

I have seen many great ads but, although it’s a cliché, the one that comes to mind first has always been Apple’s Think Different campaign.

If I didn’t work in advertising I would be a singer, but I also want to be an astronaut.

I learned kickboxing as a child and although I stopped practising when I got into school, I can still kick. It’s like riding a bike or swimming – you don’t forget. I only had to use it for self-defence a few times when I was young.

People say I have achieved a lot in my career and that is flattering but in fact I still haven’t created work as great as Nike’s Just Do It, or won a black Pencil or Grand Prix Lion and I haven’t opened more than one branch of my own agency yet. I think I still have lots to achieve in my career.

On the other hand, I have no ambition in my personal life. I feel like I already have everything. I am happy with it and I am content.

I am not married. I think that I don’t see marriage as important because my mum and my dad separated when I was nine years old, so I grew up in a broken family. It’s very important to have kids and have a good relationship with your partner, but once the marriage fails it has so many effects on the kids’ lives. My oldest brother is also still single.

If I want kids I will adopt because there are so many children that need help and the world is over-populated. I don’t want to make more trouble for the world.

Currently I have 16 cats, four dogs and a one-winged pigeon living in my house. There are lots of trees in my garden and I feed pigeons every day but one was bitten by my dog. The doctor had to cut her wing off so I keep her as a pet in her own room in my house.

I don’t think about how I’d like to be remembered. When you’re dead, you’re dead. You won’t know what will be going on. Do the best you can now. Be the person you want to be right now. Be comfortable in your own skin.

At the end of the day, what really matters are the things you love.