Why You Should Go to Spikes Asia Next Year

As Spikes Asia 2016 drew to a close last week, Ogilvy's CMO David Mayo looks back on some of his festival highlights. According to him, the festival has matured a lot in the last year, made the most of new entries and surprisingly, made quite an impression on the adland veteran - not least, because it offers him a chance to see some of the best entries ahead of Cannes next year.

It may be that I simply haven’t immersed myself in Spikes properly for a couple of years, but the 2016 event just seemed more ‘Cannes-like’ than I remember.

Not for the beaches or the restaurants, but on three levels it worked for me;

- The main stage content

- The halo events and how they were integrated into the agenda

- The quality of work and the depth of the juries

In short, it was more grown up. It felt more significant, if that’s the right way to describe a festival that celebrates commercial creativity in all its forms and myriad categories!

I was involved in a lot of the festival, including main stage content for not one but two agency networks (Ogilvy as well as Bates CHI & Partners), and the Young Academies, where I took my regular slot on the Young Suits dance card. And then we all filed in to join the other Young Academies to hear Graham Fink telling us to eat our heads (below).

We also had our publishing platform ogilvydo.com present, live streaming from the event to all Ogilvy offices around Asia and the world. The team kept Ogilvy on the front page as the most social brand at the event for the whole week, according to the dashboard we shared at the studio we set up on the main floor.

Then there was the judging; I joined the Creative Effectiveness jury, chaired by James Hurman, who was the best choice for that job.

And finally, there was the Bates CHI & Party bus which operated between the venue and the JWT Beach party for most of Wednesday night, fuelled by Bates’ signature client, ABSOLUT.

The size of the academies, the quality of the chair-people and the general organizational makeup of the content worked well. The outputs from the academies made their way effortlessly onto the main stage on Friday night and everyone got their moment in the spotlight.

The main stage was done very well. This year, the stage had shifted to a different geographical angle, so everything felt new.

In terms of content, we can see people digging deeper and making more of an effort. No longer is your ECD coming to showcase some of his work and tell everyone else how they can follow suit. The main stage was a rich crop of offerings with rock stars from the worlds of tech, gaming, media, television, online, and of course music and entertainment.

We thought McGarry Bowen would trump AKQA and Google with their interview with Adrian Grenier (aka Vincent Chase in the HBO series Entourage, below) but it was Graham Fink’s talk which filled the main auditorium until the very last beer bell went and the festival was declared closed ahead of the awards.

The awards themselves were well-attended and well-organized. Again, a Cannes-like quality about them, but the stage was set for the reason the festival exists — the work.

It was a different kind of year, with ANZ dominating from the South with made up names like Brewtroleum and Hungerithm (ANZ dominated the integrated shortlist for example with eight out of the 12 shortlists) and a great many Japanese and Korean boutiques and film houses such as Enjin, Iyama Design, Party and Birdman dominated from the North.

The work was stellar, but unlike in previous years, there was a core of work that cleaned up across multiple categories, from Samsung in Thailand with their Touchable Ink (below), to UWA Australia, Panasonic, DB Export, Burger King, Snickers and many more.

In summary, it seemed to be a year of many delicious complimentary conflicts:

- All the networks were present

- Many small shops

- Many production houses

- Many clients entering their own work

- Many countries entering from outside Asia; Sweden, UK, USA and the Netherlands

- Many individual and pro-bono campaigns, as well as many clever integrated campaigns for big clients

- It was interesting watching creative agencies entering media awards however it worked less well in the opposite direction. That said, the media category had the lowest conversion from shortlist to metal than all the categories.

Mayo's Top Five Takeaways from Spikes

1) Main stage content was better and deeper than ever before

2) The awards field fragmented like never before, to almost reflect what is happening in the industry

3) ANZ dominated the whole show

4) Countries from outside Asia entered (and won!)

5) Some clearing up of the judging rules is definitely needed to make sure that awards are given without cannibalizing other categories.

One final thing from me is that some agencies were showing work for the first time - seemingly ahead of Cannes 2017 - and some agencies were using what they had in the bag as an end to their awards year.

My shilling would go to the agencies and networks who are showcasing now ahead of Cannes 2017!