The Sweet Shop’s Claire Davidson takes in the day one seminars at AdStars Festival in Busan
Claire Davidson (pictured centre) is taking in the seminars at the AdStars Festival in Busan, South Korea for Campaign Brief Asia. Here’s her round up of Day 1:
. 17,698 Entries (which is a 40% increase in entries from last year).
. 1,717 Shortlists.
. 22 Categories.
. 193 Judges previously shortlisted entries in July.
. 35 Judges on the ground in Busan to award the work.
. 5,000 people to attend the festival during the next three days.
. USD $20,000 up for grabs in prize money.
With those statistics, it’s easy to see why AdStars is now by far the largest advertising festival across the Asia Pacific region.
I love coming to AdStars. It’s my fourth consecutive year, and it truly is a wonderful event filled with much learning, much inspiration and much creative sharing. On a personal note, what I particularly like about the festival is that AdStars focuses on sharing diverse creative solutions around the world, for the betterment of culture and humanity. One of the USD $10,000 Grand Prix winners to be announced on Saturday evening at the Awards Ceremony must be from a public service category contributing to humanity. On the back of World Humanitarian Day yesterday, this is a great achievement to see within our industry of advertising and communications.
This year’s AdStars slogan is ‘Share Creative Solutions, Change the World’ with the theme to go beyond advertising, and further beyond advertising convention, covering the change of the advertising environment and much more. 2015 also sees the Video Awards introduced, which has categories in Branded Entertainment Videos, Branded Viral Videos, Branded Information Videos and Campaign Videos – Case Film.
The first seminar I took in today was with one of advertising’s luminaries, Merlee Cruz Jayme, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of DM9 Jayme Syfu. Jayme brought us “Beyond Hard Sell is Heart Sell”.
We are in a business of selling. It’s about convincing or persuading people. Everyday though, the faster and easier way to do this is to hard sell. The most direct way to convince someone is hard sell. In the digital world there are so many changes in trends and technology. It’s exciting and it changes every year. But there is one thing that does not change. That is heart sell. (all together now AAAAAWWWWWW) Heart sell is human connections, deep connections that link to your brands. They are real stories of people’s feelings. Heart sell versus hard sell is much more difficult. You have to dig deeper. The results however give you shares, loves more than likes, hits not skipped and the buzz helps to create a brand. It also builds longevity for a brand.
Why do we insist on bringing our hard sell messages to the digital world? Consumers have changed. Remember you are now just a scroll, or a swipe or a skip away. Branded content is not an extended version of TV commercials. Genuine social media is more powerful than paid social media. We looked at case studies by Dove, Honda, and the Ice Bucket Challenge.
Can you combine hard sell and heart sell? Yes. But it must be executed well. Take Volvo Trucks and Docomo’s latest release. There are different ways to heart sell. True heart sell can stand the test of time. Create ideas from the heart because it allows you to relate more to your consumers.
A good quote from William Bernbach to put this into perspective is “You can say the right thing about a product and nobody will listen. You’ve got to say it in such a way that people will feel it in their gut. Because if they don’t feel it, nothing will happen”.
Up next was Even Teng, Managing Director of J. Walter Thompson, Taipei who spoke to us about AdAsia 2015 Taipei and invited us all to attend.
The Asian Advertising Congress, or AdAsia as it is more commonly known, is a regional advertising event organized by the Asian Federation of Advertising Associations (AFAA) which is held in a different country around the region annually.
This year it’s to be held in Taipei from November 22nd-25th and its theme will follow the impact of cloud technology on marketing, culture, creativity, media and brand communication. The aim will also be to discover inspiration from our five senses. Teng took us through the full festival programme, who will be judging, who will be speaking and what events we can expect during the four day extravaganza. Through cloud and creativity we will experience, discuss, explore, exchange, share and celebrate. I’ll also be looking forward to the Ted talks there.
Sae-Hwan Park, Vice President of Cheil Peng Tai was next up on the stage and brought us “The Major Trends and Implications of E-Commerce in China”. Park works in the marketing and supplying of Korean products on websites in China. E-Commerce in China is one of the largest and also the fastest growing markets in the world.
