Claire Davidson looking for the hunger for brilliant advertising at the Philippines Kidlat Festival

By Claire Davidson

Noel Lorenzana commenced Day Two of The Kidlat Awards & Festival with a discussion on “The Hunger for Brilliant Advertising”.  Lorenzana spoke to us from a client’s perspective – having worked as Marketing Director at Unilever Shanghai and then Vice President at Smart Communications, one of the largest IT and comms companies in the Philippines.

He explained that advertising’s job is to change the viewer’s perception – changing their behaviours, shifting their thinking toward a brand, and leading ultimately to brand love.  Do you make advertising to win awards or to sell?  (ha ha ha trick question?) We’re all here to sell.  Remember that.  Be inspiring.  Be brilliant.  But sell.  No money, no honey.  Who needs an oddly-shaped shiny object on the mantelpiece anyway?  Hmm…Aren’t the awards on later?

If you had 30 seconds to change the world, would you do it?  You could change perception in 30 seconds.  Why wouldn’t you do it? 

If you are hungry for brilliant advertising, Lorenzana suggests the following principles:

Be big, but be in context.  Don’t create big just to be big.  It has to be in the right context.  The take out can often be more important than input.  Great advertising has to be preceded by great insight.  Lorenzana used Axe Billions as a case study to discuss this.

Change perception, create new thinking.  You want to shift your customer’s perception with a philosophy.  Here we looked at Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ campaign, which was successful globally.

Stand for something, have a point of view.  What does your product stand for?  People will buy into a philosophy rather than a product.  Why do you buy Apple?  You buy it for what it stands for. 

Create a buzz beyond the box, and use 360.  Create impact to deliver your message.  Create a conversation.  Start something.  Change mindset.  Use everything around you to communicate your message.

Make the product the news central to the ad.  Integrate the product or the product features into the ad itself.  We don’t want to hear those two dreaded words that so often strike fear into the hearts of the creatives; the ‘product shot’.  Involve it from concept stage, not as an after thought.

Research has proven the top 3 top things people like in commercials are i) animals, followed by ii) women in skimpy clothing (who would have thought? weird.) and then iii) babies.  These ingredients get people’s attention.  Take notice.

Own the season. Valentine’s Day. Easter. Mothers’ Day. Fathers’ Day. Christmas. Lunar New Year. Own it. Create a campaign around the season. Create a context so that it can be renewed each year.

Be timely… blur reality and advertising.  A great advertiser has to be in tune with what is happening currently.  Create folklore.

Powerful insights win in the marketplace… and turn into cash. The insight is not obvious.  It must be found.  It must be relevant to the brand, so that the brand can work on the insight.  Both must be relevant to the category.

Be insightful, be human.  It’s important that your insights are linked to humanity.

Lorenzana left us with the advice to ‘Live more’. Great advertising stands the test of time.

Keynote Speaker Raimund Marasigan was up next, and began by telling us that he works 45 minutes a day. He wakes up at around 10.30am. He rides his bike. He plays the drums. He has lunch. He picks up his daughter from school. He rides his bike some more. He rehearses with his band. He never gets stuck in traffic. He plays at night. His band plays for 45 minutes at night.  It’s not really work.

Marasigan (pictured left in sunglasses) is regarded as ‘The Philippines’ busiest musician’.  Most notably, he drums for the Eraserheads, plays keyboards and synth for Pedicab and is the voice and guitarist behind Sandwich. He’s also a record producer, voice actor and TV host. (None of this is work of course.)

Marasigan grew up learning organ at Yamaha organ lessons. Jeez, I even remember back to my Yamaha lessons as a child…  For Marasigan, the organ was love at first sight.  He moved onto the guitar.  He moved onto choir.  He embraced breakdancing.  He grew up immersing himself in all forms of music.  He formed a band.  He wanted to get his music out there.  He recorded songs.  He sold his cassettes for 20 Pesos.  He lost faith at times, but persisted.  He changed bands, and started again.  At one point he actually got a real job.  It was then he knew that he didn’t want to work.  He found himself working nine hours a day, and making frustrating change after change and trying to second-guess what his boss and his bosses boss and so on might ask for next.  Sound familiar, account service?

At this point, Marasigan pondered what might happen if he diverted all the energy and time spent at work, into his bands. He felt he was working too hard on shit. That’s what it came down to. So he and his friends all quit their day jobs… oowah.  He invested all of his time into the universe of his band – and now he revels in the success.

Much like our work in advertising, you have to play in time, stay in key, play well with other people, practice, learn your lessons, express your own creativity. Create from the gut. Create from the heart. Try new things. Try new techniques. Put in the work. Be smart. And create.

Next on the agenda for today’s speaker sessions was Maria Ressa (pictured on left with Clair Davidson), CEO and Executive Editor of ‘Rappler’ – a social news network. Rappler’s focus is to embrace journalism, being sensitive to change and exploring new ways of examining the world – all of which they try to reflect on their site.

The core of Rappler might be ‘professional journalism’, however they have the added capacity of being able to tap the insight of crowds. Social media has changed everything. Traditional media will sell you eyeballs, social media will give you eyeballs for free. Social media gives you direct contact with your consumer and your audience. Rappler embraces crowd sharing, and creates a true social news network with collaborative stories; combined with a blend of expert opinion in the wisdom of crowds.

Incidentally, Ressa’s background was as CNN’s Bureau in Chief in Manila (87-95) and Jakarata (95-05). Most notably, she was the lead investigative reporter focusing on terrorism in Southeast Asia. In 2003 her now well-known article: ‘Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of al-Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia’ was published. She’s not to be messed with. We all sit up a little straighter when we hear this.

