Kash Sree

This was the campaign that won my first international award as a writer. A writer of one word headlines. But copywriters can be visual too, and I had been an art director for a few years before this. In Singapore “Blur” means not with it or unfocussed.

This was the first Nike campaign I did after joining Wieden & Kennedy.

Raffles was an old hotel in a country where new more luxurious ones were opening every month.

What Raffles had that they couldn't compete with was its history.

FOR YEARS HE BAR AND BILLIARD ROOM WAS PATRONIZED BY SOMERSET MAUGHAM.

AS WAS EVERYONE ELSE.

“Observing these people, I am no longer surprised there is a scarcity of domestic servants back in England.”

Such comments did not endear him to Singapore’s colonial elite.

Yet he strongly believed were to be found in the East.

Which consequently led to many of his stories starting in the same way.

Or to be more precise, in the same place.

The Bar and Billiard Room.

At least two of his books “ A Moon and Sixpence” and “Of human Bondage” were written in the hotel.

He was often found reclined in a leather armchair beneath a blue Havana haze spiraling up to lazy ceiling fans, absorbing the atmosphere, the alcohol and the lives of the expatriate planters.

Busily recording notes to be used, incriminatingly, later.

At other times, he’d be surrounded an appreciative crowd. All laughing a little too loudly at his scything repartee.

But Maugham was also a great listener; patiently sitting and enquiring of your life as if you were the most interesting person he’d ever met.

Queues of adoring expatriate wives would divulge their personal stories to his attentive ear.

Like lambs to the slaughter.

Not surprisingly, many of them were far from happy on finding their thinly disguised lives, graphically mocked in the pages of his books.

There’s no pleasing some people.

After all, he couldn’t be expected to insult everyone in person.

“American woman expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers”, he once penned.

When accused of rudeness, he retorted in a fittingly Maugham-esque manner: “The right people are rude, they can afford to be.”

Not that Maugham was completely misunderstood. Aleister Crowley once stated, “though many resent the curious trick he has of saying spiteful things about everybody. I have always felt that like myself, he makes such remarks without malice, for the sake of cleverness.”

A fine testimonial, which may not have been helped by Crowley’s own notoriety, for being voted the wickedest man alive.

Whatever his faults, Maugham was undoubtedly a charming character who only added to the legend that is this graceful old hotel in the tropics.

The Raffles Hotel Bar and Billiard Room has long been synonymous with the famous and infamous.

And with it’s history come the finest cognacs, champagnes, single malt whiskies, vintage beers, connoisseur coffees and chocolates.

Along with some of the legendary conversation to which many have been attracted and some subjected.

IT ONLY TAKES A COUPLE OF DRINKS TO BRING OUT THE COWARD IN YOU.

It was in March 1930 that Noel Coward and a friend quietly slipped into Singapore Harbour aboard an old Danish freighter from Siam.

His Friend was promptly rushed to the nearest hospital to spend a month recovering from dysentery.

Noel, on the other hand, was rushed to the Raffles Hotel where he was to recover from a badly creased tuxedo.

Sitting on the verandah on his first night, the poor chap thought that he would die from the stifling humidity.

He should have been grateful.

After all, it was this weather that would eventually lead to him writing “Mad Dogs and Englishmen.”

Besides, the humidity eventually broke and was replaced with a light shower.

Coward, unused to Singapore weather, thought it the most 

thorough-going rainstorm he’d ever seen.

The Hotel’s marble floored verandah faced a brood South China Sea and Coward was convinced that it was about to become part of the boiling, murky waters.

Proven wrong, he retired to the luxury of his suite, completely dry, but utterly miserable.

Fortunately, it didn’t take him long to discover the few basic necessities that would make an Englishmen’s life bearable in Singapore.

The first being the Raffles Hotel’s Bar and Billiard Room.

The second, the perfect gin sling.

The thirds, was some generous, if not gullible sorts to finance the second.

(Apparently, a perfect gin sling can only be improved if paid for by someone other than the recipient.)

A couple of those and he was soon feeling himself again, offering some wonderful of the place and its expatriate inhabitants.

“Singapore is a first rate place for second rate people.” He blithely proclaimed, to a far from appreciative audience.