Some of our global IT companies competing for the market place there include the following:
~ Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon from the US
~ Alibaba, Huawei, Tencent, WeChat from China
~ Naver, GMarket, Kakao, Line, Samsung and LG from Korea
How have they all developed within China? Well during the initial stage these IT companies tried to establish the leading position within the industry. They competed with each other in the industry and continue to do so today. The second stage they were faced with was to keep stabilizing their position and to seek other opportunities. The third and current stage is globalization, which focuses on cross border investment and acquisition to strengthen the global influence. For example Alibaba made a huge investment, Tencent focused on SNS and Media.
So the aim is to become the industry leader, strengthen that competitive position and increase influence. E-commerce growth in China is colossal. This year it is predicted to reach 638 billion dollars. The increase rate of online shopping is higher than the increase rate of cars, chemistry, banking, electronics etc.
The Chinese E-Commerce industry can be broken down into MART: (I hope that you all know your E-Commerce acronyms)
~ Mobile
M1. B2C Mobile Retail.
M2. Mobile Payment.
~ PlAtform
A1. Self Operation vs Platform.
A2. Integrated vs Vertical.
~ Region
R1. Thousands of countries and 10K Villages.
R2. Cross Border Trading
~ Technology
T1. Big Data
T2. O2O
In summary it’s about Convenience, Convergence, Channel, Customization and Change.
“The Magic of Culture” was next up, brought to us by Sonal Dabral, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of DDB Mudra Group.
We always want to go beyond our limits and beyond our creativity. Dabral today talked to us about going one step further and going beyond our culture.
Brands that understand culture and the local nuances of their culture are able to speak to their consumers about their own insights, using their lingo and phrases, coupled together also with their customs, beliefs, habits and rituals, and it has a great, great impact on consumers. Brands use this cultural language that is understood, but at the same time are also sensitive to their own regions and social beliefs.
We looked at a number of wonderful Indian commercials as reference, such as those for brands Happydent chewing gum, Nerolac paint, Fevi Kwik glue, Naturalite and Incredible India. Indian advertising has been successful in breaking boundaries in their country between, for example, caste systems, creating social change, geography, sport and even taking pot shots of their potbellied God.
Local stories can be used to send out the ‘biggest’ of messages and to provide a richness unique to your campaigns and thus your countries. Dabral believes that cultural insights are the darts through which great ideas enter people’s hearts. Very true Mr Dabral. Very true.
The final speaker for today was Jimmy Lam, President of Adfest. What’s going on here today at AdStars – we’re having opening day speakers from AdAsia and AdFest. It’s nice to see the camaraderie between our Asian advertising festivals and their partners. Lam today spoke about ‘Celebrating Creativity with Cultural Roots’.
The Asia Pacific Region is incredibly diverse. There’s no debating that. And it is diverse in so many ways – culture, ethnic groups, language, customs, tradition, history, food, art, religion, political systems and even technologies. If you add up the populations of China, India and Indonesia you get more than half of the world’s population. Although these cultures at their essence are very different, at times they can be very similar. At the end of the day though, it’s about insight and storytelling.
Today we looked at the winning work from AdFest’s 2105 Lotus Roots. The take outs for us were:
~ Utilise technology and art
~ Integrate a local event
~ Long live local custom
~ Save fading tradition, and give it some support
~ Have empathy of a national passion
~ Discover and use our own unique, local cultures for inspiration.
~ Adfest is Made in Asia, and Made for Asia. See there in March 2016.
That’s it for me from Day one at AdStars 2015. It’s time now for the Opening Ceremony, followed by the Opening Dinner, and then the Campaign Brief Asia & Effie Awards Korea Legendary Networking Party. What a night ahead! See you bright eyed and bushy tailed tomorrow morning. Well maybe…
Claire Davidson, Managing Director & Executive Producer – ASIA + MENA @ The Sweet Shop, reporting for Campaign Brief Asia at AdStars 2015.
