Rainmaker
- Making brands and people famous
and furious for three decades
Author: Harmandar Singh
Publisher: Sledgerhammer Communications (M) Sdn Bhd
ISBN: 9789672595304
Billed as an advertising creative director gone rogue, Harmandar Singh, who is better known as Ham, has a string of achievements and years of experience in the advertising industry under his belt. He has worked in some of the top ad agencies in London, New York,Tokyo, Singapore, Manila, and is also Malaysia’s representative for the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. He was also a columnist for the local English newspapers for 11 years before starting his own weekly e-magazine, Marketing Weekender.
Ham started an independent ad industry magazine, ADOI, in the region some 15 years ago. ADOI Singapore folded after sometime and for ADOI Indonesia, he passed the running and operation of the magazine to the local editorial staff there in mid 2009. Besides publishing the magazine, Ham and his staff also organised the ADOI Advertising Awards (AAA) to inject international judging standards in the search for creative excellence in Indonesian advertising. Similarly for Malaysia.
Rainmaker - Making brands and people famous and furious for three decades, is the first book by Ham and is a collection of some of his articles that he wrote for the newspapers as well as some new stuff which he updated for this book. Such as the Covid 19, MCO and 1MDB tales.
As the title of the book suggests, and after bestowing almost 2,000 awards to deserving winners in the advertising industry, Ham believes he’s leading the way with the ultimate badge as The Rainmaker.
He once had his own Advertising School and had collaborated on a Bachelor Degree programme on Social Communications for local university UPSI. He now serves as an Adjunct Professor at Taylor’s University lakeside campus. Ham had also led a media mission for MERCY Malaysia to Nepal and Syrian refugee camps in the Beqaa Valley. His latest project is the national anti-corruption movement #RusuahBusters. Indeed, Ham wears many hats but he only wears one turban.
Among the people that Ham cherished and remembered in this book included his friend, the late Yasmin Ahmad, executive creative director at Leo Burnett and accomplished film director, who was renowned for the Petronas festive commercials.
Ham also shared his ups and downs as an Ad man in search of his dreams and in helping others realise theirs. The book contains gems of wisdom culled from his years of experience which he gladly shares and it will be a good reference to those who wish to make marketing and advertising their calling or career.
However, the book could do with better layout and typesetting, especially the headings for each chapter, which are humongous and take up almost half a page. Also the headings and the accompanying standfirsts should not have any fullstop. Whether it's intentional or otherwise, there are one of two without them. And if there are photographs to be used, they would be better in colours as black-and-whites are so yesterday.
Hopefully, these observations will help Ham in his next reprint. The book retails at RM37.50 and proceeds of the sales go to MERCY Malaysia as well as a Bahasa Malaysia version, which will be distributed across secondary schools and public universities to promote the marketing communications industry amongst students.
