JWT New York

Having found international acclaim with their campaign for the plight of Burmese prisoners, Roy Wisnu and Chris Swift of JWT New York talk to Isobel Roberts about their yin-yang partnership and why awards are just a bonus.

Art director Roy Wisnu and copywriter Chris Swift might hail from the opposite side of the globe, but for the past few years the creative team have been calling the bustling streets of the Big Apple home, since joining JWT New York back in 2008. And it’s a move that has brought the pair great success – including a D&AD Black Pencil and a slew of gold Lions at Cannes – as well as their personal career highlights.

While Swift was raised on Australia’s West Coast in Perth, Wisnu grew up across the ocean in Indonesia. With visions of inspiring students just like Robin Williams’ English teacher in Dead Poets Society, Swift studied English Literature, Language and Culture at university. But not quite ready to return to the school halls after graduating, he instead turned to advertising: “I felt too young to go straight from school to university and then back to school to teach kids not much younger than me,” recalls the copywriter, “so I looked for an alternative. Advertising appealed as it allows an environment that can mix creativity with popular culture, in a business setting.”

An arranged marriage

Wisnu on the other hand always had the advertising industry in mind. Growing up engrossed in his art supplies, it was a degree in Design & Visual Communications that got him his first agency gig at Ogilvy Indonesia. Having risen through the ranks to become executive creative director, Wisnu gradually came to realise that his true love lay in art direction. Following this realisation he jumped over to Ogilvy’s Singapore office to return to an art director role, and it was there that the agency’s creative director first paired him up with Swift.

“It was like an arranged marriage,” jokes Wisnu. “All I knew was that I was going to be working with a guy who was the same height as me – ‘petite’. I’m glad it works. Although Chris and I share a lot of similarities in our sensibility and taste, a bit of yin and yang also works for us. What I lack is covered by him and I don’t need to feel pressured because of that, as I’m better at something else. With this arrangement, we work productively and efficiently.”

Ever since they first joined forces on a DHL campaign for Asia Pacific, both Wisnu and Swift have had their sights set on working at the centre of big global brands in New York. Some of the clients the duo have collaborated on since they first set foot on Manhattan soil include Diageo and Rolex, and here they count their combined international experience as a distinct plus point.

“A lot of our clients at JWT have their worldwide headquarters in the US, more specifically in New York,” comments Swift. “They want global ideas more than regional one-offs, so our having lived in a few different markets I think helps us to have a more international perspective for such clients.”

Inspiration behind bars

The project the pair are most proud of came with a much humbler budget than most, and stormed the industry’s award shows – an interactive installation in Grand Central Station for the Human Rights Watch, highlighting the plight of Burma’s political prisoners. From afar, part of the installation of the Behind Bars in Burma campaign appeared to represent a series of tiny prison cells, but on closer inspection the cell bars turned out to be ballpoint pens which visitors could then remove to sign a petition.

 “That project is our baby,” says Wisni, “and it was literally born nine months after we developed the concept. It’s probably the most important project we have done because of the scale but also because we were talking about a real issue, the Burmese suppression, so it was pretty big in terms of the weight. We also worked closely with the client and that was really important for us. Every time we met them we would hear more and more real stories and then we would be even more inspired. It was a really rewarding experience.”

“The project was fantastic,” adds in Swift. “The people at the Human Rights Watch are incredibly smart and decisive in their goals. Work that achieves results is by far the most rewarding kind you can do. It is definitely a nice feeling to be winning awards and all that, but that should be the bonus of doing something good, not the end goal.”

Back in their current work, Wisnu and Swift have been drawing on that experience in other mediums, and building on participatory ideas as well as further developing their digital experience. And if the Burma project’s international succes is anything to go by, there’ll no doubt be more recognition on the horizon.