VANOBrand & Media

Index  /  The Studio

A practice built to
close the gap.

Between the brand people and the media people, there has always been a translation loss. VANO exists to make it disappear — one team, accountable end to end. Independent since 2026.

§ 01 — Origin

Why we started.

VANO opened its doors in San Po Kong in 2026, in a corner of Kowloon where the manufacturing floors of an older Hong Kong now house the studios of a newer one.

The founders came from both sides of a familiar divide. Some had built brands — the positioning, the identity, the work that makes a company worth choosing. Others had spent the budgets — the planning, the buying, the daily arithmetic of turning attention into outcomes. Each side quietly believed the other was where the value leaked out.

They were both half right. Brand work that never survives contact with a real media plan is decoration. Media buying with no idea worth carrying is just distribution. The value was leaking, but it was leaking in the space between them — in the handoff, the re-brief, the translation loss no one owned.

So VANO was designed without that seam. Strategy, creative and placement sit in one team, measured against one number. The person who wrote the positioning is in the room when the media plan is set and when the flight is read. Nothing is thrown over a wall, because there is no wall.

We are young by design and independent by conviction. We took no holding-company shell and no volume deals that would quietly bias where your money goes. It makes us smaller. It also makes us honest, and it is the whole reason the work is good.

A calm, light-filled brand studio interior with long worktables, pinned reference walls and stacked printed material.
Fig. 02 The San Po Kong studio — reference walls, worktables, and a lot of daylight.

§ 02 — Principles

Four things we hold to.

01
One number, agreed earlyclarity over comfort
Before we design anything, we agree the single metric the work must move. It is uncomfortable and it is the most valuable hour of the engagement.
02
Buy in the openno hidden margin
Transparent fees, verified delivery, and a media ledger you can read line by line. We buy your media the way we would buy our own.
03
Taste is not optionalthe work must be good
Rigour without craft is a spreadsheet. We hold the creative to the standard of something a person would actually stop for.
04
Report plainlyno varnish
We tell you what worked, what didn’t, and what we’d change. A good report reads like the truth, not a victory lap.

§ 03 — Milestones

The first year.

A short history, honestly told. We date our story from 2026 — the year the practice was founded — and we won’t pretend to a past we don’t have.

2026

The practice is founded

VANO LIMITED is incorporated in Hong Kong and takes its studio in The Hyde, San Po Kong — brand and media under one roof from day one.

2026

First flights in market

Our earliest engagements ship — launch campaigns and repositionings for internet and IT companies, planned, made and placed by a single team.

2026

The open-ledger standard

We formalise transparent media buying as a written commitment to every client — no volume kickbacks, no hidden arbitrage.

Now

Taking on select partners

We keep the roster deliberately small so every engagement gets a senior team. A handful of places open each quarter.


§ 04 — The team

Senior people, on every brief.

We don’t staff engagements with a pyramid. The people who win the work are the people who do it. Between them, the founding team carries roughly two decades of collective practice across brand, performance and platform media.

Founder · Brand & Strategy
Selwyn Cheung

Leads positioning and narrative. Spent a decade turning technical products into brands people could repeat back to you, across Hong Kong and the wider region.

Founder · Media & Placement
Priya Nandakumar

Runs planning and buying. Built and audited seven-figure media programmes and is unreasonably attached to the idea that every dollar should be traceable.

Creative Director
Marco Ferreira

Owns the craft. Art direction and production that has to survive both a three-second scroll and a client’s second look.

Head of Analytics
Hannah Iwuoha

Turns flights into findings. Builds the measurement so the report reads like the truth rather than a decoration of it.

Strategy Lead
Tobias Lund

Bridges brand and media in the plan itself — the person who makes sure the idea and the buy are arguing for the same thing.

Studio & Client Lead
Amara Osei

Keeps the engagement human and on time, and is usually the reason a deadline held that shouldn’t have.

Work with us

A small studio, seriously committed.

If the way we think matches the way you want to work, we’d like to hear what you’re building.

Start a brief