Asia Pacific advertising was centre stage last
week at Adfest in Pattaya, Thailand. This year’s show saw a bumper crop of work
and showcased diverse creative voices from across the region – and whetted the
appetite for next year’s 20th anniversary event. LBB’s Laura Swinton
caught up with judges and speakers to dig out the key take-homes from this
year’s event.
Tech trumps
traditional
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the volume of
tech-related entries continued to grow, and entries to the branded content and
innovation categories were up 50 per cent. What that meant was that judges had
plenty of fascinating projects to get their head round, though they also saw a
lot of over-excitement.
“It was quite diverse and there were a lot of
entries in tech, which is exciting… but the downside is that there’s a lot of
experimentation which is not purpose-driven,” said AKQA’s Eric Cruz, who was a
member of the Promo and Effectiveness juries.
The boom in tech also hit some of the more
traditional categories, leaving jury presidents concerned. Entries into film,
for example, were down 14 per cent. M&C Saatchi’s Ben Welsh, who chaired
the Film and Radio jury, said that while the Gold and Grande work was
exceptional, he was concerned that film was being unfairly neglected.
“One of the things I’ll say is that film is in
danger, probably globally,” he said. “There’s a shift going on and a lot of
what we saw wasn’t very exciting. Even if you make a film that’s 15 minutes
long, you’ve still got to have a good idea, you’ve still got to execute it
well, you’ve still got to make a point. And a lot of things didn’t have a
point.
“Film, I think, is being diluted by longer
formats and at the same time it’s not the most exciting brief you get on your
desk any more. But film is still one of the most powerful things. Think about
the things you get sent on social media – sometimes it’s a bit of tech but
usually it’s a film. Films are what people share. We spend millions of dollars
choosing to watch films, and advertising supplies them for free. Films are
still the best way of telling a story. The Golds that won were all brilliant
storytelling, great at involving an audience, whether through emotion or
surprise or mystery. Film will always be really important but right now it’s
not getting the attention it deserves.”
Print, too, seemed to suffer from neglect. CK
Tan of Ogilvy Malaysia said that while print craft was impressive, print was
suffering from a lack of freshness. He put this down to a lack of demand from
clients and the sexiness of digital mediums. However, he suggested that by
reframing or renaming the category, award shows could help to reinvigorate the
medium.
“Award shows can motivate agencies to do good
work. Across all the traditional categories from outdoor to TV to radio, you
can see that the award shows have adjusted and added more categories to do more
different kinds of work. Except one: press,” he said.
“I think instead of waiting for agencies to
reinvent the press category, maybe award shows can make the change and reinvent
the whole category. Maybe they no longer call it press, maybe they call it
printed media, or even static media. Maybe you have a ‘press or magazine'
subcategory and a 'digital' subcategory. That way you could include things like
Instagram. It’s a form of static imagery. And I believe once you include that
sort of thing it becomes more vibrant and makes it a category that reflects
what’s really happening out there in the world.”
Get Specific With
Case Studies
As ever, case study videos were a key talking
point among the juries. Chris Chiu, who chaired the Promo and Effectiveness
jury, sat through a solid nine hours’ worth of videos and emerged with a great
piece of advice for agencies entering videos into award shows.
He revealed that several great pieces of work
failed to make the cut as they neglected to detail the results and impact of a
campaign – a key component in both effectiveness and promo. He suspects it’s
due to agencies using a one-size-fits-all approach to their entries and advised
that small tweaks to tailor videos for different categories could help.
“The big learning for me was: don’t be lazy.
Obviously it costs to make a video but if you’re going to submit a video for
effectiveness and you’re doing the same video for integrated, then make sure
you do a little edit or tweak. If you’re doing integrated, the point is to show
that it was exemplary in all different media. And that’s fine because you show
scale. For effectiveness, you can cut out the execution and drive towards what
happened. I’m saying it just needs a little tweak, not a whole new script. Some
were fantastic but didn’t talk about results, which is what we were looking
for.”
Local flavour is
more exciting than global appeal
The one element of Adfest that all the jury
presidents uniformly loved was the diversity of local voices from throughout
the region.
“This was my first time judging at Adfest, and
for me it was less like a judging thing and more like a cultural exchange,”
said BBDO India’s Josy Paul, who chaired Media and Branded Entertainment. He
likened his jury members to cultural ambassadors.
And while the entries across the categories
brought different cultures to the mix, it was the Lotus Roots award that
highlighted this respect for diverse local cultures across the region.
““It’s one of the joys of coming here. I wanted to
promote work that talks to local people in Australasia or around Asia Pacific
rather than work that talks to awards juries, which is what I think that more
international panels will end up doing,” said Grand Jury President Jeremy
Craigen.
Ben Welsh, M&C
Saatchi’s Creative Chairman of Asia also highlighted the value of Adfest’s
local flavours.
“When you come to Adfest you go to all these
buffets, and the judging is another buffet and you’ve got all these different
flavours. Some are incredibly intense and these are the ones you remember, and
they stand out from the rest and make the other ones look bland. If you think
about Cannes or D&AD people are entering work that they consider to be
world class. They’re entering work here that they consider to be the best in
their country so you get a more interesting mix of work here because it’s so
much more cultural, which is why Roots is so fascinating. I love the Lotus
Roots,” he said.
But despite the diverse local voices, Chris
Chiu argued that the emotions and insights underpinning the work spoke to
universal human drives. “The flavour of quirkiness or fun isn’t the same, quite
distinctly so, but the thought of using quirkiness and fun to lead a
conversation was quite consistent. I didn’t think there was too much fun in the
entries from the Middle East, they were more about serious, social issues.
Whereas the Australians had a lot of fun, the Kiwis did, the Thais, the
Japanese, the Malaysians. They all had a laugh. It’s quite obvious that what’s
funny in Australia might not be funny in Southeast Asia.”