The Chillies: Hot times in Sri Lanka
Tom Ormes is the Joint Creative Director at iris Singapore. Two weeks ago he spent several days in Sri Lanka on the judging panel for their local awards show – The Chillies. Here he gives an account of his experience there.
It isn’t Cannes, D&AD, One Show or the CLIO’s, but then again, it’s not the Botswanan Golden Mongoose’s either.
This is Sri Lanka, and it’s the Chillies – the big local creative award show.
There’s a buzz of anticipation in the air concerning the horrific 25 year-old civil war that’s hopefully about to come to an end. Not too surprisingly, it makes what we do seem a tad trivial in comparison.
Nonetheless, we’ve been in town all week, and enjoying every minute of it. The international jury is made up of industry heavyweights (and very nice people): Masako Okamura, Agnello Dias, Senthil Kumar, Graham Kelly … and then there’s me (pictured below).
There were also a series of judge’s forums that were chaired by theawesome Linda Locke. No, I’m not brown-nosing. I truly think she’sawesome.
There’s a great energy and passion around this festivalthat’s been massively refreshing for all of us (though I did findhaving 7 cricket channels on cable equally stimulating).
Nobullshit. No attitudes. No wankers. Okay, maybe one: the guy at the bar… you were French and annoying. But this is Sri Lanka and you don’tcount, so stay out of it. The Sri Lankan ad industry is cool. Andhungry.
All the talk here is about making it happen on a world stagelike it is in Thailand, in India, and in Malaysia. It hasn’t reallyhappened here yet, but it will. Everyone – including clients, and evenmore surprisingly, a lot of suits are behind the cause.
We were toldthat clients would be part of the judging process. Strange, right? Butit turns out they were there as moderators and assistants (ha).Actually, it worked out well having them in the room and it wasinteresting seeing how they listened (and learned?) when we’d debatethe merits or otherwise of a piece of work. Ernst & Young were alsoin the room tabulating results – it felt like American Idol.
We wentthrough a tonne of stuff, and found ourselves pleasantly surprised.There was a fair amount of pooh, as there is anywhere, but there were afew pieces that really jumped out and impressed. Some very cool work,particularly stuff that’s was entered in tough categories.
One ofthe stand out pieces for me was a stunt for a clothing brand calledRebel with the proposition ‘Get Stolen’. They ‘kidnapped’ the drivetimeradio dj’s of the most popular stations. Pretty brave in a market wherekidnappings are common. It was one of the few pieces that broke therules, whatever that means. I guess it got noticed… at least the judgesnoticed. We awarded it Best of Show. Some of the work for Orange (thetelco) was good as well.. especially on a looooow budget.
The scamdebate is pretty huge here at the moment, and in my humble opinion, Ithink the Chillies are a bit on the militant side regarding theirwitch-hunt for what they define as scam. All submitted work must pass astrict 4-level anti-scam committee run by suit and managementrepresentatives from competing agencies. A lot of stuff was culledbefore we could even see it and make our own decision.
Overallthough, it was a great week meeting some very cool people. Hopefully,we played a small role in helping the Sri Lankan ad industry take astep closer to getting where they want to be.