Behind the Cyber winners at AdFest

Brett Mitchell, Digital Director at Droga5 Sydney, is a self-confessed Japanophile, so we asked him for his verdict on judging Cyber advertising at AdFest held in Tokyo last week. Mitchell was Jury President of this year’s Cyber Jury.

What were your overall impressions as a judge at ADFEST?

“The diversity of work was really great. Judging really different campaigns in different languages was tricky, but our Jury really seemed to scrutinize the work. I actually thought we were quite hard on the work entered, but some of the winning stuff is pretty sensational.”

Uniqlo’s ‘Lucky Switch’ won Best of Cyber. Why?

“It’s a unique, integrated idea that uses a widget to put Uniqlo’s brand on other people’s sites, which is quite cheeky. ‘Lucky Switch’ was actually a very close tie with the Uniqlo fashion show, which is all about making fashion more democratic.  It had a very nice tone of voice because fashion is so undemocratic and snooty.

“And that reflects the brand, because Uniqlo does produce great clothes for very little money, as evidenced by my recent spending spree with them. So clearly the advertising’s working! Their delivery was 10 out of 10, the production values were incredible, which is why it won Gold.”

What makes a campaign worthy of Gold?

“It’s a bit of work that makes you go, ‘Wow, that’s amazing, I wish I’d thought of that or done that’. It’s really just a singularly unique and new idea, and certainly we saw seen a bunch of that throughout the week.”

And Bronze?

“Bronze is still a really great bit of work, we saw many fantastic bits of work that didn’t get up for a Bronze, and I perhaps thought they might have. I suppose we had a fairly hardened up jury, so if you won a Bronze this year, it is a great piece of work. We’ve set a high level for the industry.”

You also judged AdFest’s 360 entries. Why did DDB Auckland win this year’s GRANDE 360 Lotus?

“We only awarded three 360 Lotuses, and the GRANDE winner came down to DDB Auckland versus Contract Advertising in Mumbai.

“DDB’s Moro campaign is based around Auckland being voted as the 4th most livable city in the world. In typical New Zealand humour they built an entire campaign around the number ‘4’ and making things ‘4th’, which is quite a nice idea.

“Contract Advertising’s campaign for Sanctuary Magazine was about saving the Indian tiger from extinction. I think the idea was probably stronger but from a 360 perspective, DDB just had more spokes in the wheel, so it won on that basis. I think we made the right call on that.”

As Jury President of the Cyber category, what was your role?

“Just to facilitate the conversation, make sure everyone was questioning where we were voting, and just to keep the conversation alive. And also sometimes to sit back and observe, but mostly to keep the thing flowing.”

Any highlights?

“For me, obviously judging Asian work is great – you get to check out a whole lot of stuff you’ve never heard about before. Asia as a region is of special interest to me because I love all things Asian.

“On Saturday I had a sensational dinner at a restaurant recommended by chef Tetsuya, basically the chef proceeded to cook me all kind of delicacies like abalone baked in wakame and salt. So my overall highlight was a culinary one.”