Queenie Ling: 5 things for 5 days at Spikes

Queenie Ling and Tim Hull won Bronze in the Young Spikes Media competition on the weekend. Here Ling reports 5 things for 5 days at Spikes Asia exclusively for CB.

Every day, Tim and I were jammed packed. Whether it was the seminars or brainstorming for the intense 24hr brief in our hotel room or getting lost walking back from the Dentsu party at 3am, Singapore never stopped to amaze us.

For the 5 days at Spikes, here are my 5 memorable notes:

1.    Keeping Technology ‘human’ – While I’m not exactly sure what makes this a smart towel, one theme I noticed at Spikes revolved around keeping technology ‘human’. Whether it’s Virtual reality, Artificial Intelligence or Facebook marketing, they should always revolve around the specific needs of the consumer. It sounds obvious but as we keep advancing to the next ‘smart towel’, it’s good to reflect on what human need we are addressing.

Take Pepper the Robot for example who has the ability to read emotions. You are also able to ask him for a hug. While I’m sure Pepper doesn’t question why you want a hug, this plays on the human need for love, acceptance and even intimacy.

2.    Cultural Differences – Coming from an Australia market, it was interesting to see how Asian market regions target and talk to their audience.

At home, there is a lot of buzz around ‘big data’ targeting capabilities from powerhouse platforms Google & Facebook and how their large wealth of data can help us find a mum who recently moved house with her two kids, and not just another W25 – 54.

In China though, both Google and Facebook are banned. So how are these markets tackling this issue? It was interesting to hear the perception of how lucky the western world is in having a more open policy to utilising this data, Fareeda from Hylink Digital Solutions talked about finding a viable solution in China by creating a ‘magic cube’ capturing consumer behaviour online and arrogating all available data source into a ‘Super ID’ to form audience models. Here they have different data sources but the same goal of people based targeting.

Culture also influences marketing. An interesting seminar talked about how Social Distance (Wealth & Power) is highly accepted in Asian culture. Therefore the idea of ‘Me’ is stronger than ‘We’ in Asia. With this difference, selling luxury goods in China emphasise ‘bling’ and abundance, as there is a need to maintain the social distant in Asia.

3.    Could you vs. should you – The first seminar I attended on the creative realities of virtual reality had set up an important question which stayed with me for the rest of the week which was – just because you could do it doesn’t mean you should.

As new technology allows for more ways to interact or target our consumers, it’s good to reflect on what is possible, shiny and new but more importantly what would actually work.

4.    Going above and beyond – For the 24hr brief, our client was the UN Women Singapore Committee. The challenge was to change the perception of the word ‘Feminism’ from a

man-hating, negative stereotype, into something that is inclusive of all genders, allowing for open and healthy dialogue in a 16 day time frame.

Our opening slide – The current conversation on feminism is alienating…

One of the toughest challenges for us was not knowing our audience. While this challenge could be applicable to back at home, we needed to understand how Singaporeans felt about this issue. Our insights needed to come from their point of view. So that’s exactly what Tim and I did. We explored the area and asked our taxi drivers, people in the shopping centre & streets. We even turned up at the UN Women’s office, met all the staff there and asked more questions.

What we discovered was the pride Singaporeans have in coming from a third to a first world nation within just one generation, which everyone lovingly described as the ‘Singapore Spirit’ or the Singapore story. Therefore our idea was to create a national petition to redefine the word ‘feminism’ quite literally in the form of changing what it means on information sources such as Wikipedia, which still has a polarising definition compared to the UN Women’s meaning as equality for both genders. This would then allow an opportunity for Singaporeans to have open and healthy discussions on redefining an inclusive meaning for everyone.

What impressed the judges on our work was the extent we had gone to really understand the culture and how our idea strongly linked to this background research, all done in a very tight deadline.

5.    Beautiful lights, beautiful city – And lastly, with all the stress, the manic and the hangovers, it was always good to just have a moment to appreciate such a beautiful city.

It has been an amazing experience and a highlight of my career. Hope to see you again soon Singapore!