Petronas' 'Tan Hong Ming': an unscripted crush wins Malaysia's first Cannes Gold

Petronas, Malaysia's national oil company, airs a signature commercial for Independence Day. For the 50th Merdeka in 2007 it needed to speak to a nation divided along ethnic lines, so Leo Burnett's Yasmin Ahmad went to a primary school in Taman Tun Dr Ismail to interview children about friendship.

Use a real, unscripted schoolboy's confession of love for a classmate of another race as the whole film — authenticity carries the unity message.

After the official interviews, seven-year-old Tan Hong Ming kept seeking attention; Yasmin sat him down, and his unscripted confession about classmate Ummi Khazriena was kept. The only direction given was to walk her back to class, and the film closes asking: 'Our children are colour-blind. Shouldn't we keep them that way?'

The short film won the Gold Spike in TV at Spikes Asia 2008 and a Gold Lion in Film at Cannes 2008, Malaysia's first, making Tan Hong Ming a national icon who still features in Merdeka reunion campaigns.

Malaysia's 50th Independence Day in 2007 was the occasion, and Petronas, the national oil company, was expected to produce its signature Merdeka commercial. The brief carried real weight: the country's communities were divided along ethnic lines, and the ad had to speak to all Malaysians at once.

Leo Burnett Malaysia's executive creative director Yasmin Ahmad took an unusual route. She went to a primary school in Taman Tun Dr Ismail and interviewed children about friendship, planning to find a story among their answers. After the formal interviews, seven-year-old Tan Hong Ming kept seeking the crew's attention, so she sat him down for an impromptu chat — and he confessed, on camera, that he loved his classmate Ummi Khazriena, a girl of a different race. The crew scrambled to find her, and the resulting film was kept almost entirely unscripted.

The only piece of direction in the whole spot was asking Hong Ming to walk Ummi back to class; that natural walk away, hand in hand, became the film's iconic final image. The closing line — 'Our children are colour-blind. Shouldn't we keep them that way?' — turned a six-year-old's crush into a statement about the nation.

The commercial won the Gold Spike in TV at Spikes Asia 2008 and, per The Edge Malaysia, a Gold Lion at Cannes 2008 — the first for a Malaysian film — and the Gunn Report 2008 called it one of the most charming declarations of love beyond racial discrimination. The children became national celebrities, and the ad is still remembered as the moment Petronas became the custodian of national unity.

Authenticity no script could buy: the confession was real, accidental and unplayable by actors, which is why it moved the whole country.

The unity message rides inside a love story, so viewers feel it before they are told it, instead of being lectured.

It reversed the convention of big-budget patriotic spectacle: a 33-second impromptu interview beat polished productions.

By pairing the boy's sincerity with the closing line, the ad turned a personal moment into a national mirror without naming any politics.

The strongest message often arrives unscripted: instead of writing a unity lecture, the team trusted a child's real moment, proving authenticity beats production value.

Tan Hong Ming and Ummi Khazriena became household names; the film is included in Petronas' classic 'Love Letters to Malaysia' collection on its official YouTube channel, and the pair were reunited by local brand Lokalteez for the 65th Merdeka in 2022 in a commemorative video remembering Yasmin Ahmad. Yasmin died in July 2009, and the ad remains the standard against which Malaysian Merdeka campaigns are judged.