The Kancil Awards are Malaysia’s largest, most prestigious advertising awards competition. They were established in 1978, under the name ‘6A’ which was later changed to Kancil Awards to honour local products and show pride in recognising home-grown Malaysian creative excellence in advertising. The awards see a large annual participation of the advertising industry’s leading people and many upcoming designers.

This year’s task for the student award was to create a campaign that made KFC more attractive to the youth. Chong created a television commercial in an old western movie theme. The commercial shows what looks like a classic cowboy shootout, which turns out to be just people sharing a KFC meal. Instead of the obvious approach of people sitting at a KFC happily eating, he says he made his commercial to be remembered.

“You see commercial of every product with people happily using that product. I wanted something that will be different and memorable,” he said.

Chong says he had learnt a lot from participating in a national scale competition, and now knows the industry expectations. He also says meeting leading advertising company representatives at the awarding ceremony was great experience, and he will be aiming for the grand prize next time.