So today, how have media and journalism changed?  Filipinos spend only 3.6 hours per week reading newspapers, whereas they will spend 21.5 hours per week on the internet. 40% of that time is spent on social media. Asians trust social media more tha
n traditional media. 

Today we are in the age of reference. A good example is Wikipedia. Gone are the days where we went to leaders and elders for reference. Today it’s the people on the street. Or it’s Google. Celebrities now perform higher than leaders, in terms of ‘go to’ people for knowledge.

Rappler has revamped and reworked work flows. We’re living in an age where things need to happen fast. You report now as a team of one. Gone are the days of the journalist, the cameraman and the soundy. Now you record on your iPhone. It’s your phone but it’s also your camera. It’s HD in quality, and you can post it immediately.  Yikes.

Go beyond borders.  You can’t just tell your audience what happens – Twitter beat you to it.  The role of the journalist here is to also provide context and state what it means. Harness the wisdom of crowds – that means collaboration.

Ressa states that this is where Rappler is unique – it uses a ‘hearts and minds’ approach to news, through use of a ‘mood navigator’.  Emotions are extremely important, and 80% of decisions we make in our lives are based on what we feel, and not on what we think.  So the heart does rule the head…

Everything we say or do spreads through our social networks in 3 degrees.  For example, if I am lonely, 54% of my friends are likely to be affected by my mood, then 25% of my friend’s friends will be affected, and my friend’s friend’s friend has a 15% chance of being affected.  Smile and the world smiles with you.  If you feel something, chances are you will spread that feeling to your friends.  So how do we change behaviour?  You look at the fundamentals of social networks.

Rappler has a ‘mood navigator’, which is a crowd-sourced mood device of the day. This is all put together at the network and Filipinos are then told which stories most affect them each day. The mood navigator curates content and crowd sources in ways other news sites have never done before. Social media jumpstarts everything. It’s been phenomenal during the past year. Rappler’s success is based purely on its connection with social media. Leap on their site and see what we are feeling today. Ressa concluded by telling us to remember that tomorrow begins… today.

The final keynote speaker today was Eric Cruz, ECD of Leo Burnett Malaysia. I always like to listen to Cruz speak – he’s engaging and impressive.  He told us that in order to bring back the hunger, we need to embrace the failures.

Cruz was very humbled speaking with us today.  He was born in the Philippines, and it meant a lot to him to be here as a speaker and a juror this year.  He’s of the opinion that what we do is we crave, we hunger this thing called life.  How we get to where we are in life is based on this basic instinct – this hunger.  

Cruz shared with us his path and detailed the most pivotal points of hunger to challenge his journey.  His first hunger came at junior school, with his two best friends. The early competition pushed him to become a better person. As a young teen, Cruz moved into a movement of breakdancing. He was number two in his club, which just pushed him even further. Then came new wave and Duran Duran and his favourite band member, Nick Rhodes. Cruz became hungry to create like these artists.

It was around this time that he and his family moved to the US, later followed by Spain. Then there was the misunderstood youth phase – and Cruz was pushed by The Cure and Morrissey.  He drew their images.  He painted their images.  A pivotal point in Cruz’s teenage life came when he was reading a GQ magazine article about the Chinese American Creative Director, John Jay, of Bloomingdales. Cruz didn’t quite know what a creative director did, and here was a man who didn’t go to art school. Yet he was incredibly inspirational and would become a long-standing mentor to Cruz.  Cruz’s parents had advised against art school, but the idea was set – I too could become like this man.  He decided to fight for his dream, and after losing a scholarship he enrolled in art school anyway, just working that much harder.  Rather than now focusing on his own work, Cruz focus on graphic design.

After graduating, something called the World Wide Web arrived. People were creating things called websites, something Cruz turned his hand to for a year.  He then noticed that the Chinese American dude had gone to Weiden+Kennedy Portland. Here was a man who fused graphic design and advertising, and Cruz was inspired to work with him and for him. This didn’t happen immediately – he was at first knocked back. And guess what, this just made him hungrier.

After some time creating motion graphics and titles for a company in LA, attending grad school, then backpacking around Asia, Cruz found himself focusing on identity.  He is kind of Filipino, kind of American, and also lived a lot of his life in Spain.  So what was his identity?  

He implores us to investigate who we are.  Personal identity can relate to cultural identity.  Design became a cultural anthropology for Cruz.

Finally, Cruz got his chance to work with Weiden+Kennedy in their Tokyo office. Tokyo was for a Cruz an opportunity to re-connect, re-discover, re-ignite, re-brand, and re-invent Asia.  Weiden+Kennedy is an experiment; not an advertising agency, not a design company, but a new kind of platform. Weiden+ Kennedy exist to create provocative relationships between brands and people.

Cruz tells us to find the most interesting people you can, put them together, and let them play.  Make sure they don’t have the same background as you do. This brings about a creative identity. And another word of advice, even if we don’t know what we are doing, tell the company where you want to work that you do. The only way to learn is to put yourself in deep shit and do it.  You’ll learn fairly quickly.  Have the hunger to challenge the status quo.  If you don’t see that hunger happening, do it yourself.  Make it happen. Always experiment in the day to day work that you do right now. This will keep you happy. This will keep you in this field. Change. Innovate. Evolve. Create from within. Remember who you are and where you come from.  Inspire in your own way. We are the stories we tell. Stay hungry. Stay foolish. Embrace failure.

The final quote we were left with was, ‘I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed’.  Michael Jordan.

Thank you Kidlats for having me. It was more fun in the Philippines.

Claire Davidson (pictured left with Kidlat judge Brandie Tan), Executive Producer, ASIA and MENA @ The SweetShop reporting in for Campaign Brief Asia at The Kidlat Awards 2013