Creative Minds: Cheil’s Jaeyun Jung on her favourite Samsung campaign

Name: Jaeyun Jung

Origin: Busan, Korea

Places worked/lived: Seoul, Korea

Pronouns: She/her

CV:

Art director, Cheil Worldwide, 2007-present

1. How did you end up being a creative?

Although I majored in visual communication design at art school, I find graphic design still difficult to master. What interested me was working with visual materials as an instrument to refine the message and to express myself. I’ve worked on comics and graphic novels in the beginning. However, I wanted to work in a bigger environment (and with a steady income, of course), and that is how I chose to work in an agency where I can do a similar work but with a different media.

2. What's your favourite piece of work in your portfolio?

‘Come Bespoke Home’ is Samsung’s 2021 campaign that promoted all of their home appliances line-up. With the song ‘Come Back Home’ written by Seo Taiji, a historical figure in Korean pop music scene, we wanted to create a music video using the song’s lyrics as a copy with various home appliances making an appearance. I don’t know much about 1995, the year when this song became a big hit, since I was only four years old then.

However, it was natural to understand the song’s magnetism, its influence, and the youth in that era who loved it. If the song’s message, originally meant to tell runaway teenagers to head back home, is put together with the visual of new home appliances finding their way home, wouldn’t it be witty and lovely? How the work turned out was satisfying, and what’s more, it got everyone talking as it recorded the highest number of views and comments on Samsung Korea’s YouTube channel, so I’m pretty proud of it.

3. What's your favourite piece of work created by someone else?

Nike Korea’s 2014 campaign ‘Fun Wins’ and 2021 campaign ‘Play New’ are my favourites. Ad campaigns interest me, but usually I get inspirations from things that are not advertisements. ‘Pachinko’ on Apple TV+ and Michelle Zauner’s book ‘Crying in H Mart’ have both left a deep impression on me recently. Both works are stories about looking at Korea from the outside, and it is interesting to see in other perspective that is subtly different from how I feel about my identity as a person born and raised as Korean.

Connecting my recent interests with ad campaigns, these two works of Nike Korea come to mind. ‘Fun Wins’ created the coolest stuff with a not-so-cool model and location in Korea back then. ‘Play New’ pointed out bad customs in Korea’s sporting world in a sophisticated Nike way. Both campaigns had an amazing message and visuals that I was electrified when I first saw it.

4. What/who are your key creative influences?

My teammates. Through all the work process, I am motivated and taught by them. They are the people who make me appreciate working as a team and the team chemistry. I think of them as a family in the workplace and who made me an art director as I am.

5. Do you work best under pressure, or when things are calm?

Wish I could do it well under calm and relaxed state, but pressure and tension always makes better results. Feels like adapting to this environment is K-culture.

6. What advice would you give to 10-year-old you, if you could?

Exercising and sweating it out is not uncool. It’s fun and rewarding. It’s important to become stronger and healthier. As an adult, I am now spending money and time on working out.

7. What really motivates you?

A good conversation.

8. What’s your favourite music / film / TV show / book / other of the past year, and why?

BoJack Horseman on Netflix. I love the show’s odd imagination, unpredictable direction, and its lively characters.

9. Tell us about an artist (any medium) that we've never probably heard of.

@jyjy9 on Instagram. It’s my personal portfolio account before working as an art director. It’s a shame the artist is not as active as she used to be, but she is the one artist that I wish continues her work than anyone else.

10. Analog or digital?

Definitely digital. I became a person who cannot create anything in the world without Command + Z.

11. Any regrets?

That I did not know the advice that I would give to 10-year-old me when I was 10. Else, I am pretty satisfied and have no regrets.