Rob Campbell is Head of Strategy at Wieden+Kennedy, Shanghai. He’s also the personality behind one of Adland Asia’s most influential blogs The Musings of an Opinionated Sod. Despite Rob’s irreverence, clients and colleagues consider him an “inspiration.” In fact, Eaon Pritchard of Appliance of Science has said, “Rob wouldn’t mind me paraphrasing Brian Clough by saying, “’Rome wasn't built in a day, but Rob wasn't on that particular job'. He’s one of the top ad planners in the world today and an all-round top chap.” (You just can’t get praise better than that!)
Rob’s job is to help clients like NIKE, Converse, Beats, P&G, Chrysler, Heineken, Arla, Tiffany's, Momo and the soon-to-be built, Disneyland Shanghai, with their commercial and communication needs across Asia Pacific. Our goal is to continually prove creative intelligence is the most powerful way to win hearts, minds & profits.
He’s had an eclectic background. He started as a session guitarist for some of the worst—yes worst-- 80’s popstars in history. (He notes that he only played the songs; he didn’t write them.)
His first role in advertising was as Creative Planner at HHCL in the UK. Rob admits that his first job title should have been “sponge,” and he left with an amazing experience, great memories, awards… and written warnings.
He then became Founder & Creative Planning Director of Cynic in both the UK and the US… where he spent more than seven years designing interiors for 747’s, developing mopeds for Vietnam and creating award-winning (and effective) campaigns for brands like Virgin, IKEA and Coke.
He then move to Singapore as Regional Head of Planning for Y&R Asia, where he credits great people, hard work and luck to enabling some top work for clients like SONY, MTV, Schweppes & Tiger Beer.
Rob next became a planner at Google’s Cultural Engineering Lab in the US and led an engineering/planning team to identify and develop culturally-relevant products, tools and services. Then he hopscotched back to Aisa as Founder and Creative Planning Director of Sunshine Hong Kong… where in 18 months he and his team won and worked with clients ranging from Microsoft Asia, National Geographic, AIA and Virgin Racing.
He credits his career, to date, to luck, the planning gods, and being pretty good at what he does.