The business of authenticity — how an accidental CEO brought TSL to its first decade

Bryan Choo, founder and CEO of TSL Media group, talks a lot about balancing authenticity and creativity, almost as if it's a sacred ethos that guides his work. It may be necessary, especially for an accidental CEO of one of the most successful travel and lifestyle publications in Singapore, going from bedroom to boardroom in a short matter of ten years. 

In podcasts and interviews, Choo's origin story for TheSmartLocal.com (TSL) is consistent: He found chilli crab recommendations by foreigners to be uninformed, thought that it was perplexing that Singaporeans think the country to be boring, took it upon himself to create a mega list of '52 things to do in Singapore before you die', and subsequently, published it on TheSmartLocal.com. 

Unbeknownst to him ("I took a flight the next day to Bali and didn't check my phone for hours"), this list would be the mother dough to the content TSL creates and the various brands Choo would go on to spawn. 

Today, Choo sings a clearer, more lucid tune regarding the media house's North Star. "We want to create tangible value in the world," he offers. "Success, for TSL," he offers, "isn't merely measured by numbers or profit margins."

That value, for Choo, relies heavily on content authenticity. What the 40-year-old CEO knows to be true is that 'people tend to reject content with an apparent agenda'. "They're drawn to genuine experiences and real emotions that aren't overly scripted." 

Unsurprisingly, it's a strategy which, though Choo doesn't express overtly, is a tall ask for some brands TSL works with to embrace. 

But he is unwavering. Choo shares the three strategic thrusts that guide all of TSL's branded content. 

"Firstly, we never want to disrespect our readers. Secondly, the content should never feel like an outright advertisement. It should be engaging and entertaining on its own. Lastly, the content must offer value, whether through humour, useful information, or emotional resonance."

TSL: A unicorn

Founded in 2012, TSL quickly rose to prominence as a leading hyperlocal content and media emporium. Aiming to disrupt the traditional media landscape with its innovative approach to content creation, TSL focused on offering Singaporeans a fresh perspective on local lifestyle, travel, food, and more. 

They were a unicorn of their time, a media house that mirrors the world's foremost authority on viral content then — BuzzFeed. Like BuzzFeed, TSL's early success can be attributed to its keen understanding of social media trends and its ability to take advantage of the rise of platforms like Facebook and Instagram to spread its content. 

Their content was tailored to resonate with the local audience, rapidly gaining traction for its creativity and insane relatability. Using multimedia formats such as videos, articles, and social media posts, TSL efficiently tapped into the digital habits of modern Singaporeans. Over the years, it expanded its reach beyond Singapore, covering other Southeast Asian countries and offering region-specific insights.

TSL stayed ahead of the curve, adapting its hyperlocal content approach for a rapidly changing demographic and a world where new social media products pop up like mushrooms after a rain. 

Their efforts have since earned them numerous accolades. Some of their most notable awards include the prestigious Marketing Excellence Awards, a significant recognition for their innovative digital marketing strategies and campaigns. 

Bryan's first true love

I'm meeting Choo today shortly after lunch at TSL's brand-new office somewhere off Bendemeer Road — well, not exactly brand new in the sense that they've taken over the first floor of the building in addition to floors two and three. 

There's a reception desk here where the logos of the other eight TSL brands are proudly displayed — The Smart Local, Eatbook, MustShareNews, Zula, Telegram Collective, Wiki.SG, and Uchify — and where guests and employees remove their shoes. "Like a family home," I thought on a whim. Outside, two sports cars are parked, pride in place (one belongs to Choo), which makes me think he must be doing something right from behind those walls.

Choo was born in the United States but moved back to Singapore when he was five. The Marine Parade native attended Catholic High throughout his formative years before shifting to Clementi when he enrolled in Ngee Ann Polytechnic. 

"I'd say my childhood was pretty standard, uneventful even — except for my passion for gaming. I was a competitive gamer, which might sound odd now, but I travelled the world from when I was 16 to about 20, competing in video game tournaments."

But Choo's first real love was not gaming — it was soccer. "As a kid, you're drawn to what you love most, and for me, that was playing soccer," he shares. He was fuelled by genuine aspiration, exacerbated by Singapore's fevered passion for the game, especially with the Malaysia Cup then. 

"My mom would take me to watch the matches, and seeing the Singapore Lions play live was electrifying." Sadly, soccer dreams remained just that when Choo realised that he would never achieve the level of skill and physical ability the game demands. 

