When The Poet Became the Face of POEMS for PhillipCapital's 50 Year Anniversary Campaign

It was surreal, seeing my face on a moving bus for the first time.

For PhillipCapital's 50 year anniversary, I was invited to be part of the story. More than that, I became the face of it. Initially what I thought was an engagement video turned out to be a full-scale campaign - moving through Singapore on buses, in train stations, and then also screened in cinemas before Spider-Man Brand New Day.

That is not a sentence I ever expected to write.

For me, this was something deeply personal. It'd be one thing to be in a campaign of this scale, but another to be of one that means a lot to me. Two parts of my life met in public. One was the world people knew me for, sitting behind a typewriter and writing poems for strangers. The other was a quieter interest I had carried for years, investing.

Everyone's got to start from somewhere, right?

When people think about investing, I reckon they imagine a sea of numbers in red and green. Charts. Prices. Risk. Returns. Earnings reports. Decisions that feel too technical to touch unless you already know the language.

Poetry sits on the other end of the room. It deals in feeling, memory, ache, courage, and the private conversations people have with themselves.

That was what made the campaign compelling to me. It didn't ask poetry to decorate finance. It asked whether poetry could make investing feel more human.

The coverage was taking an everyday man (wich I proudly take on the mantle of) - and not a financial guru or big named celebrity - and poetry to persuade a new generation to invest.

The title, typewriter poet, has followed me for years. I have written poems for people at events, in public spaces, and in moments where someone offers 3 words, a story, or a feeling, and waits to see what comes out.

This time, the subject was money, time, and the future. And I was more than eager to pen down the story.

Why the campaign felt honest to me

I wouldn't have felt right fronting something that treated investing like a guarantee or a shortcut. That has never been how I see it. So I did my research on the company. On the other side of the coin, the client was doing their own background checks on me. We had many conversations regarding investing - more so for them to understand if I spoke their language. They asked what made me interested in it, who my influences were, my main stock holdings, my experiences, and so on. They wanted to make sure I was genuinely interested in investing. And luckily for me, I 100% was.

On paper, the brief could have been reduced to a string of tags, POEMS, Phillip Capital, Campaign, Poetry, Poet, Adam Tie, Typewriter, but the real story was more human than that. It was about making a subject that can feel distant become closer, warmer, and easier to begin.

Becoming the hero of the story

I'm used to the intimacy of being the typewriter poet. One person stands in front of me. They give me any 3 words. Maybe they tell me about someone they love, something they are afraid of, or a season of life they are trying to understand. I type away. Clickity-clackity. A poem emerges. Two people inside a genuine interaction.

The POEMS campaign put me right under a solo spotlight. And it was surreal, and humbling.

What I learnt from letting my two worlds meet

This experience reminded me that we do not always need to keep our interests in separate boxes.

For a long time, I thought of poetry as my public world and investing as my private one. Poetry was what people saw. Investing was what I read about, thought about, and practised more quietly.

The PhillipCapital 50-year campaign brought those selves together. It showed me that the overlap was not random. Both worlds ask us to think about time.

A poem can hold a moment that might otherwise disappear.

An investment can be a decision made in the present for a life you have not reached yet.

Both require patience. Both require care. Both carry uncertainty. Neither rewards panic.

A poem cannot teach someone everything about investing. It never pretended to. But it can open a door to a more human side of it - that we're all trying our best here to go beyond being a beginner, and all it takes is that first step forward.

A note on money, art, and responsibility

Because this campaign touches on investing, I think I need to be clear about something. This post is a personal reflection, not financial advice.

Investing involves risk, and everyone’s situation is different. A campaign can spark interest. A poem can shift perspective. But decisions about money should be made with proper research, care, and, where needed, professional advice.

That responsibility matters.

I believe art can make difficult subjects more approachable. I also believe we should be careful with trust, especially when money is involved.

The strongest campaigns do not ask people to suspend judgement. They invite people to pay closer attention.

What stays with me upon reflecting on this campaign is not only the scale of it, but that we all carry multitudes within ourselves. I didn't need to pretend to be a guru, or beyond what I recognise myself to be. But simply daring to poke and push at the question: what future am I building towards, and what am I protecting in my life?

Whether in poetry, investing or campaign work - this was a rare and kinda beautiful meeting point. And I'm grateful and ever humbled that I got to stand there.

Thank you POEMS by PhillipCapital for trusting me with this.