Meet Winona Wee | Advertising Creative

We had the good fortune of connecting with Winona Wee and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Winona, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
I’ve known I wanted to write for a living since I was about 15. In school, I flunked my Sciences but excelled in Humanities. I spent most classes daydreaming and writing short poems in my notebooks and on my arms. My family didn’t think I would even make it to uni LOL.

After graduating, I went into editorial writing and wrote mainly about creative professions — but I quickly realised that I’d rather be creating work than writing about them. That’s how I stumbled into copywriting for my first creative agency.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’m super passionate about building communities online. I think there’s something poetic about creating connections that transcend borders. Two starkly different campaigns come to mind when I think of this: Teemo Treasure Trek and Please Arrest Me.

Teemo Treasure Trek: Although Lunar New Year is celebrated by more than 1.5 billion people worldwide (myself included!), it’s always represented the same way in media. So my team and I created #TeemoTreasureTrek, a 2-part cinematic for League of Legends which featured Teemo (a LoL champion) discovering the regional nuances of delicacies at the suggestion of players. We partnered with local stores from 8 different cities to translate their homemade specialities into 3D renders: allowing Teemo to bring the tastes of the world back home to the virtual world of Runeterra. +1 for representation!

Please Arrest Me: In India, marital rape isn’t a crime. RIT Foundation needed help raising awareness for this, so we got an activist to turn himself in to the police, pretending he raped his wife. Within minutes, he was freed. We captured the whole process — from him interviewing lawyers & victims, to him going into the police station with hidden cameras & being told that raping your wife is not a crime. The film was launched to fierce reactions from both camps: Thousands of conservatives reported and took down our content 4 times. Indian feminist influencers, activists and actresses pushed back by sharing our content & encouraging followers to do the same. Through this, we managed to secure a hearing date to repeal this absurd law, and on a grassroots level, I’m proud to say that I managed to successfully connect marital rape victims to counsellors in their state.

Ultimately, I think what sets me apart isn’t my craft or my creativity, but my willingness to just go crazy, be out there & experiment! Anyone can come up with ideas, but it takes grit to see them through. Although I’m a copy-based creative, I love tinkering and getting knee-deep into the technical side of things. More recently, I’ve been experimenting with AI art. My home country of Singapore just repealed 377A — an archaic British colonial law which criminalises sex between two men. To celebrate the repeal, I used Dall E to create a series of posters featuring Singaporean men embracing. Prior to this, I also partnered with Melissa Ho & Sharmain Lim to create http://SexEd.Gay, an inclusive sex education platform that houses tips for LGBQTIA+ youths in Singapore. Choosing Love is always a radical act.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I’ve just relocated to London so I’m still familiarising myself with the city, but my favourite spot has to be The Barbican Centre. It’s a beautiful complex with Brutalist architecture. Go there any day of the week for movie screenings, gigs, and exhibitions. I saw my favourite exhibition “Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy & The Avant Garde” here, and what I really loved about it was that instead of focusing on art movements or technical craft, this exhibition focused on the relationship between creative couples and how that inspired their individual work. We are the sum of what we love.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
S/o to my mentors Nicolas Courant, Sascha Kuntze, Gui Camargos, Dee Reyes & Xander Lee for always making me believe I could go the distance.

S/o to my creative partners Melissa Ho, Ria Ocampo, Nico Tangara, Luke Somasundram, Amos Mak, Sid Lim & Sharmain Lim for inspiring me with their craft & passion.

S/o to my best friend Bell Tan for being my biggest cheerleader.

S/o to BBH Singapore and Ogilvy Singapore for giving me the space to grow into the creative that I am today, and big s/o to Susan Hoffman for bringing me on board my latest adventure halfway across the world with Wieden + Kennedy London!

Website: http://winonawee.com, http://sexed.gay

Instagram: http://instagram.com/sexed.gay

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/winona-wee-07371072/

Image Credits
Allan Yeo, BBH Singapore, RIT Foundation, Ogilvy Singapore, Riot Games, Dall-E