Choo thought gaming would be his calling instead. "My mother wasn't fond of my gaming," says Choo with a laugh. "I think that's a common sentiment among parents, right? But my mom is the kind of person who, once she recognised I was sensible and knew my limits, allowed me to pursue my interests." 

He recalls his time as a gamer fondly, recounting the days he spent flying around the world to take part in competitions. He attributes that time as being instrumental in shaping who he is today. But, like soccer, Choo's gaming dreams were also put on hold. 

"During my time competing with some of the world's top players, I understood that only the elite in gaming, much like in tennis, can earn a substantial living — perhaps only the top 20," Choo recounts. Falling short of that peak, he adds, would mean a challenging life, not necessarily a comfortable one, and certainly with a limited career span. 

It's an epiphany that came even as he consistently ranked in the top 16 or 17 in world tournaments. "I recognised that sustaining a position at the top wasn't likely for me. That's when I realised that a full-time career in gaming wasn't the path I wanted to pursue."

Genuinely local

In university, Choo chose to study Finance. Armed with two safe bets — a diploma in IT and a degree in Finance — he thought his adult life was set, aspiring to get a job as a hedge fund manager. "But as luck would have it, I graduated right when the subprime crisis hit, and suddenly, job opportunities were scarce."

Choo was now officially, as he put it so eloquently, a "quintessential confused millennial, unsure about what to do with my life, yet aware that a long career was ahead of me." With few job prospects on hand, he went back to the world of gaming, albeit slightly tweaked. "I turned my attention to a side project I had been running — a gaming community website that evolved into an e-commerce business known as SC2SEA.com."

This venture was one of Choo's initial forays into the business world. The platform did sufficiently well to earn him a passive income, allowing Choo to contemplate his next step at his own time.

"When I considered my next business venture, I wanted to ensure it would add value to society. I aimed to create something akin to TripAdvisor but with a more focused, hyper-local approach."

He observed that while TripAdvisor was an excellent resource for travel planning, it sometimes could have done better on genuinely local experiences, like where to find the best chilli crab, which locals would know better. "That's where the concept for TheSmartLocal emerged."

SOPs from controversy

This year is TSL's 10th anniversary, and while I don't particularly like to prescribe meaning to arbitrary numbers, 10 years as a media outfit in tiny Singapore is a feat that should not be casually attributed to fate. 

Today, according to their website, TSL Media boasts ‘200 million+ pageviews and an additional 200 million+ video views annually' with an employee count of 200. 

By and large, TSL has also managed to avoid controversy and divisive public discourse. That is mainly due to their family-friendly content that rarely draws condemnation — even a video of their talent, Fauzi Aziz, interviewing ambassadors and participants at Singapore's Pink Dot seven years ago received encouraging and supportive comments. 

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Perhaps it helps that TSL's video repertoire consists mainly of low-commitment series such as group game sessions (TSL Plays), experiential first-time work experiences (The Part Timer), and an insider look at what their team members do outside work (#LifeAtTSL). 

Still, it'd be disingenuous to say that TSL hasn't produced any content that has drawn ire from Singaporeans — two come to mind. 

The first was a video from 2016, parked under the 'Singaporeans Try' series, where some TSL talents tried Indian Snacks to celebrate Deepavali. The five-minute video would go on to be widely derided by Singaporeans. 

They took offence at TSL's callous appropriation of Indian culture, comparing ladoos, an Indian snack, to diarrhoea and making faces while sampling snacks the Indian community enjoys during Deepavali. Online condemnation was swift — one hour after it was published, TSL set the video to private and made a public apology.

"On Monday, we published a video on our YouTube channel in which some of us tried Indian snacks from Little India," the Facebook post says. "It was our intention to create a video celebrating Deepavali, but because of the poor execution of the video, we ended up offending a sizable community of fellow Singaporeans." 

The post acknowledged that 'the feedback we've received over the past two days has been vital in helping us identify our shortcomings.' "This is a big learning lesson we'll take with us moving forward. We apologise again for this mistake and we will not be producing content like this again," the post concluded. 

It's a lesson Choo and his team took to heart for future 'Singaporeans Try' video — a 'Fasting for a Week for Ramadan' challenge, for instance, received overwhelmingly positive reactions. 

