New York Confessionals: Death by Case Study Video – Chris Kyme at the New York Festivals

Chris Kyme (left), the CEO of KymeChow Hong Kong, is in New York for the New York Festival Awards judging. Here’s his report, exclusive to Campaign Brief.

Okay so we all know that if you want a chance for your brilliant but intricate and extremely complicated idea to stand any chance in the major shows you have to have a great presentation video put together.

I get that and I see how absolutely essential it is to get some ideas across. It’s just that after the first couple of days of sitting through round after round of entry after entry in this show, the good news is, it’s very thorough and the integrity of my fellow esteemed judges is unquestionable in wanting to investigate the story behind every single entry.

The bad news is, I’m kind of ‘case-studied out’. It’s not that they’re not necessary, they very much are. Especially given the complex and often unorthodox nature of some of the brilliant entries. It’s just that, well, do we really have to have a case study for everything?

Today, and I am not jesting, we looked at a case study for a logo design. It told the story about how the logo was approached, the influences that informed the designer. The considerations behind the textures. It just stopped short of telling us what he or she had for lunch while they were working on it. Really? Couldn’t we, you know, just look at the logo like they used to?

Whatever next, case studies for print ad or poster entries? Here’s the V/O: “How do you convince over 40,000 thirsty consumers to drink blah blah with a budget that only allows for outdoor posters in the space of 2 weeks? We solved the problem by creating a unique colourful poster that combined the power of words and pictures in a confined space. Our art director and copywriter brainstormed for several weeks before deciding on an idea which was then sold in to our client. Once approved, we set about bringing the concept to life. An original photograph was executed with a professional photographer and was specially retouched to bring out its unique features, which was then placed inside the ad layout along with a clever headline. Once placed inside bus shelters the poster was a huge success, garnering over 2,500 unique stares in its first few days, with some passers by stopping for a second look (cue video footage of art directors and copywriters, their friends and family ooh-ing and ahh-ing as they take snapshots of the poster with their smartphones..) and some even making sign language that indicated they were interested in buying the product.”

Okay I’m being just a tad sarcastic, but we’re nor far away from this I swear. The other good news of course is that this is a great jury, there is some healthy debate, and the right kind of work is quietly and confidently making its way to the top. Some of which we’ve all seen before, but with a few nice surprises popping up. I do have to wonder though, why aren’t we seeing more of Asia? Maybe that justifies a case study video….