Creative Profile: From Singapore to Germany, police officer to NGO founder, Naresh Subhash found his home in advertising

Most people joke saying I lived many lives, and indeed I have.

I was a filmmaker, bible school student, police officer, strategist, brand manager, copywriter, NGO founder, interior designer, an artist… etc.

My road into advertising was not the ordinary one.

My love affair with creativity began when I was five. My grandmother and I had this ritual we would do every afternoon when I got back from school, watching reruns of “I love Lucy”. It was our special time when no one else was around and it was just the two of us.

One day, we encountered the biggest British Airways campaign ever shown in Singapore. The Face started playing on our television screen, Yanni’s “Aria” blaring out of the speakers, I was transfixed, spellbound by what I was watching, and I remembered wondering “how did they do this? What is British Airways?” and just as I had thought that, the ad ended with the most audacious line “The world’s favourite airline”.

I was hooked.

Every time the ad would come up on the screen, I would come running from wherever I was in the house to watch it. Then my grandmother uttered, “if you like it so much, study hard and go and make one for yourself”. Neither one of us had a clue of what that entailed. But that ad planted a seed in an overweight five-year-old, 10,000km away in Singapore. Since then, I haven't allowed myself to lose the awe and magic I felt when watching that ad.

But, getting my feet through the doors was a struggle.

I didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up. I knew I loved drawing, telling stories, collecting model aircraft and colour blocking my clothes. But, it was when I qualified for University that I was caught off guard, suddenly, time felt like it was up. I had to decide.

In Singapore, a university degree defined your career, your future, the person you were supposed to become. I was now torn between the dutiful and successful son’s role of majoring in Political Science or bringing shame to my family and reading a film degree.

In act of defiance I took film.

Naively, I believed it would lead me to that British Airways ad—it was BFA in digital filmmaking, that wasn't going to happen. But, what it did do was lay the foundations for a career in advertising, it helped me discover a world of art history, modern art, contemporary art, storytelling, design and craft. It also gave me the opportunity to travel abroad and pursue advertising modules in Germany which later found me landing my first job as a Strategist in a full-service German-speaking agency. With “Hallo” being the only German I knew, I learnt how to hustle.

I took every opportunity to put myself out there, taking night classes in German, working for small start-ups—anything and everything I could do to get more experience. The setbacks were ego-shattering, and it was financially challenging.

It was only after a couple of years of hustling, that I discovered Falmouth and 70,000 Singapore dollars later, I had a masters’ degree in Advertising. At that time, not everyone was using digital books, we still had physical portfolios that we carried from one agency to another. My creative partner and I had to rework our physical book 10 times before we got our first placement.

Today, I’m a creative director in the UK and working across some of the most amazing brands.

I still feel like a recent grad, always remembering that nothing was given to me and everything I have built is because of hard work. The thing is, you don’t come into advertising because it pays well.

Sustaining a career in this industry needs passion and commitment to building brands and playing a part in shaping culture.

It’s not glamorous, and no one EVER clicks on a banner ad, but you do it because you are building something bigger.

I have yet to make anything on the scale of the British Airways Ad, but that isn't my goal anymore.