The digital marketing and advertising maestro and founder of social media agency Goodstuph talks about her career path, philosophies and the future
Meet the Tribe is an eight-part series introducing a few of the 122 industry leaders across Asia who helped us select the Gen.T List 2019—a panel of experts we call The Tatler Tribe. Pat Law is a member of The Tribe in Singapore, representing the Media, Marketing & Advertising category.
Pat Law realised early on that advertising was her calling. Setting out to pursue it as a career, she quickly rose up the ranks, moving through Publicis, Arc Worldwide, TBWA and Ogilvy as she checked off the agencies under some of the industry’s largest companies.
However, in 2010, while she was at Ogilvy, her father was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Driven by filial duty yet lacking a salary that would pay the steep medical bills she knew would inevitably follow, she felt forced to resign in order to find a way to make more money fast.
Pat decided to bet on herself. She took a loan from Irene Ang of Fly Entertainment, a leading Singapore talent agency, to start her own firm, Goodstuph. Within three months, she had paid Ang back. Her risk was reaping rewards. Today Goodstuph’s clients include the likes of Changi Airport Singapore, HP, Nike, UOB and SingTel, to name a few, and her company has been named Southeast Asia’s Social Media Agency of the Year by Campaign Asia for the past seven years running.
Was there a pivotal moment when you decided to pursue a career in advertising and marketing?
The pivotal moment came when I was 15. Wimbledon was airing in the wee hours of the night. I had just had dinner. A KFC commercial came on and I watched fried chicken falling from mid-air in slow-motion. I felt hungry instantly, but also awed by the power of advertising. The rest, as they say, is history.