Claire Davidson Adfest Diary – day one
Claire Davidson, managing director and executive producer ASIA & MENA @ The SweetShop, exclusively reports for Campaign Brief at Adfest 2015.
It’s the start of the festival circuit for the Asia Pacific today with AdFest 2015 kicking off in fine form. In excess of 1000 delegates have descended upon the seaside town of Pattaya, Thailand with what will no doubt be three absorbing, alluring, and action-packed days – if the schedule and line up is anything to go by.
This year’s theme is “Be Bad” – not a particularly hard feat to achieve in Pattaya. I’m sure that the vast majority of attendees will achieve this in no time at all, and that most of the judges (who arrived earlier in the week) have already earned their stripes. I’m assuming though that the AdFest organisers want us to take this up in some sort of deep or abstract way and apply it to our work.
Perhaps.
Totally fine with me if my first instinct is correct and they’re really talking about cocktails.
Our creative industry is continuing to grow, expand and develop through humongous and gargantuan change and at excessive speed. We all know this, and sometimes we get distracted. We lose our way. We lose sight. 
We wonder about all this new technology. We wonder what half of it is and how it can be successfully applied to our industry. But through it all we always go back to the fundamentals. We head for the basics. We live for standout advertising. We live for great work. So let’s “Be Bad” in our creative excellence. That’s what the next three days are all about. I look forward to exploring this in the work.
The festival this year has a savvy
speaker lineup, thought-provoking forums, compelling interactive kiosks, engaging workshops and of course all of that winning work. So let’s see who is being brave, which agencies (and their clients) are taking risks and who is producing that extraordinary work we all strive to make and love to see.
Being the nerdy, dorky individual that I am, I arrived early and sat in on most of the speaker sessions today.
First up for me was Nick Law, Global Chief Creative Officer of R/GA who brought us “How To Make A Brand Badass”. Law gave us three rules to follow to make brands interesting:
~> Don’t be a fool. Don’t let your brand look like an idiot.
Let’s take our brains. The left side of the brain processes things one at a time. This is the part that helps us to tell stories. The media we have historically had at our disposal is the narrative of stories. The other side of the brain is the systematic side. It’s a special processor. It processes all at once. We have time on one side and space on the other. The creativity is more architectual that comes out of the right side of the brain. It’s no longer art and copy. It’s stories and systems. It’s time and space. The systematic thinkers become the executioners. You can create frameworks for behavior. These two ways of thinking can work together. It’s a partnership. Start with behavior and end with the message.
We looked at case studies such as The Game Before The Game for Beats by Dr Dre, as well as spots for Equinox and Nike.
~> Don’t be a liar.
We looked at the journey from think to make. Always start from a place of truth. Start with something true about the brand. Think about what is relevant for the audience. What are people going to care about? Do something interesting. Remember though that what is interesting from a story point of view may not be interesting from a systematic point of view. Consider things from the consumer’s point of view. The end result is not about the client’s point of view, it’s always your customer. Always be clear. Make your message easy to understand. Create clear interfaces. This journey from think to make is really complex now. We have a vast campus with all types of creative thinking. Get making as quickly as possible. With so many people and departments endlessly touching the working process these days, the final work often ends up being dull. Don’t wait. Clients don’t have control over the media (and this makes them very nervous), but they can contribute to it. Respond to work at the speed of culture.
Tell the truth about the world you live in.
~> Don’t be a bore.
We traditionally have called stories ‘big ideas’. This digital media, new systematic world consists of multiple contexts. Traditional agencies tell you what to say. Today’s agencies tell you what to do. But really you must look at the whole idea. You must combine. Turn the model upside down. Start with the behavior and then figure out what the message or story about that behavior is. Stop interrupting people’s lives. Fit in before you break though.
Brands that are honest and brave do the best work.
Always a highlight at any advertising festival is The Gunn Report. 
Emma Wilkie certainly didn’t disappoint today when she brought us the 2014 Gunn Report. The Gunn Report is published annually in January, and this is their first address for the year. The Gunn Report combines the winners lists for the top 45 Award shows in the world, monitoring creative success from global, regional and national awards shows and establishing league tables for creativity.
Today we were treated to the best of the best.
The USA was the most awarded country in the world, with Japan coming in sixth. For the top advertisers, Nike came in tenth; dropping out of the top five for the first time ever. The dominant three for 2014 were Volvo, VW and Honda. The leading campaigns across all disciplines were for Honda Internavi and Harvey Nichols. MZJ stole the position of number one production company, followed by Folke Film and Outsider. Our top notch three directors were Andreas Nilsson, James Rouse and The Sweet Shop’s own Steve Ayson in third position. Whoop! Whoop! Congratulations once again Steve.
