Into the Belly of the Beast: Lydia Pang on Power, Ego, & Making the World Less Shit

Speaking with Lydia Pang is a bit like looking into the sun. There’s something bright and otherworldly about her – a warm, organic power – fundamental, essential, dynamic. She describes challenges as “delicious” and seamlessly shifts from chatting about semiotics to star signs (she’s a Libra, by the way – and a Dragon). She does not misspeak. There’s a decisiveness about Lydia Pang that projects a kind of authority usually reserved for stiff white men in dusty suits. Hers is a world of clarity and drive: she is an alpha.

As a creative strategist with a frankly intimidating resume – she has held leadership positions at M&C Saatchi, Refinery29, Nike – it somehow tracks that Lydia is “not naturally very good at resting.” In her charming Welsh accent, she explains that she “hate[s] liminality” and “crave[s] clarity:” “I like things to be binary, complete – they’re either on or off.” Having transcended the corporate landscape and founded her own creative strategy studio Morning last year, Lydia Pang is most definitely “on.” Morning already works with some of the world’s most powerful brands, from Facebook and Instagram to Gucci and Margiela.

Growing up with a half-Hakka Chinese background and emo/goth proclivities in the midst of rural Wales, Lydia shares that, “from a young age, I was made to figure out my identity in a place where I was very different. I was also made to formulate adult opinions and form that alpha leadership energy.” Today, she has transformed that energy into an undeniable power. And she’s using it “to leave the world a little bit less shit than it was yesterday.”

SLEEK: Ads and brands are some of the most powerful actors in our world today and you’ve worked, and continue to work, with some of the leading ones. Having been so high up in these spaces, what has your professional experience taught you about power?

Lydia Pang: My career is kind of shaped around the fact that I took my vulnerability, potentially, in a space, in my career, and converted that into power. Through choosing to be in uncomfortable spaces and have uncomfortable conversations and at the very beginning of my career, twelve years ago – being the only woman, person of colour, often the youngest person, and somebody that was always quite futurist in my views around brands and what they should be doing as vehicles for good or utility – I feel like I shaped a lot of what became my power through being in spaces where I automatically didn’t have any.

I’ve chosen to operate in spaces that are powerful, that have huge reach, because I feel like that’s where you have a platform for real world change. I know people are a bit like, ‘that sounds like a cute way of saying you sold out and you’re okay with it.’ But actually, I feel like if I were to go off into the woods and write a cute feminist magazine, maybe ten, 20, maybe 1000 people would read it. And that reach wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to have really uncomfortable conversations with people who didn’t want to have them – at a global scale with loads of budget – and reach people through the thing that everyone loves the most: stuff.

I wanted to go right into the belly of the beast because I knew that would be a great and safe place to cause trouble. I also knew that I would be able to learn a lot and that that power of working at the biggest brand and the biggest agency in the world would unlock more platforms for me and that definitely happened.

S: While a lot of people, women especially, tend to make themselves small so as to not make other people uncomfortable, you seem to have a very healthy ego that’s expensive and generous. What do you think about the ego and the role it plays in creativity, especially in these powerful spaces?

LP: I feel like ego is actually an amazing tool when leveraged with an abundant mindset and with awareness. I never made myself small. If anything, I often made myself a bit too big through an ambition to be loud enough or noticed, and that often manifested in the way I dressed or, you know, really obtuse opinions just to get attention quickly. As I got older, I managed to iron some of those things out and back them up a little more.

I really believe that ego is inextricably linked to creative output. Ego is essentially taking the fibers of who you are, the bones of who you are, and caring about it so deeply that it is a reflection of you. If your work can be a reflection of you, and your values are true, and you do the work on yourself, then I think the creative output can be more meaningful and richer – and also, when built with empathy, can speak to a lot more people.

Some of my best work I’ve poured my ego into. It takes ego to have to have this type of job, to stand up and disrupt, potentially, and also convert something that could easily be evil into something good. That’s really hard.

S: You don’t dress like what you would expect someone from a corporate background to dress like. How has that worked for you?

LP: I just love style, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit to an element of self-awareness because I definitely used it as a way to speak very loudly in a room where I wasn’t often given permission to actually speak. Clothes can like make such noise if you’re like clever. In rooms where I’ve not necessarily been given power, I’ve taken it with like, silencing outfits – and, honestly, it worked for me. That became a sort of resume.

S: In terms of your visual storytelling, you focus a lot on genuine representation as opposed to tokenism.

LP: Representation has been really tokenistic and also opportunistic, and then therefore not sustained. That’s the real work – it’s not a sexy to be like, ‘okay, but now you need to commit to that community for a long time’ and ‘how are you going to continue to empower that economy’ and ‘how are you going to make sure that that there’s a circularity to it.’ It’s harder to present and show off and take credit for because it’s less tangible. That’s why Morning is a strategy studio, not a creative content studio. I want to get into the belly, the fibers of brands, and interrogate those systems because those are the parts that actually create day-to-day change.

S: What was your thought process behind deciding that you want to strike out on your own and begin Morning?

LP: I think there’s a temptation for people to assume that the reason I left those big, corporate, patriarchal structures was because I was either tired (which I was) or I felt like it wasn’t a space where I could grow and thrive anymore. But, in fact, it was the contrary: I was winning. I was doing great. I was constantly getting promoted, constantly headhunted. I felt like I was unstoppable in the corporate world. And actually, that made me realize that I could scale this. I didn’t have to just work for one brand, or one company. It wasn’t that I shied away from that confrontation or that feeling of being in minority. It was the fact that I wanted more of it.

So my husband and I did a kind of bold thing: we quit our delicious corporate jobs in the US and moved to the countryside in Wales to set up our own thing, which is a really weird and hard move because you have to be good enough and cool enough for people to find you. You’re suddenly not in the middle, you’re not right there. I didn’t have a Nike email, I wasn’t living in Manhattan, I wasn’t on the scene. The scene had to come and find me. It was the most validating thing, beyond any big job I’ve ever gotten, to run a successful digital company from the woods, essentially.

S: At Morning, you’re working to “make the world less shit.” What does it mean to make the world less shit?

LP: It means upholding ourselves to an element of responsibility, showing up for that every single day in a small way – I think that’s really what being less shit stands for. It’s not about transformation, a big old inflated promise, like ‘we’re going to change the world.’ It’s like, ‘well, no, let’s just try and be a little bit less shit every single day.’ And, actually, that’s truly manageable for all of us. I feel like if we can all just be a tiny bit less shit every day, then we would actually stand a chance and achieve some incremental, but then actually systemic, change.

S: Do you think you’re doing it?

LP: I believe wholeheartedly that every day I contribute with the work that I do. I have so many uncomfortable conversations, pushing people to be better. I’m constantly asking brands to use their power for good. That is the purpose of my agency. I also coach and mentor women of color in the industry. I feel like the one thing that I can say about myself is that I’m very committed: if I say I’m going to do something, I do it fucking fully.

I care about pulling people in and giving people a platform to tell their story – that matters to me. But, more than that, I feel a responsibility to leverage visual culture, stories, and brands for good in any way. I’m not really fussy, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be me.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.