Dramatic fall in AdFest entries and delegates

It’s a very subdued AdFest.

Talk last night centred around how brutal the judges had been and how many delegates and entries the festival would attract this year. 50% down was the speculation.

As it turned out entries declined to 2004 levels with just 3,309 submitted over the 13 categories. It’s a large, but not unexpected decline on last year’s record 5,148 entries and 2007’s total of 5,012.

Delegate numbers are way down on previous years with only 693 attendees this year. This compares with 1266 last year and 1331 in 2007.

Japanese delegates are down from 401 to 221.

Korean delegates fell from 84 to 35.

Singapore down from 53 to 10.

Indonesia down from 60 to 32.

Malaysia down from 42 to 23.

The only large increase this year is from Sydney – up from 26 to 41 delegates.

With depressed delegate numbers and entries it also looks like the juries here have been very tough. One Gold in Print, two in Poster and just two in Film is the whispered bar talk.

But the winners are bound to be worthy with AdFest’s two big name jury heads Sir John Hegarty and Mark Tutssel gaining rave reviews from creatives that sat on their panels.

Day One started today with the traditional Gunn Report session hosted by Donald Gunn and Emma Wilkie. This year Gunn modified his presentation to highlight the Asia Pacific region. Some of the statistics were very interesting and point to the large contribution the region plays in world creativity. Japan topped the Asia Pacific Country ranking of creativity with 117 points, from Thailand (74), Australia (58), Singapore (53) and New Zealand (38). The top ranking agency was Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore followed by Dentsu Japan, Leo Burnett Malaysia, O&M Mumbai and O&M Singapore. In Networks Ogilvy again topped the table with Leo Burnett second, followed by Saatchi, JWT and then TBWA.

Ogilvy India Executive Chairman and National CD Piyush Pandey then took the stage to highlight the results of The Cup and talk about local insights and culture and how they can be used to make powerful advertising.

JWT presented the first session after lunch – The Dragon is Coming! The Wolf is Coming. Moderated by JWT China’s Lo Sheung Yan it featured Zhen Hua Li (Independent Curator MSG Production & BJ Art Lab) and Wuershan, a director at One Production. The session did not talk on advertising in China but rather looked beyond our industry to give insights into the history and emergence of contemporary art in China.

Nick Souter, Partner at Insideout Sydney then presented a model for agencies to build a creative culture and not simply a creative department in his talk on how to build a whole -brained agency.

Later today is the presentation of the Dentsu hosted Young Lotus Creative Competition followed by the first of the three AdFest awards presentations. The Welcome Party concludes the day.

At least, this year, the queues to the buffet and bar will be shorter.