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"The incident happened seven years ago when we were just a few years old, and our team was very young," Bryan tells me today in retrospect. "Back then, we didn't have the best SOPs in place, and one gap we identified was the need for a strong editor to go through the final output of every video to be published, to ensure there were no insensitivities." 

At this point, he stressed that creating negative sentiment is the last thing TSL wants. "Our brand mission is to create positive content for Singaporeans," he reiterates.

And like any crisis worth its weight in gold, this became a catalyst for establishing protocols, processes, and priorities that Choo swears by. "The need to build things right rather than fast." 

It led to the hiring of more experienced team leads tasked with maintaining the most rigorous of standards at every touch point. "Thankfully, we have never had a similar incident since."

And then, there's 'One Week Love'.

One Week Love

One Week Love was TSL's attempt at replicating the success of Netflix's Korean runway hit, Single's Inferno. According to their website, 'One Week Love' is the hyperlocal twist on reality dating shows to see if you can find love in seven days.' The 10-episode reality dating show features ten mixed-gender youths with a growing online presence, navigating the search for love through challenges and confessionals. 

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And like the Korean OG, TSL's also has a commentary panel comprising the company's own talents.

"The idea wasn't just to produce a show," Choo tells me, "but to pioneer a movement in Singapore's entertainment scene. Such initiatives are always accompanied by inherent risks. In this case, the financial risk was considerable, given the production costs."

Financial considerations aside, nothing could have prepared TSL for accusations of the show perpetuating bullying culture, toxic groupthink, and gang mentality.

In a commentary I wrote for RICE Media last year: "What this is, at least based on what I watched, is a group of girls who don't say what they mean, indulge in petty arguments, and who should all be shoved back into the all-girls secondary school black hole where they probably came from. It's enough to trigger Singaporean women who know all too well how bad it was back then in school."

"It's classic juvenile bullying," I added, "amongst adults who should have known better. But boy, does it make for good television. Whether it's a responsible thing to air knowing the potential backlash is another issue altogether."

Today, Choo is more contemplative about the whole kerfuffle. He tells me that what most viewers might not realise is that the production team actively toned down the severity of their edits. 

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"We chose not to show certain parts out of concern for the perception of the aggressors," Choo shares. "Even though it's a reality show, and everything was unscripted, our objective wasn't to showcase it in a harmful or overly negative light. We removed a lot of content to ensure that even those portrayed as aggressors weren't unjustly vilified."

"So you're saying there's more bullying on the show than we saw?" I probed. "Yes," Choo replies. "But what I did not expect was for our show to become a platform that sheds light on these local issues that, before us, hadn't been portrayed so openly."

Choo also leaned on the panel discussion to guide the narrative towards a constructive direction during those moments when bullying was portrayed. The panellists, he explains, emphasised unacceptable behaviour and highlighted the importance of mutual respect. 

"Why didn't you just delete those bullying scenes from the final edit?" I ask. It's a question I've been meaning to direct at Choo ever since the show aired.

"Maintaining authenticity was crucial to us," Choo reiterates without skipping a beat. There's that A-word again. "We could have easily edited out the bullying entirely, presenting a perfectly harmonious scenario. But that would strip away the genuine nature of human interactions, making it all seem too staged or sanitised." 

Upon reflection, Choo felt it strange that Singaporeans reacted as strongly as they did to the incidents in the show. "Globally, there are more intense reality shows, and I felt the portrayal of dynamics like what we did was common. That's why I thought the reactions to ours seemed particularly strong." 

Growth spurts

For all the headways and inroads Choo is making on the content front, for a company in the throes of rapid expansion, it's a tenuous task, I reckon, to manage the people charged with making big plans and even bigger shows like 'One Week Love' to come to fruition. 

On TSL's Glassdoor page, a review titled 'CEO is making some questionable decisions, middle management is suffering' shared that "recently the CEO hired a whole bunch of upper management people that are paid high salaries, but we've yet to see much positive change'. 

It adds: 'Don't know what they do in the office. That seemed to have drove (sic) away a lot of people that have worked in the company for many years."

The review ends with advice to the management: "Hire more producers and writers and talents instead of management that just go to meetings???"

"When viewed from an external perspective, there might be some confusion about our recent decisions," Choo explains when I ask how the team is reacting to the decision to hire more senior management. 

There's Jonathan Seto, the new chief growth officer who used to helm global marketing agency MOI Global as senior VP, and former head of APAC at The Goat Agency, Nicolle Sing, who has been appointed as group director.

