Didi Pirinyuang joins VMLY&R as creative chief, hopes for better creative collaboration in industry

Brand and customer experience agency VMLY&R has appointed Didi Pirinyuang (pictured) as its new chief creative officer. In her new role, Pirinyuang will lead the agency’s creative team in delivering solutions for clients, sharpening its creative culture and driving its strategy to boost the agency’s creative service offerings. She will be succeeding Chan Woei Hern who has now joined VaynerMedia as its new head of creative for the APAC region.

According to a statement from VMLY&R, Pirinyuang’s extensive experience spanning a wide range of consumer segments is an asset to the agency’s regional operations and feeds into its ongoing strategy to attract the industry’s best talent. Known in the industry as a "creative unicorn" for her standout work, partnering with clients such as Pizza Hut, PUMA and PETRONAS, Pirinyuang brings with her two decades of hands-on industry experience, including the management of creative teams, said the agency.

Pirinyuang will report to Kenni Loh, CEO of VMLY&R Malaysia. Loh said: “We are delighted to welcome Didi into the VMLY&R family in Malaysia. Her creative prowess preceded her, and with her input, we look forward to scaling our creative offering further, using brand and customer experience to deliver the most engaging and culturally relevant creative commerce experiences for our clients.”

In an interview with A+M, Pirinyuang said that she hopes moving forward there will be a better collaboration between all creative agencies. “We are all in it together, as an industry, after all – with the same objective of bringing amazing ideas to life. Wouldn’t it be great if we can all win together versus trying to outshine each other?” she added.

Additionally, she hopes for more expressions of ideas and media-agnostic creativity that does not always fall back on film-led campaigns. “With everything at our fingertips and even more tools at our disposal, we now have even more opportunities to hack, rewire and innovate upon anything to create new experiences,” she said.

Other than previously being the executive creative director at Ensemble World Malaysia, another feather in Pirinyuang’s cap is being a founding member at Ensemble and UM studios. She had been with Ensemble since 2017.  She added that what attracted her to the role at VMLY&R is the opportunity to work with great talent, clients and exciting brands. “There’s a strong sense of collective hunger to do things differently, to explore new realms and expressions of creativity, and humanness that permeates the agency and its direction,” she said.

As one of the leading voices in Malaysia’s creative scene, occupying the role of executive creative director that is often male dominated, Pirinyuang offered her perspective of being a woman in the industry. She said that while creativity is gender-neutral, women need to use their voices more powerfully, confidently and emphatically. “The female energy is most powerful when we don’t shy away and we acknowledge that yes, we do deserve to be at the top, as much as anyone else,” she added.

Pirinyuang aims to lead by example. The foundation of her creative philosophy is ‘ideas’, which she deems is crucial in good advertising. Simple solutions to complex everyday problems, but ultimately culture-changing, conversation-making and highly-memorable ideas are central to quality advertising. “However, when it comes to execution, experiences make a lasting, more tangible impact than yet another film. Easy to say, realistically harder to attain - but we never stop trying,” she added.

Related articles:
Didi Pirinyuang exits ECD role at Ensemble Worldwide MY
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Ensemble names Didi Pirinyuang ECD as Chan Woei Hern steps down