Spikes Asia: The Good, the Bad and the Brilliant

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PiyushGaryDavidSonal.jpgCampaign Brief Asia’s co-publisher Kim Shaw gives his opinion on last week’s Spikes Asia Festival.

Spikes Asia has just concluded in Singapore and every delegate would, I think, have to have been left with the positive feeling that the new partnership between the International Advertising Festival (also owners of Cannes Lions, Eurobest, Dubai Lynx) and Haymarket’s Media Magazine is off to a very good start. The three days were packed full of good and diverse speaker sessions, highly entertaining evening events and a bucket load of awards.

It was a great first up effort that has put Spikes Asia on the map. I’ve been to a fair few award festivals over the past 15 or so years and overall I’m giving Spikes Asia a score of 7.5 out of 10.

It would have been higher had there been less awards in that very big bucket.

Here’s my opinion for what it’s worth. (If you agree, disagree or wish to voice your own opinion as a delegate to Spikes Asia please feel free to comment, hopefully constructively, in the comments section below).

JudgesShot.jpgTHE GOOD

As the saying goes, an award show is only asgood as its juries and Spikes Asia brought together one of the verybest to be assembled in Asia – all the way through each category.

Thespeakers and panels were on the whole very good. With eight speakerseach day delegates had plenty to choose from and attendance numbersvaried dramatically from around 600, for Neil French’s BBC HardTalkinterview and David Droga’s President’s Address, down to around 50-100for some others.

I must admit I did struggle with the 9am starteach day – it does seem somewhat unreasonable for an Asian-based show.I cherry-picked and attended all the creatively-focused sessions withmy highlights, in addition to both the Neil French and David Drogasessions, being presentations from Chris Garbutt (ECD O&M Paris),John Hunt (TBWA Worldwide ECD), the Leo Burnett and Contagious”Wildfire” panel headed by Mark Tutsell, Piyush Pandey’s India showcaseand the Uniqlo session. There was also a DDB presentation featuring abloke knighted by the Queen but I’ll save that for the ‘Brilliant’section below.

The networking and socialising opportunities fordelegates at Spikes Asia were fantastic. Certainly, I couldn’t faultthem and, from this perspective, Spikes Asia proved to be up there withthe very best festivals that I have ever attended. All three nights of thefestival were extremely well done and the Singapore industry really rolled out the red carpet.

McCann_Party.jpgMcCann hosted the Wednesdayopening night at Lau Pa Sat hawker center. Complete with a band, DJ andgorillas it was an entertaining way to kick off the festival and towelcome delegates. On Thursday six different agencies opened theirdoors for office parties with all delegates invited to drop in on themanytime during the night. Unfortunately I got mugged early by theoverly generous vodka the O&M bartender was pouring so I ran out ofsteam, vocal ability and memory before being able to drop in on EuroRSCG and Starcom, but my friends at Media voted the Euro RSCG party thebest. The revolving party idea is a unique one that worked really wellfor both Spikes Asia and the agencies who opened their doors. There wascertainly no expense spared at the Yahoo! sponsored IndochineWaterfront after-party that followed the Spikes Asia awardspresentation on Friday night. It was a very classy way to end theFestival.

The most contentious subject of discussion in the leadup to the Festival and throughout it was Spikes Asia’s decision not toallow entries from Australia and New Zealand. There is even division onthe subject within the two joint venture owners of the Festival. But Iam firmly on Terry Savage’s side here.

One of the strengths ofthis year’s results is that they were not diluted by the results of anyAustralian and New Zealand presence.

In previous years theweaker creative networks in Asia have been able to prop up theircreative performances at Spikes with entries from their strongerAustralian and/or New Zealand offices. What I like about this year’sSpikes is that low ranking network positions at the Festival may sparknetwork chiefs to shift a little more emphasis to their creative outputand give a bit more support and encouragement to their Asian-basedECDs. Besides, quite frankly, Australian and New Zealand ECDs don’twant to enter Spikes Asia anyway.

THE BAD

SuntecCity is a cold, boring place. Even if Aretha Franklin, Jackie Wilson,Ray Charles, and Marvin Gaye played there every day for the next yearthe place would still lack soul. Commercial realities will rule the daybut I did find my heart agreeing with the “I wish it was held in Bali”sentiments. There were also some annoying sound problems with some ofthe microphones but the main problem with Suntec City is that severalof the speaker sessions were poorly attended and, because there wasnothing much to hold people in the exhibition area, delegates werequickly lost to the shops, hotels or various offices. For the 300 plusSingapore-based delegates pressure from the office was not an easything to escape from.

In terms of the work, the understatementof the year came from one of the judges on the first day of theFestival after I asked about how the judging was going – “I think weare being a little generous”.

A little!

By adopting theexisting rigid Cannes Lions systems for the judging process there wasalways going to be an increase in the numbers of Spikes handed out. But 258Spikes Asia trophies is a bit of a joke for a regional-based show andespecially for a region that prides itself on its strong performancesat the big international shows. The shoddy treatment of the Silver andBronze trophy winners at the award presentation night only reinforcedthis fact further.

This is by far the biggest and most important concern for the organizers leading into next year’s Festival. Spikes Asia has every reason to be proud of their first up effort, but let’s tighten up on the numbers of trophies handed out.  

Leavingaside Design (introduced this year) and the Grand Prix awards here’s acomparison of the awards tally for the 2008 Spikes held in Bali and thisyear’s Spikes Asia.

Bali Spikes 2008 – 6 Gold, 39 Silver, 64 Bronze.

Spikes Asia 2009 – 45 Gold, 70 Silver, 117 Bronze.

The numbers speak for themselves.

SirKen_OnStage.jpgTHE BRILLIANT

Sir Ken Robinson.

Hispresentation at Spikes Asia on Friday was worthy the cost of the tripto Singapore. If you were a delegate to the Festival and didn’t attendthis DDB sponsored event you really missed out on something very, veryspecial. Thank you DDB.

Words can’t do justice to Sir Ken’s 45minute talk. It left me inspired, awestruck, entertained and feeling inadequately about 6 inches tall at the end. And I wasn’t alone. I wish wehad our hands on a video so we could share it with you now. We don’tbut, if you haven’t seen it, here’s his 20 minute Ted presentation from a few years back and check out Sir Ken’s new book The Element.

Actually, reliving Sir Ken’s presentation prompts me to adjust my mark for the whole Spikes Asia experience up to 8 out of 10. I would have thrown in a Gold Spike as well, but there’s none left.