“These are essential and critical hires,” that much Choo is certain and unwavering. "When news of senior hires circulates, some people might view it positively, thinking it's an opportunity to learn from new expertise. Others might worry about how it affects their personal goals or whether it signifies impending changes. The crux is how individuals handle ambiguity and their levels of neuroticism."

What is essential for Choo is to clarify and communicate his intentions. However, he admits that regardless, interpretations can be very subjective. 

"Fortunately, most of our team tends to exhibit low neuroticism, often seeing the positive side of ambiguous situations. This optimistic outlook is a cornerstone of our company culture."

Creating safe spaces

A collaborative and trustworthy company culture is another aspect of his leadership that Choo is proud to front. To a question I asked about a time when he had to manage a clash in company culture between employees, Choo draws a blank. 

"It's hard to pinpoint one because we rarely face significant issues." He credits it to his team's screening process, describing it as 'robust'. "If someone isn't a good fit, we usually realise it within the probation period, and team leaders make recommendations accordingly," he adds.

But don't take his word for it. On Glassdoor, many reviews had only good things to say about TSL's company culture. 

"I see comments here on our culture and people, and I share similar feelings; that's TSL's best strength," a former employee of three years writes. Elsewhere, a former video producer said: "Encourage a healthy working culture, less office politics; Good Managers and boss." 

"Our aim is to create a safe space free from blame, rumours, and politics. It's important for me that employees can come to work without worrying about behind-the-back discussions or petty politicking," Choo elaborates, adding that while there may be some minor politics, it's been minimised and duly managed. 

To further improve camaraderie — especially for a company that fully embraces a hybrid work-from-home model — Choo has set in place initiatives that he says foster collaboration. 

"Every month, we pair individuals randomly for lunch to promote interactions and get to know other members of the company," Choo shares as an example. "These policies aim to encourage collaboration. When employees are content and happy, they are more productive and tend to stay with us longer."

"Legacy stifles innovation"

"If you could call yourself up the night before you founded TSL, what would you say?" I ask Choo. 

"I'd give myself a reality check," he tells me with nary a hesitation as if it was something he thought of every day. "I'd say, ‘Bryan, the next 10 years will be tough. Expect to spend nights in the office and work 16-hour days. It'll be a lonely journey, but if you can push through these challenges, which won't be easy by any standard, you'll have a successful career ahead’."

Today, the work of media houses like TSL becomes much more challenging because of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is getting more intuitive by the day, perhaps eventually rendering the work of 'content churners' obsolete. It is why AI — Large Language Models, specifically — is something Choo is determined to get ahead of. 

Still, as interested as he is in the technology (on the side, Choo has been tinkering with creating a game using ChatGPT), Choo knows it's the younger minds that will be at the forefront of such advancements. 

"I wasn't born into the digital age, and my viewpoint is influenced by my four decades of living, unlike the newer perspectives of younger individuals," he intones.

This philosophy also guides how he views legacy planning within TSL. "It's important for old ideas to make way for new ones. The newer generation is introducing innovative and creative content that the older generation might never have considered. This cycle, in some ways, emphasises the importance of mortality."

Choo once read a quote about the idea of immortality (he can’t recall from whom now, but felt it memorable enough to reference), drawing parallels between his work at TSL. "The quote points to the downside of immortality, suggesting that without an end, fresh perspectives wouldn't emerge. This mirrors my belief that clinging to traditional views and obsessing over legacy stifles innovation."

When Choo published that first post from his bedroom on November 25, 2013, he never anticipated the business to look anything like it does today. Nor did he ever, in his wildest imagination and when he dared to dream, thought it would grow beyond a small team of 10. "I thought we would rely solely on advertising revenue, drawing in views from search engine results and providing a platform for people to read reviews."

Today, Choo dreams bigger, sharing that his goal is to extend TSL's influence and reach beyond Singapore. It's an aspiration I respect. Having worked with multiple media startups, I've witnessed first-hand how difficult it can be for a founder to shift their mindset from creator to CEO, stepping out of the task of making to the task of growing. Many fail to make the change, and even fewer still dare to dream big..

"As things progressed, we've reached a stage that I wouldn't have imagined a decade ago," he reflects. "There has yet to be a top English media publication in Southeast Asia, and as the region grows, we aim to take the number one spot.”