Spikes Asia to honour UNIQLO with this year’s Advertiser Of The Year Award

Spikes Asia will present their Advertiser of the Year Award to UNIQLO, the Japanese retail chain operator that designs, manufactures, markets and sells casual clothing, providing people all over the world with pieces to create their own style.

The company started out in 1949 in Yamaguchi as the men’s clothing shop Ogori Shoji, followed by the opening in 1984 of a unisex casual wear store in Hiroshima under the name Unique Clothing Warehouse. It was at this time that the name “UNIQLO” was born, as an abbreviation of “unique clothing”. With an unwavering focus on quality and value, UNIQLO adopted the SPA (Specialty store retailer of Private label Apparel) strategy in 1997 meaning that they would exclusively produce and sell their own clothing controlling every stage of the creation of its products – from the fabric used to the stringent production control programme at the factory and the final store display. It’s at this stage that their advertising campaigns proved fruitful in Japan.

Having won their first Cannes Silver Cyber Lion in 2007 and going on to win a Cannes Cyber Lion Grand Prix in 2008 for ‘Uniqlock’, they picked up three Spikes Asia awards last year – a Silver Digital Spike for their Parka series ‘Tokyo Fashion Map’, a Bronze Digital Spike for ‘Try H2 Heat Tech’, as well as the Spikes Outdoor Grand Prix for their ‘Human Vending Machine World Tour’.

“Without doubt, UNIQLO wholeheartedly embrace and encourage creative thinking. From working at the very core of creativity alongside artists, designers and musicians through to taking onboard the ground-breaking marketing ideas produced by their agencies, UNIQLO are not afraid to push the boundaries when promoting its products. UNIQLO are very deserving of the Advertiser of the Year accolade.” said Terry Savage, Chairman of the Festival.

The award will be presented to Naoki Otoma, Uniqlo’s Senior Vice-President (pictured above), during the Spikes Asia awards ceremony on Tuesday 21 September at the Esplanade theatre in Singapore.

Naoki Otoma commented, “It is indeed a great honour and a pleasure to receive this award. We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to the festival organisers for seeing fit to recognise UNIQLO with this highest honour for our advertising efforts in Asia. In this era of people, products and economies becoming increasingly borderless each day, people can make global choices and consume globally. Thus, disseminating information and developing new communication channels are tasks that are becoming more important than ever. We will continue to actively communicate, with innovation and humour, to make the lives of people better worldwide. We hope that you will look forward to our future activities as we continue with our mission of “Changing clothes. Changing conventional wisdom. Change the world.”