Troy Lim is a Creative Director at Ogilvy & Mather and also a student at our part-time Masters in Digital Media Management in Singapore. Troy was ranked by Media magazine as one of the top 5 Creative talents in Asia and number 5 in the Campaign Brief Asia Creative Rankings. We asked Troy to share his experience as a Hyper Island part-time MA student.
Hi Troy, can you share your professional background with us?

I was voted Best New English Copywriter (Gold) at the Creative Circle Awards in 1999, and awarded the Gold Bullet by Young Guns in Australia in 2003. In 2009, I was part of the D&AD Jury for Press Advertising, and also the Co-Chairman of the Crowbar Awards 2010, a creative award show for students of advertising, design, interactive and film. I’m currently the Creative Lead on Singapore Health Promotion Board, National Environment Agency and Singapore Sports Council, and I’ve picked up Effies and IPA Gold for HPB.

What brought you to apply at Hyper Island as a Master’s student?

I attended the Social Lab at Hyper Island, not quite knowing what to expect. It was just one week, but it was enough of a refreshing and rewarding experience that made me want to learn more. And I’m a firm believer that creative folk should always seek to improve themselves – if you think you know everything, then complacency has set in. Since I only found out about the MA two months before admissions closed, it was pretty much “now or never”. I liked the idea of being able to bring learnings from Hyper Island to my creative practice and vice versa.

What’s the biggest change that you have seen in yourself, since you’ve joined the programme?

Working people always say, “I wish I could go back to school again, life was so simple then”. Now that I’m living the dream, I can positively bust that myth – working and studying at Masters’ level has stretched my thinking and challenged me in ways that I would not have thought possible. Ralph Waldo Emerson put it most eloquently, “The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.”

What’s been most challenging in your learning journey?

Applying learnings to what I do everyday – theories are useless if I can’t use them in a practical way. That and finding the time to complete the MA projects on top of work commitments. You can’t do the Masters in Digital Media Management if you haven’t mastered the art of time management.

How and where do you find inspiration?

Be like a child, be curious about stuff that you know nothing about. Surround yourself with ideas, share, dissect, question, mash and rip them up. Inspiration will find you.

How relevant do you feel your education at Hyper Island is to your industry?

We’re living in a digital age where new technology is constantly emerging and disrupting how we do business. Luckily or unluckily, depending on one’s perspective, is that no one has cracked it – not even Google or Facebook can say for certain what Digital will be like 10 years from now. Hyper Island equips you with the skills to think about Digital in ways that are technology agnostic. So the knowledge and critical thinking skills you attain will have a far longer shelf life than the next iPhone.

During your time at Hyper Island so far, what has been your greatest learning?

Change is to be embraced, not feared.
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Article updated on: 30 May 2024