Laura Geagea’s AdFest Diary: Day 3 and 4
Laura Geagea, Managing Director and Executive Producer of China, Asia & MENA at Sweetshop (pictured) reports for Campaign Brief Asia from AdFest 2018.
The excitement and buzz of Day three and four was noticeable as everyone awaited the awards ceremonies in the evenings. With Hakuhodo’s ‘Gravity Cat taking Gold, Thai agencies did very well this year with two Silvers and one Bronze! Check out the full list of winners here.
Day Three
I started off Day three with Dominique Touchaud & Vidya Murthy from P&G telling us about Breaking Bad: How to transform a brand without destroying its legacy.
Touchaud and Murthy took us through P&G brands like Herbal Essences, Whisper, Gillette, Pampers, SKII and Old Spice. In today’s market, brands reach a point where they stagnate. And so, the moment comes for some experimentation and finding each brand’s true tone.
This means breaking conventions, going bold and seeing where you get to.
A word of advice from Touchaud, “Never go for the coolness factor.” Once the new campaigns air, your consumer will tell you whether you are cool, you don’t get to decide that yourself.
“What is the core of the brand? What is the truth of the brand”, is the question you need to ask yourself. Sometimes changing a brand’s positioning isn’t the easiest thing. Touchaud and Murthy walk us through the changes P&G has brought to Old Spice and six-year-long process it’s taken to get to the right message through. Trying to find the right tone is what requires the experimentation and what makes it so important to understand that we are dealing with different times and different consumer groups. Check out how P&G brought experience as a core idea to their brand and changed the Old of Old Spice into a more mature, experienced Spice.
Next up was Emma Wilkie, Managing Director of the Gunn Report who shared the World Premiere Presentation of new Gunn 100.
Wilkie’s an Adfest favorite, coming here every year since 2004 and during 45 fantastically inspiring minutes, she took us through the best work in the world and in Asia Pacific.
In three bundles of five spots, we traveled between worlds of work and ideas with the top theme of the year (once again just like 2017) being PURPOSE. Creativity Meets Tech is in second position with beautiful campaigns that remind us of the giant steps our industry takes every year.
The US, the UK and Australia top the table with the US in the lead with 24 jobs in the top 100. An array of the usual suspects, but also some countries that have seen huge improvements, with campaigns coming out of Thailand, Egypt, UAE and Sweden . Demonstrating again that no market is too small to make it into the creative ranking.
Nike sits at the top of the table for top brands for creativity for the fifth time in the ranking’s 19 years. VW Group and Mars lead the way for Top Advertisers for Creativity.
The top 100 are also broken down by sector with non-profit and public sector taking the lead. Followed by technology and electronics and then by retail.
The top five countries in Asia Pacific are Australia, Japan, Thailand, India and New Zealand. Great to see Thailand in there with a spike of creative work for 2018. Dentsu Tokyo leads the way for the top five agencies in Asia Pacific.
Later in the day I joined The Power of Ideas, The Power of Believing talk led by Kentaro Kimura (APAC Co-Chief Creative Officer) with Ai Suzuki (Creative Producer), Naoki Ono (Copywriter & Product Designer) and Yuta Okuyama (Creative Director) from the Hakuhodo Tokyo team.
Okuyama walked us through the production of the great Gravity Cat that won the Gold Lotus Friday night. Most of it was shot in camera with a real rotating set built for the apartment where it all happens. Each reset was an hour long! So, what is the key to taking a simple idea to something successful in the market of today? Okuyama believes it’s about taking risks. Simply put he says, “More Risk, More WOW!” and that’s exactly what comes through in the spot.
Ono & Suzuki also walked us through some product design projects with Pechat being a big hit in the Japanese market. Pechat is a small microphone in the shape of a button that children can attach to their favorite stuffed animal and “talk” to them. Pechat can be connected to a parent’s mobile phone so they can interact with their kid through the device. They are also now working on a model that has an automatic response. The parallels between product development and advertising were brought to the table but also the process of having to create a prototype, get funding, and experiment!
Definitely another reminder that being bold pays off.
Umma Saini was up next with This Is Your Last Brief and took us through a near death experience that changed her view of the world, work and most of all her life. The Creative Director from BBDO Singapore walked us through her early career, her move to Singapore and how the events in her life made her want to transform our lives. As we are all immersed in our TRANSFORM week, don’t we all want to transform our lives but also do transformative work? Saini asked. Ultimately getting to the idea of what we would do differently if the next brief that came in would be our last brief. Would you do it differently? Would you be bolder? That’s the secret between near death and creativity.
Day Four
Hitting the fourth and last day of the talks, I went over to the hall to listen to the Co-Founder of Contagious, Paul Kemp-Robertson talk about How to Win in 2018: Contagious Trends for Future-Proof Brands.
Contagious is based in London and was co-founded in 2004 as a response to the need in the industry of someone to help them navigate all the new trends and changes happening.
Kemp-Robertson walked us through the basic rules of how to win in today’s industry
1- Put the customer first and find ways to address the points of friction in their journey
2- Embrace new technologies when appropriate
3- Give women a voice
4- Be brave, think beyond the brief
5- Get involved with movements and people in authentic ways
6- Don’t be a jerk
He then took us through four themes while illustrating them with different campaigns and brands that are doing things right.
Politicized Culture
Lots of brands ignore politics, while others take the bold way and take a stand. The new reality is that lifestyle and politics can’t be separated. Airbnb’s campaign #weaccept is a great example of using a political backdrop and making a statement which articulates your values openly. And that ultimately benefits the brand.
Modern Masculinity
52% of UK men don’t feel represented in ads because of the way they are portrayed in the world of advertising. This part is about staying true to your brand. Showcasing your consumers the way they want to be shown, and not the way the way marketers want. Sleek Makeup worked that way with their #myfacemyrules campaign, which featured real people in the real world. As a result, the interest in the brand ski rocketed online by 759%. Not too bad…
Transparency
Price, Progress and Provenance. These are the 3 Ps that allow you to have transparency with your brand. This is about establishing trust with your consumer. Start-ups have been particularly good at this as they think outside the business model status quo. A couple examples are Lemonade (Insurance) and Aspiration (Credit Card).
Agile Long-Termism
This is the shortest section, but the most important one from a business perspective as it focuses on businesses going for short term results instead of holding out and keeping their eyes on the long-term goal. This is where it’s important to understand your company’s organizing principle and using agile long termism to win.
Kemp-Robertson finished the talk off with very solid words of advice that we should all take with us back into the office on Monday, “Be stubborn on vision but flexible on details.”
The day continued with two sessions with The Jury Presidents Crossfire that went over the winners and submissions that came in this year. Next Joyce King Thomas, Grand Jury President discussed how a 30,000-year-old medium became the most transformative idea of 2017.
The second awards ceremony took place again in the evening and the final After Party followed at the Cliff Hotel’s Infini Pool with the biggest crowd we’d seen so far in the evenings. Most of us flew back to reality on Sunday and back to the office on Monday!
Thank you for having us Pattaya and thank you AdFest for a fabulous and transformative week. Until next year!