The best agency in digital was Forsman and Bodenfors. The most awarded agencies were Forsman and Bodenfors, Dentus Tokyo, Adam & Eve DDB London. BBDO was bestowed the number one position for agency network for the ninth consecutive year in a row. A big congratulations to all.
The hefty winners for the Asia Pacific were:
Film – New Zealand Transport Agency ‘Mistakes’
Print – Guinness Draught In A Bottle ‘Un-Cinq’
Digital – Honda Internavi ‘Sound of Honda – Ayrton Senna 1989’
Advertiser of the Year – Honda
Country of the year – Australia
Production Company of the Year – Finch
Director of The Year – Derin Seale
Agency of The Year – Dentsu Inc, Tokyo
Digital Agency of the Year – Dentsu Inc,
Tokyo
Agency Network of the Year – BBDO
Emma left us with three key trends which formed throughout the past twelve months:
~ Great work is coming from anywhere now, from an ever-widening diversity of cultures. There is no longer a barrier to creative excellence.
~ Groundbreaking ideas are encouraging behavioral change.
~ Fame is a key factor in effectiveness. Take Volvo Trucks with Jean-Claude Van Damme, which was the most awarded Television commercial of the year in 2014.
Work that is awarded is more likely to be effective than work that is not awarded. Thank you very much Ms Wilkie.
I then popped over to the breakout World
Producers’ Summit, which I have attended a number of times before. The World Producers’ Summit provides an opportunity for we production company owners, managing directors and executive producers to get in a room together and really break apart the production elements within our industry, a
nd discuss each and every facet we encounter in our working lives. Today we talked about the business, opportunities, planning challenges, business issues and possible ways to solve them, contracts, procurement, in-house production companies in agencies, and TVC versus content costs. It was a sharing of intelligence about global production trends. Producers from more than fifteen countries attended.
The summit today was chaired by Steve Davies, Chief Executive of the Advertising Producers Association and Executive Vice President of the Commercial Producers of Europe. Now that’s very long title…
Davies and a number of affiliates have assembled a listing of Universal Principles of Engagement for producers, which was launched globally and endorsed by commercial producers associations around the world at the World Producers Summit in June 2013. Essentially this is a bill of rights for production companies, the aim of which is to fulfill the following basic principles of contracting a production company to produce a commercial:
~ Meet the client’s objectives
~ Establish a common vision
~ Utilise Non Disclosure Agreements
~ Maximum of three bids
~ Contract in writing
~ Production companies should be contracted on a fixed bid or cost plus basis
~ Up front payment
~ Interest on late payments
~ Cancellation provisions should be clearly specified
~ Choice of suppliers
There are a number of these I can’t see being implemented into the Asian market
where I work any time soon, but it sets great standard for us all to strive for.
Next up was “Bad is Bad”. This was brought to us by Chung Su Ko, Creative Director, Brand Experience Group, Seoul.
Brand experience design is most often associated with sensorial or lifestyle experiences. 
Ko, however, believes that it is more than that, and that it’s about perception; so he focuses on designing specific perceptions of brands. After all, Ko worked as an architect for nearly fifteen years, before moving to brand experience four years ago, and this really truly is his area of grand expertise.
We all have different perceptions of what is good or bad, because our views reflect our perspective. So what is relevant relates to context, goal and point of view.
(Remember that we see bad as crap or mediocre or BAD as extraordinary).
Bad is bad is relevant to context.
What is more important, brand consistency or localization? Let’s look at Apple – they are all about Brand consistency. On the other hand brands like Aesop localize all of their stores. Both have had a large amount of success.
Context is economic viability.
Context is local community.
Context is marketing campaign.
Context is culture.
Context is timing. Ko thinks this is the most important lesson to follow.
Context is brand power.
Is your BAD really BAD? Ko asked us to all go home and ponder this. Creative work is only as good as the purpose.
Jung Jooyoung, founder of the Hyundai Group, always believed that the world’s most successful brands carefully craft their brand perception through experiences.
Well it’s nearly time now for the Adfest 2015 Welcome Party and we all need some refreshments. It’s very hot here in Pattaya. See you all tomorrow after the badness that befalls us all tonight. Well, fingers crossed…