The bar and Billiard Room was a splendidly civilized place, where white jacketed patrons would casually commune under high ceilings and lazy fans, cosseted by attentive staff. And in keeping with the etiquette, a strict dress code was stringently adhered to.

Coward, taking no chances stated. “I take stock of myself in the mirror before going out: an unfortunate tie exposes one to danger.”

His fortunes further improved when introduced to the Quaints, a local theatrical group with a frighteningly varied if somewhat dubious repertoire.

They would spend evenings collectively singing dance hall numbers around the Bar and Billiard Room’s piano. (Dance hall music, of all things.)

Spurred on by his brilliant performance at the piano, it wasn’t long before Coward found himself on stage, “taking a perfectly good role and throwing it in the alley.”

Unfortunately, he also threw it into the waiting hands of critics.

The show closed after three days.

Well, at least it paid for his drinks.

The Bar and Billiard Room has long been synonymous with the famous and infamous, who would, and still do, wax lyrical over the finest cognacs, champagnes, single malt whiskies, vintage beers and, of course, Singapore Slings.

Because, in the right surroundings, with the right stimulation, there’s a little coward in all of us just waiting to be coaxed out.

ENTRY WAS DENIED TO THOSE NOT WEARING A JACKET, TIE OR A GOOD CHICKEN CURRY.

The compulsory white linen jacket and public school tie were largely successful in keeping out undesirables. The nouveau riche, Americans, chartered accountants and the like.

         There were standards to maintain, after all. One couldn’t allow patrons to dress for the tropics, just because they were in the tropics.

         So it may come as a surprise to find a twenty-four stone, bearded giant wandering around the Bar and Billiard Room barefooted in curry-stained pyjamas.

But Professor Peiter van Stein Callenfels was exceptional in more than just his attire.

         The original model for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Professor Challenger”, Callenfels was a noted archeologist and historian turned coffee planter. (The more cynical might consider that a natural progression).

         And like many of the region’s planters, he would wile away the hours nursing a few beers in the splendour of the Bar and Billiard Room.

         Unlike many planters he would do so speaking fluently in four different languages.

         For Raffles was a place where he could find what he considered the rarest of commodities.

         Civilized conversation.

         To Callenfels, this consisted of the fruits of his intellect bombastically thrust upon a preferably female audience.

         After all, he did consider himself somewhat of a ladies man.

         This could be attributed to his impressive physique, which spilled gloriously out of the gaps in his pyjamas and cascaded over the sides of his reinforced armchair.

         Was it his fine head of hair and whiskers, which he proudly groomed only once a year?

         Or perhaps it was his impeccable taste in curry enshrined in a pastiche of stains down the front of his pyjamas.

         Whatever it was, it cannot be denied that he did possess a certain charm.

         And if one missed his stentorian boom, by some strange quirk of deafness, Callenfels could always be identified, by the steady stream of serving staff briskly gliding between him and the bar, in an attempt to keep pace with his insatiable thirst.

         Legend has it that he could consume up to thirty-five beers or ten bottles of gin in a sitting. And they soon learned not to insult him by serving him less than a quart at a time.

         (If only he’d been around during the thirties, his excessive consumption could have single handedly seen the hotel through the recession.)

         Not that his gargantuan appetite was limited to alcohol. He could voraciously devour his way through the entire Raffles Dining Room menu and had done so on many occasions.

         It is even rumoured that Callenfels may have once eaten human flesh while living with the cannibals in Sumatra.

         Entirely possible, when you consider he ate everything that wasn’t fast enough to escape.

         The Bar and Billiard Room has long been dedicated to the ageless pleasures of self indulgence.

         The finest selection of Champagnes, cognacs, single malt whiskies, vintage beers connoisseur coffees and chocolates can all be secured in quantity (if need be).

         Along with the legendary conversation that has long been associated with the place.

We did these ads for Nike Canada leading up to the 1998 World Cup. They appeared on billboards along Toronto’s College Street that borders on both Italian and Portuguese communities. We played up the historic rivalry between two of the world’s best teams.

Nike State of Origin Rugby campaign

We found out that black on black gun crime in Chicago was killing more young black men each year than in all of the Vietnam war. We thought maybe showing who black on black crime was helping might make them pause to think.