Tim Hull: 3 inspiring campaigns at Spikes Asia

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team.jpgTim Hull (far left) and Queenie Ling (near left) won Bronze in the Young Spikes Media competition on the weekend. Here Hull reports on three campaigns which inspired him at Spikes Asia exclusively for CB.

While over at the Spikes Asia Festival I got to experience a range of different ideas and campaigns that were clever, whacky and inspiring.

11986478_10153272182693757_2816725230710375169_n (1).jpgBelow are 3 campaigns that I took away and show me something different about media, all for different reasons.

The Life Saving Dot: Many women in rural India suffer from Iodine deficiency and this is linked to more serious health issues with in the community. Grey Group created iodine patches that also served as bindis, by wearing the bindi women absorbed the iodine through the patch and received their daily source of iodine. These ‘life saving dots’ were distributed through medical centers across rural India.

This inspiring campaign was a great example of using a cultural insight to solve a problem with in a community20150908_170439.jpg making a real difference.

Melanoma Likes Me: A brilliant idea to raise awareness of melanoma to an audience that aren’t the easiest to talk to. Creating a melanoma Instagram account an algorithm was used to find posts with popular sun related hash tags. ‘_melanoma’ would add the user as a friend and then post creepy comments such as “love it lets hope the weather sticks around… #killerweather”.

The account itself had pictures and information to spot and check for melanoma skin cancer.

I thought was a very clever and innovative use of a social platform to talk to a hard to reach audience. It also places the message as close as you can to the behaviour to get people to think about the consequences of their actions.

Snickers Hungry Barber: Snickers set up a barber shop where patrons could choose from one of eight hair styles that make you look like someone has either attacked with clippers or seriously stuffed up your fringe. People were motivated to try these whacky hair styles for the buzz and attention they would receive in upcoming parties and social media.

These haircuts were offered for free over eight days, right before party season.20150909_094403.jpg This is definitely proof that you don’t always know what will work and what won’t, though this was created in Japan where I believe anything is possible. I liked how this campaign did something completely left of center to generate buzz and create buzz for the brand in the process.

It was great to see such a wide variety of work getting recognized as a result showing off all the different ways creativity has been used to solve a problem.

This experience has reinforced in me that problems can be solved many different ways. Media is changing so quickly and you can look at this and be intimidated, or equally you can see so many opportunities to create great work.