this is a bad idea right?
Van Der Alex is two guys and a bet. In the words of Hannah Montana, we're the best of both worlds.
We spent our careers in PR, on opposite sides of the table, watching the same mistakes get made with bigger and bigger budgets.
So we became the anti agency. No awareness for the sake of it, no publicity for the sake of it, just work that actually helps your brand convert.
Every agency says it works differently. Then all of them prove it with the same numbers. If the different ideas are judged by identical markers, how different are they really?
So we deal in bad ideas. Bad by the standards of an industry that measures the wrong things, and can never quite figure out why it’s not working.Who’s bad? *Michael Jackson voice*
When a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure. Give an agency a number to hit and it will hit the number, stripping out everything that made it worth measuring on the way. If the work landed, you should not need a report to tell you.
A peek into how we think, and what the anti agency approach does for a brand. It’s about knowing what actually moves the dial versus what just dresses it up. Drag through, click a node.
Kishen came up the brand side and stopped at the top of it. Writer and Sub Editor at The Sun Daily, then head of communications at Sunway Group and Pavilion REIT, where he built their ESG programmes from nothing.
He has been the client. He has sat through the pitches, signed off the budgets, and knows exactly what agencies get away with.
Michael is the agency side. Eight years and a client list most shops would frame: Moët Hennessy, LEGO, Chevron, Tesla, Nobu. Known for the ideas nobody else would put in the deck.
He has spent years running KOL programmes and knows who actually moves people, and who only looks like they do. Different categories, same job. Make people care, then make them act.
All of this was done before VDA existed. It is also the reason VDA exists.
Promote Hennessy Paradis, one of the most sought-after expressions of the world-famous cognac, to an audience that's seen everything.
A super curated experience for media, KOLs and the brand's VIP guests. The brief was simple: the experience had to emulate the expression. Rare, refined, unforgettable.
Announce Tesla's entry into Malaysia with the Model Y, and make it a big bang.
Packed out Pavilion KL's centre court and made it the talk of the town. Honestly, this is the kind of story that sells itself. We just made sure the execution matched the moment.
Launch SplashMania, Gamuda Land's brand-new waterpark, and fill it from day one.
Made waves with an extensive KOL programme, celebrities included, and PR you couldn't scroll past. The park was buzzing from opening weekend and ticket sales went through the roof.
Keep Nobu KL on everyone's lips during the move to Four Seasons, with no restaurant to serve from.
Ran the Chef With No Address campaign. Head Chef Philip cooked his way across the city, collaborating with influencers and restaurants while his own kitchen was in boxes. The move became the story.
Bring Rebuild the World, LEGO's global brand campaign, to Malaysia for 2024.
A brand campaign inspiring Malaysians to find creativity in everyday life, localised and brought to life for the 2024 market.
Turn Sunway's food bank programme into a story the whole country would notice.
Rallied staff and communities behind the programme, and put it in the Malaysia Book of Records along the way.
Launch the second Arthur's Storehouse at Pavilion Bukit Jalil, with a story big enough to lift the whole brand and spill over to the original at Pavilion KL.
The brief was talkability, a buzz like no other, without breaking the bank. So we put a Bono lookalike on stage and built the whole night around him. The story went far beyond the outlet, sending shockwaves through the news and pulling the brand up with it.
Four disciplines. Done properly.
Success here is never a vanity metric. Plans built on data and behavioural science, measured on the real impact that moves the dial.
Storytelling that creates talkability. Coverage that doesn’t just sound good, it gets your brand into the conversation.
Hyper detailed analysis of what a creator’s storytelling capabilities actually are and what kind of collaboration makes sense, before any name goes in a deck.
We break down the science behind visual language, then map creative that means something. Our partners handle the hands-on design. We make sure it still says the same thing in five years.
Selected Work / Branding & Creative
A logo isn't a picture, it's a system. Before anyone drew a line, we traced five thousand years of how humans have built order: Vastu, Pythagoras, Vitruvius, Islamic geometry, the marine chronometer. Then we found the brand's shape inside watch-movement mechanics. This is the thinking we bring, the concept and the story that makes a mark mean something.
Five thousand years of systems thinking, mapped as one evolution.
Think of the business model as a timepiece: many intricate moving parts creating tremendous value. The layers become in-house movements, height signifies scale, compression equals simplification. Complexity harnessed, not endured.
The concept turns into visual language. Meaning gets contextualised, the system is set in motion, and the shape starts to say what the brand means.
Concept and storytelling by Van Der Alex. Hands-on execution sits with our design partners.
The standard brief, corrected in four places.
The deliverable you asked for is standing in for a business result. We isolate which one, then aim everything at it.
There is usually a sharper measure than the industry default: talkability, and the reaction a story earns on its own. We find it, then beat it.
Numbers only mean something in context. Strategies get formed by reading the data through behavioural science and drawing inferences from the cyclical nature of consumers.
Brands typically look campaign by campaign, quarter by quarter. We look at everything holistically, proper brand building for the long term. And we will show you why that works for right now as well as for tomorrow.
Keep scrolling
The cabinet is empty. Between us we have written enough award entries to know they are not the point. Ask us again next year.
Backing a new agency is a gamble. We know. But to an industry measuring the wrong things, every idea worth having looks like a bad one. Bet on the bad idea.
How Not To Do It
How To Do It
Room To Improve / PR
Abstract
Research paper coming soon. We're building the full case study for this example, benchmarked against the module's thesis.