Profile: Winkreative founder Tyler Brûlé on his Asia strategy

Alternating between journalist and entrepreneurial businessman, Tyler Brûlé continues to be driven, perhaps above all, by his appreciation for good design. That is certainly the guiding principle behind Winkreative, an agency which sprang from a demand for ad customisation from magazine clients, and has grown steadily but unostentatiously, recently opening for business in Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong presence will follow London and Tokyo models - an office within the Monocle magazine bureau - although on a smaller scale, for the time being. The ink is still drying on a contract with Swire Properties for the branding of an ultra-high-end residential development earmarked for completion later this year, and custom publishing duties for the city’s Pacific Place mall. Yet as exciting as this expansion may seem, Brûlé is cautious not to chase new business simply for growth and appears content for Winkreative to remain an exclusive, relatively small-scale operation. He explains the new office will be purely administrative to service regional clients outside Japan, with editorial and creative work produced in London - a major contrast to bigger, multinational companies.

The arrangement, prompted in part by a desire for quality control, is characteristic of Brûlé who, despite a hectic travel schedule, as chairman remains closely connected to all business and output and runs the agency like a family.

“We always have to come back to a central place,” he says, noting casually that Winkreative has been deleted from pitch lists due to its policy and has itself turned down new business opportunities that would have required the installation of a local creative team. Brûlé says the rule has paid off with a carefully maintained portfolio of exclusive companies. Swire, he says, was attracted to the agency largely because of its relationship with Monocle. Operating within the same building as the editorial team allows for ideas and information sharing that does not exist in the average branding company, he says.

Brûlé already has plenty to occupy him in Asia. Aside from Japan, where the agency works with clients such as bathroom manufacturer Toto and homewares retailer Franc Franc, the Taiwan Tourism Bureau remains a key account, the scope of which has grown since Brûlé oversaw a revision of creative work to suit Monocle. The result has been a strong national brand identity in a region where tourism branding is largely haphazard. Korea is also an important market. Clients there include Hyundai Card and Amore Pacific.

But as with Monocle, a ‘global briefing’ based around Brûlé’s own interests - a love of print media, Japanese culture and reportage from sometimes obscure destinations - Winkreative is more of a hobby that has become a successful business than a purely revenue-generating venture.

While premium brands are the company’s mainstay, Brûlé says he is happy to take on relatively low-margin work, “if it’s an interesting project, good portfolio piece, or if [the clients] are nice people”.

Above all, Brûlé says, he is drawn to clients with shared dreams. These days, they may be more likely to be found in Asia than the West, where he says design has become increasingly “commoditised”.

Naivety still exists of course, and he describes the Taiwan Tourism project as “a learning curve, where we have had to justify every decision”. But the appetite and talent are here. Brûlé believes the closed nature of markets like Japan and Korea is a design asset rather than hindrance.

“Too much influence almost dilutes things,” he observes. “People fault Japan for being inward looking, but you could argue that’s its strength because it has its own voice and charts its own course.” The same logic could be applied to Brûlé himself.

This article was originally published in the June issue of Campaign Asia-Pacific.