BBDO Malaysia, Saatchi Malaysia and TBWA Shanghai star on day two of AdFest

Here are some highlights of Day two at AdFest.

PRESS LOTUS

This year, out of 621 entries for Press Lotus, 29 Awards were presented including 1 Gold, 13 Silvers and 15 Bronzes. Saatchi & Saatchi Malaysia won the only Gold Lotus in this category for its Silverfish Books ‘Page Numbers Campaign’. The agency also picked up 3 Silvers, plus 1 Bronze.

Leo Burnett Mumbai picked up 3 Silvers and a Bronze for its ‘Bajaj Exhaust Fans’ campaign, while Euro Singapore won 3 Silvers for its Nikon campaign.

Overall, Malaysia walked away with 1 Gold, 3 Silvers and 1 Bronze; Bangkok picked up 2 Silvers and 6 Bronze; followed by Singapore with 3 Silvers and 2 Bronze; Mumbai with 3 Silvers and 2 Bronze; Hong Kong with 4 Bronze; and Shanghai and Sydney with 1 Silver each.

There was no Best of Year awarded in Press. When questioned about it Jury head Mark Tutssel said that a Best of Year award needs to be something that is fresh with a brilliant idea, executed exceptionally well.

“I always ask myself ‘do I feel jealous?’ and in this case, unlike in the Poster category, the answer was no.”

Tutssel said perhaps Silverfish Books would have taken Best of Show had the campaign been for Penguin Books as opposed to a book retailer.

“Our industry needs big ads on big brands, so certainly this took the edge off this campaign for me.”

Tutssel said it was a curse on our industry that ads get branded as large advertisers , when they are in fact just a reseller of that brand and many others.

POSTER LOTUS

Out of 662 direct entries, 33 Lotus Awards were presented including 2 Golds, 18 Silvers, 12 Bronzes and 1 Best of Poster. BBDO/Proximity Malaysia won Best of Show for its Jeep ‘Two Worlds’ poster, and also walked away with 1 Gold and 1 Silver for two other entries from its Jeep campaign.

JWT Shanghai won Gold for its ‘Shan Shui’ public service poster series, and the agency also won 3 Silvers and 1 Bronze. Saatchi & Saatchi Malaysia won 4 Silvers in total plus 1 Bronze, while Euro RSCG Singapore won 3 Silvers for its Nikon campaign and Leo Burnett India in Mumbai walked away with 3 Silvers and 1 Bronze.

Tutssel described the Jeep Best of Year winner as inspirational: “This is very intelligent work worthy of an iconic brand like Jeep. The auto category has had some brilliant work created for it and it is always a highly contested category. It’s great to be able to award something fresh that stands out and this work (Jeep) does exactly that.

“I am jealous.”

FILM CRAFT LOTUS

From 131 entries, there were 4 Gold, 5 Silvers and 10 Bronze Lotus Awards presented in the Film Craft category.

The four Gold Film Craft Lotuses were awarded to: IF WORKS Inc Tokyo, JWT Shanghai, George Patterson Y&R Melbourne, and Goodboy’Z House Bangkok, which also walked away with 1 Silver.

Other top performing production companies include GoodOil Films Sydney, which won 1 Silver and 1 Bronze, and Song Zu Sydney, which one 1 Silver and 1 Bronze.

Overall, production companies from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in Australia and Auckland in New Zealand picked up the most awards, with 1 Gold, 2 Silvers and 5 Bronzes between them.

NEW DIRECTOR LOTUS

This year, there were only 11 entries for the New Director category. As a result, only one Bronze was awarded in this category to Cherub Pictures in Sydney for its ‘Soccer Can’ spot for Ballantine’s & Cola. Two other production companies were also shortlisted as Finalists: The Sweet Shop, Auckland; and HAT Inc in Tokyo.

SPEAKER SESSIONS

Speakers sessions for Day Two kicked off with a presentation by one of AdFest’s major sponsors, Sino-ADI, which hosted a panel discussion called ‘How to Innovate Ourselves Out of this Downturn’. The panel included Joe McDonagh, Worldwide Global ECD at Cheil Worldwide; Sheung Yan Lo, ECD at JWT North East Asia and Chairman JWT China; Akira Kagami, Executive Officer and Global ECD of Dentsu Inc Tokyo and Jay Benjamin, ECD at Leo Burnett Australia.

DDB’s John Zeigler then gave an great presentation called ‘The Gossip Principle: Reversing through an Age of Acceleration’. In the presentation Zeigler said that gossip was the foundation of all communications and without it society would not even exist.

“If we look back, we might see that the existence of everything we do today, has originated from a single human tribal behaviour, gossip. The new creative challenge is staying true to the core idea and the brand story, knowing full well that what we say will be morphed and changed by the consumer. Gossip in its basic form works the same way.”

In the afternoon, Contagious magazine gave a trend briefing entitled, ‘Mass+Niche: The Art of Two-Track Branding’, presented by Deputy Editor, Jessica Greenwood.

The day concluded with Prasoon Pandey’s presentation of the Fabulous Four films, as voted by this year’s Film Craft and New Director Jury Panel. The Jury singled out a film by Japanese director Yuji Shiota of HAT Inc Tokyo for his short film called, ‘Sarah and Sandy’. The other Fabulous Four directors selected were: Sam Bryant, Luscious International Sydney; Brian Lucknasuwan, Big Blue Production Co Bangkok; and Nitiz Wongthed, director at The Bandits Co Bangkok.

This year, 53 scripts from 22 cities were submitted to Fabulous Four – up from just 14 script submissions in 2008. The four directors selected to take part in this year’s screening submitted the most compelling scripts based on the theme, ‘Made in Asia’.