Creativity at the core

TeamAsia’s Bea Lim shares the importance of branding and identity

‘Each one of us is a storyteller.’ TeamAsia Managing Director Bea Lim shared the value of branding and identity at the University of Santo Tomas for a seminar entitled Outside the Box held last Saturday, April 16.

In today’s world, everyone is after the next exciting trend. Each one of us is in search of the next thrill –that feeling of exhilaration that makes our hearts race. But in the pursuit of these things, we often lose focus of the things that are most important.

For Bea Lim, managing director of integrated marketing communications firm TeamAsia, “the boring things are most essential,” especially in the field of creativity.

Lim shared this with Thomasian marketers at the Outside the Box seminar organized by the University of Santo Tomas’ Junior Marketing Association (USTJMA) last April 16. The event was attended by marketing students of the university who wanted to learn about how to bring their  ideas to the next level of experience.

Lim, in her talk titled “Creativity @ the core,” reminded students that the most basic things in marketing may be old or might sometimes be boring, but it is in these details one can find the foundation of every successful brand. She underscored the value of knowing the brand, its identity, and committing its values to mind, because with knowing the heart of the brand a marketer can create a story that will make a lasting impression.

“Each one of us is a storyteller,” Lim said to the attendees of the event. “When we come up with an idea, we weave a tale. What makes any brand stand out is its story.”

To illustrate her point, Lim shared with the students the story of TeamAsia, a company that she has worked for since she was six years old. She told them how she challenged the creative team of the company to rebrand the 24-year old agency. She gave them a near impossible deadline to come up with great ideas, and in just a week they were able to deliver.

“It was a testament to our thinking in TeamAsia.” Lim shares. “When anyone tells us to go outside the box, we simply tell them ‘what box?’”

Before Lim’s presentation, Arnel Villanueva, art director of J. Walter Thompson, delved into the topic of creativity and how it can be translated to innovation.

Lim also conducted another discussion with youth leaders and volunteers in De La Salle University Dasmariñas Campus earlier that day. The workshop tackled how to engage millennials to do volunteer work and how young people can maximize their efforts to attract more people who are devoted to the cause of social change.