Adam Slater + Cam McMillan Spikes Diary: Day 1

Adam Slater (right), copywriter at cummins&partners and Cam McMillan, art director at BWM are a team competing in the Print category of the Young Spikes competition. Here they give a rundown of their first day.

Cam and I have always wanted to represent Australia* in something. But neither of us ever imagined it would be advertising.

Which is why were quite surprised when one of the Spikes delegates referred to us as our country’s ‘Creative Athletes’.

It seemed like the wrong term to use. After all, how many ‘athletes’ start their day by eating Hungry Jacks at the airport?

But while we might not have spent too many hours in the gym, or undergone gruelling physical and mental conditioning (apart from making it through Godzilla on the plane ride over), I suppose we do share one thing in common with our sporting heroes – a mission to bring home gold. 

Luckily, Singapore is proving to be a great place to get our creative juices flowing. So far, these juices are mainly coming from our armpits, back and forehead – it’s damn hot.  But as far as advertising festival locations go, the high-tech hotbed of Singapore a pretty logical choice.

This was only confirmed upon our arrival to the SUNTEC convention centre, where we discovered a pair of escalators that use motion activated sensors to adjust their own speed -conserving valuable energy during periods of inactivity.

After taking a seat to recover from and discuss this technological marvel, we were lucky enough to catch an engaging seminar on Usability, Engineering and Advanced Data Models. Unfortunately, our luck soon ran out, as it quickly became clear that we had wandered into a separate conference on Cyber Security.

Over in the Spikes auditorium, the first of group of speakers were describing Asia as an ‘untapped resource’ for creativity, a continent that requires ideas and innovations that can keep up with it’s own rapid development, as well as creative storytelling that resonates with the wide variety of people and cultures that call the region home.

Armed with this knowledge, it was time to attend the all-important Young Spikes Creative briefing, where we were given our task for the next 48 hours.

After that, all that was left to do was to retire to our hotel and tackle the seemingly insurmountable challenge at hand: how to operate the ‘EZ Maid’ Bed Lifting System.

Then, we’ll probably get on to solving the brief.

*Technically, Cam’s a Kiwi, but I’m assuming he always dreamed of pulling on the green and gold.