Malaysian agency heads react to 2-week lockdown

Casey Loh, chief creative, The Clan

We are establishing business continuity and contingency plans now and briefing the teams our standard operating procedure for daily reporting and brainstorms. As my partner, business chief Syed Nasir, has said too, this will really test our people’s ability to work remotely and efficiently. As we are all about people and collaboration, having to work remotely may limit the sense of synergy that we’ve always enjoyed at The Clan.

Though it is not something we have not done before, the circumstances now are different from having to call in for a brainstorm or video call a pre-production meeting. To constantly be in touch with each other while juggling clients'requests can be quite a challenge. However, having the right systems and team leads in place can make all the difference so we have to be agile enough to adopt a new strategy as the days play out.

I think in a way this Movement Control Order is a forced reset on the industry and how clients' demands are met with more structure in place.It is forcing the industry to rethink the way it interacts with each other and perhaps even do away with the multi-layered approval processes which can sometimes hinder speedier turnaround. And yet with all the tech and connections we have set in place for the way we keep track of things, I still think getting people to huddle together every once in a while is a great way to feed of each other’s creative energy and find a solution that would not be possible when working in isolation.

Now seems to be the perfect time to deploy even more dynamic tools that will help clients chart the progress of their campaigns and for team members to jump in and out of different milestones to save time and manpower. We are still in the midst of perfecting this ourselves so hopefully this will give us the insight we need to make the tool even better.