SINGAPORE — Young creatives from all over Asia Pacific recently flew in to Singapore for this year’s edition of Spikes Asia. The unique chance to demonstrate their artistic prowess and quick wit was made possible to a handful of talented individuals through the Young Spikes competition, aimed at creatives aged 30 or under. For the Philippines, one duo successfully persisted in representing the country in the Young Spikes competition, aimed at creatives aged 30 or under.
The Young Spikes Competitions provides Asia Pacific’s next generation of creative talent a unique chance to gain recognition and make their mark on the industry. At this year’s Festival, Leo Burnett Manila’s Senior Copywriter Martha Teves and Senior Art Director Gabrielle Santos were able to showcase their skills on a wider platform. Having won the local leg of the competition, they were given the opportunity to learn from seasoned leaders in the advertising industry, mingle with fellow creatives from other countries, and race against a 24-hour deadline to crack a brief and present their ideas to the jury.
adobo Magazine had the chance to talk to Martha and Gabrielle about their experience as first-time entrants, how they’re feeling as the Philippines’ only representative team.
adobo Magazine: What was it like competing with all the other 4As agencies than competing regionally? How’s the difference?
Martha Teves: I’m actually quite thankful that we had the experience of having the local competition before we got here because it gave us a sneak peek into what we can expect. I don’t think there’s too much of a difference between how we conduct our competitions locally and how they do it here, so I think the way we approached it was very similar to how we did the local competition as well. This time around, in the regional competition, it felt a little bit more natural to us because we already had the first experience.
Gabrielle Santos: For me, in terms of the process, it’s the same — the brief, the timings, the submission, parang it all felt the same. The fact that we had to submit first online, we didn’t feel that much of the “bigness” of it. Kasi nga, parang, “Ah okay, let’s just do this ulit. Nagawa na natin before, gawin na lang natin ulit.” Pero I guess nag-sink in lang eventually when we realized na iisa nga lang kaming team from the Philippines. Kailangan maitaas ang bandera (both of them laughed).
Was there more pressure because you’re not just standing for Leo Burnett, but you’re also representing Philippine creativity?
Gabrielle: Sinabi rin ni Martha kanina na parang, I wonder how it is for the other competitors who didn’t grow up learning how to speak English? I feel like medyo advantage na we can explain ourselves well in English because a lot of things get lost in translation, especially if you just translate it for the purpose of presentation. So I think medyo comforting thought na, “Okay sige, I think we can do this, it’s nothing new to us.” It gave us that additional confidence getting into the presentation.
Martha: I think one thing that I really want to say about the level of competition that we had regionally and locally, is for the future young creatives, it’s a very good practice for them to have that experience locally. So that when they do bring their A-game regionally, it’s something that does, in effect, come naturally to them. I think for us, in terms of the pressure, or all those things that we had to think about, we were fortunate enough to just pull from what we already know. The experience that we had in terms of ideating with our daily work, just that practice, it almost feels like muscle memory in that sense. So I think that also helped us.
What’s interesting about the competition this year was that this was probably the first time the contestants had to fly in to present. We spoke to the other creatives while we were lining up, waiting for our turn to present, and they said that previously, all they had to do was submit their work, and then they would have their results online. It was good that we didn’t know that because the pressure wasn’t too much. It was just something that we learned right then and there. I feel like if we had learned previously about that, we would have been too much in our heads about it.
What was the brief and what was your insight that led to your presentation?
Martha: We had to decide between entering the integrated competition and the digital competition: we had entered into the integrated competition. We were asked to come up with at least three executions for our brief. Our partner client was Plan International, an international NGO concerned with children’s rights. Those rights can vary from, let’s say, how climate change affects younger children or reproductive health and how that affects young children. For any of those things where children don’t necessarily have a say, Plan International comes in.
Specific to this brief, we had to answer how we would end child marriages. Early and forced child marriages are things that still happen. It’s a breach of human rights, but it does happen in a lot of regions. I guess, specifically in the South Asia or Asia Pacific region, it is still rampant. That’s one of the causes that Plan International is fighting for. They asked us to come up with an idea on how to help them and their ongoing efforts of ending early forced child marriages by 2030. That’s the brief, essentially. It was quite heavy when we learned about it at first, but we were given 24 hours to execute our ideas.
Seeing that there’s also a cultural aspect, how were you able to navigate that?
Gabrielle: I think it went without saying that before we even talked to each other, we really had to research this. We don’t want to go into something that we don’t really know about, lalo nga na it’s really about culture. I think in the Philippines, thankfully, it’s not as much of an issue; I guess because it wasn’t part of our culture versus in other countries. I think that’s also how our thought process went: “Let’s understand the culture first. What happened that they had to resort to this kind of arrangement?”
We just focused on educating ourselves first kasi if we want to educate others, it should be in a way na parang, “How did we get ourselves to understand it? How do we impart that knowledge in a way na it would be easier for them to understand?” At the same time, we’re not crossing any lines, or we’re not offending other people, especially if we’re dealing with a culture that’s not ours. That’s where all the research came in before even thinking of an idea.
Martha: And I think one other thing that was super important for us was to understand our role in this deep-rooted issue. It’s child marriage. It’s something that has been going on for generations. It’s about being unable to break that cycle, and that’s the reason why this thing is still ongoing to this day. That’s also something that we really needed to understand as well. In what sense can advertising and communicating this issue help them? And where do we stand in terms of the solutions that we can actually give?
We both understood that this was a competition. Still, potentially, we understood that something could be done as well if the idea is enough and if Plan International thinks it’s something they could execute. We were also careful about that as well. Kumbaga, hindi lang parang for competition’s sake.
adobo Magazine is an official media partner of Spikes Asia 2024.
