Claire Davidson’s Spikes Asia Diary: Day Four

The Sweet Shop’s Claire Davidson is on the ground at The Spikes Asia Festival, at Suntec City in Singapore. Here’s Claire’s highlights of the fourth day of seminars at the Festival.

A big thank you to Dentsu Aegis and Massive Music for hosting their spectacular Kosumosu party last night. Jurors, speakers, delegates and clients were treated to a very special evening at the magical Chijmes Hall with 2ManyDJs.

Today marks the fourth and final day of Spikes Asia’s 2014 Festival of Creativity.  The shortlists are all out and there are a lot of excited (and somewhat nervous) people wandering the convention centre today ahead of tonight’s awards ceremony.

I caught a session by Yoshi Matsuura, Senior Strategic Planning Director, Senior R&D Director, TBWA\Hakuhodo + Hakuhodo this afternoon.  Matsuura spoke about “Zen Meets Anime:  Cultural Dynamics that Spark Creativity”.

Advertising is a mirror of a country’s culture.  So let’s look at the culture of Japan.  What is the culture behind Japanese creative works?  Japanese creative projects have dual personalities.  Matsuura breaks them down into Zen and Anime.

The evolution of Japanese creativity can actually be found from Zen and Anime.  Zen and Anime are two opposing cultures.  

Zen = simple, beautiful and quiet, yet very powerful

Anime = chaotic, energetic and freestyle

Zen, as a culture, is a never ending pursuit of simplicity, and reaching enlightenment.  Zen developed during the Samurai period.  It was fostered in Buddhism and other areas of life.  It converges things to be simple.

Anime is a culture of loving chaos and colour.  It chaotically diffuses things.  The townspeople culture fostered Anime.

Today we are seeing stronger creativity from Japan with the fusion of these two cultures.  Powerful creative always creates harmony out of dissonance.  There are methodologies to make these fusions happen. ‘Pixelization’ fuses the analogue with cutting edge technology, which gives birth to a new brand experience.  Fusion between the two also includes ‘geekilization’ and ‘kidzilization’.

The above, though, doesn’t just relate to Japan.  Creative can be uniquely produced in your country.  Understand the local culture of your culture.  Identify what the ambivalence is of your culture.  Find it.  Cherish it.  Then combine it.

Next up was Graham Fink, Chief Creative Officer of Ogilvy & Mather China who brought us “Baozi, Baozi, Baozi”.

Graham commenced his speaker session in Mandarin with a Chinese poem that he wrote.

If baozi (Chinese sweet buns) are filled by a committee of people with different opinions, they taste like shit.  Stuff it with everything they could burst into an unrecognizable mess.  You want a bun that’s unique.  Crafted. Original.

Fink asked us to look at the big agencies today.  There are just so many people in offices with so many roles and positions and titles.  Talk to people individually in our organisations.  Don’t talk to them in these large meetings where nothing is decided and there are just too many opinions.  

Make these people feel part of a team and not a committee.  

“Search all of the parks in the world and you won’t find a statue of a committee” – David Ogilvy.

Simplify everything.  Simplify your thinking.  Learn from the greats.  Learn from our past.  Strip things back to the basics.

We looked at many simple and successful campaigns.  

So many ads you see today have too much information.  The human brain just can’t take it all in.  It’s up to the creatives to be tough and say no.  It takes bravery and it takes balls.  If you are a great creative you will be tough and you will say no.  Briefs today are just so stuffed full and overflowing.

A great advertiser also gives the consumer a little bit of work to do.  They make them think.

Outwit the competition.  

If the copy is too packed it’s like a crowded train.  

No one wants to get into it.  

It looks uncomfortable, it looks hard work.  

Turn the page.  

There’s always lots more interesting stuff to look at.

“Strategy is sacrifice” – David Ogilvy.  Steve Jobs didn’t listen to his customers.  He knew what his customers wanted.  No one in a focus group ever said they want an iPhone or an iPad.

Take risks.  Have fun.  Be brave.  Be uncompromising.  Be different.  Be inspiring.  Stop listening to all these people.  Now is the time to act.

Be brave.  Be baozi.

Last up for me was “Touching The Hearts of A Billion Chinese”.  Moderated by Cherry Ye, Features Editor of the Longyin Review, the panel comprised of Jimmy Lam, Vice Chairman + Chief Creative Officer of DDB, North China, Tomaz Mok, Chairman of McCann China and Norman Tan, Vice Chairman + Chief Creative Officer of Lowe China.

With China being the world’s second largest economy, there are many social issues that the nation has to deal with.  The Chinese government drives a lot of public service advertising to project positive energy, but they also come with a lot of rules and regulations as to what can be shown.  There is a focus on pride, harmony and goodness.  The aim is to create improvements in the many, varied and vast obstacles and hurdles facing Chinese society.  This goodwill behind all the PSAs is touching the hearts of a billion Chinese.

In rural areas, there are many poor families, and their children can not afford education.  We looked at the ‘Mother’s Choice’ PSA,

17% of Chinese travel to go home for Chinese New Year. This includes many migrant workers who can only afford to go home once every one to two years.  The moving PSA we saw was ‘Life Journey’.

“Salute to Ordinary People” is a PSA to make Chinese citizens feel valued.  Most of the 1.357 billion population in China are ordinary people.  It is to promote stability, peacefulness and happiness for people.

“The World is Watching” focuses on a sensitive issue.  The government doesn’t like to see uncivilized behavior by Chinese citizens abroad, and used a man in a panda suit to show us why.

For me, the most powerful PSA we saw this afternoon was “Human Traffic Sign”. (view the case study here) This campaign calls attention to the alarmingly high incidence of injury and death in China, as a result of both pedestrians and drivers failing to obey road signs.  Real accident victims were invited to participate in this very emotional plea to road users, holding traffic signs and shocking us with the graphic physical consequences of their accidents, as their eyes implore us, communicating a deeper sense of loss and pain.  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from those faces throughout the spot and would challenge anyone to respond differently – a wonderful achievement.  Here is an example of a PSA produced by a car manufacturer (Buick), rather than the government.  I’m sure the campaign will do well tonight.

Thank you Spikes Asia 2014 for an incredible four days.  It’s now time for the Gala Awards Ceremony and After Party.  Good luck and goodbye!

Claire Davidson, Executive Producer ASIA & MENA @ The SweetShop, reporting for Campaign Brief Asia at Spikes Asia 2014.