Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Alan Cerutti co-founder + CEO at Happiness Saigon
Tomilli: Why “Happiness”?
Happiness is the ultimate rebellion against negativities and impossibilities. It’s also a timeless concept. We want to help brands spread happiness, ranging from contentment to intense joy, because we believe that brands that do this matter, are discussed and ultimately do better business. Today we are evolving to a Creative Consultancy Agency providing consultancy on how to drive more happiness for brands, ultimately, driving bottom-line results as a business partner does, while utilizing the power of creativity, ideas and innovation.
How do you apply this concept to works with the brands you handle?
Our people are the most important asset of Happiness. We have a saying on the wall: “We do everything to make people happy because happy people make great work and great work is what makes people happy”. Our own happiness is defined by the work, we strive and are at our best when there is a happy partnership, with the belief in the heart that creativity and innovation are powerful resources. We stimulate this, we nurture this and when we find it, we revel. In addition, we are positive people, we are Make it Happeners. It’s on our business cards, we are disgusted by negativity and lack of originality.
How do you make your customers happy?
We drive home the promise that Creativity Means Business.
How do you do this?
As we believe that Creativity Means Business, we launched the ‘Happiness Effect®’, a joint effort between Happiness Connect (communication consultancy and implementation) and Happiness Works (performance consultancy and media planning/buying) allowing us to measure accurately the (positive) impact a creative idea has on the core KPI. It’s the circle we aim for, as achieving KPI’s is ultimately what makes client happy.
One of our most recent successes is Lay’s Crispy Subtitles (link here), it’s been launched with PR support in Vietnam and it has traveled the world being named AdAge Editor Pick among top publications and featured on many tech publications like Gizmodo, Trendhunter, etc. To date we have +1.000 downloads and over 1 MIO $ of earned media and it’s just started.
WINA is an independent festival that has been promoting the best of global independent creativity for 5 years, but do you think that more associative spaces like this are needed to make the independent creative industries known?
Yes, I believe in markets such as Vietnam or broader South East Asia. Creativity is an important resource for growth acceleration. The good thing is that with emergence of economies, culture is popping out and creativity is becoming a necessity. We’re keen to lead the industry by leading the way and the more celebration of creativity, ideas and innovative thinking, the better!