MANILA, PHILIPPINES — On October 14, 2024, The One Club for Creativity launched the very first ONE Asia x adobo Magazine Masterclass in the Philippines, in partnership with adobo Magazine, at The Ayala Museum. The learning event brought together top creative leaders from Asia Pacific to empower and inspire the next generation of creatives with insights from the best.
The day’s first speaker was Kevin Swanepoel, CEO of The One Club for Creativity, who is a renowned award-winning creative himself. He has recently won the prestigious Above & Beyond Innovator Award in 2023, and was named into the Advancing Diversity Hall of Honors in 2022. Under his leadership, The One Club stands strong at the forefront of the creative industry’s digital revolution, with continued support to the community through various educational programs and award show celebrations.
In his session, Kevin opened the day’s masterclass with the “2024 One Show Trends Report,” highlighting six key and overarching themes that the jury observed from its most diverse data set ever, with over 20,000 total submissions to learn from. “These are the insights that defined creative excellence in The One Show 2024,” Kevin started.
Mainly, the trends revolved around these key takeaways: the full palette of creative emotions were on show, from laughter to fear; DE&I rose to the top, with major increase in inclusion and diversity in the work; more humor and joy; and the creative use of data.
Here are the six trends he identified:
1. Brave Brand Humor
The first trend Kevin underlined is that ads these days are moving from the traditional “sadvertising” (i.e. more dramatic films) to now more entertaining and funny executions. However, he also emphasized the importance of brand insight to really cut through to consumers — without it, audiences are just laughing without being converted to brand fans or consumers.
2. Hyper-personalization
With today’s technology making content more intimate and immediate, there’s also a call for brands to be more personalized with their advertising — to create promotions that are so well-fitted to the consumer’s motivations and behaviors.
That is, personalized on a one-to-one basis, and a one-to-community basis as consumers are now moving into siloed, closed off online communities. And so, Kevin highlighted that brands must also prepare for the next challenge in personalization: data privacy. How can brands connect with consumers on a personal level if they don’t know what they want and how they behave?
3. Accessible Tech
Thirdly, Kevin pointed out the use of tech in building an “inclusive future for all,” many of which was exhibited in stand out entries to The One Show Asia. “Brands are harnessing AR, machine learning and increasingly AI, to improve accessibility,” he stated. This is something that more brands should leverage on as consumers are also now becoming more critical when it comes to inclusivity. As technology becomes more sophisticated and powerful, this is now something that consumers expect from brands.
4. Speed of Culture
“More than ever, advertising has its finger on the pulse of popular culture,” Kevin stressed. Once more, the rapid developments in technology and culture have pushed advertising to also be more agile and quick, with the fastest reactions to real-world events garnering the most engagements from audiences.
5. Effective Tech
On top of technology being used as a means to open more opportunities and bridges to make the world more inclusive, it is also a very powerful and integral tool to demonstrate effectiveness. After all, the greater discussion on AI in the advertising world is largely focused on getting the most impressive brand results with less, or at least the same, amount of effort. And AI is just one among many developments in technology that allow ads to be more effective and creative.
6. Pared-back Craft
The simplicity of craft still rings true in creative effectiveness, on top of all the trends identified in Kevin’s presentation. Sometimes the most effective route still is to craft a really well-executed and well-designed piece of advertising work that seamlessly blends into people’s experiences.
To wrap up his presentation, Kevin stressed this singular truth: “AI will evolve.”
“AI was everything across this year’s winners. But too often, it served as the creative idea itself and not a tool to enhance human-centered creativity,” he explained, challenging the creatives in the room to learn the ropes when it comes to artificial intelligence, but use it to inform their creativity – not dictate it. A good creative idea is still the most important currency in the industry.
adobo Magazine is an official media partner of ONE Asia and The One Club for Creativity.
The ONE Asia x adobo magazine Masterclass was made possible by the generous support of sponsors Yellow Brick Road Productions, Soundesign Manila – Audio Production House, and Meta.
Special thanks to our organization partner, Ayala Foundation, Inc., for providing the venue for this event.The One Club for Creativity – home of The One Show, ADC Annual Awards, Art Directors Club of Europe (ADCE) awards, ONE Asia Awards, Type Directors Club and competition, TDC Ascenders, Young Guns, Young Ones Student Awards, Next Creative Leaders, ONE Screen Short Film Festival, and more – is the world’s foremost non-profit organization whose mission is to support and celebrate the global creative community. Revenue generated from entries to its global awards shows goes back into the industry to fund programming under the organization’s four pillars: Education, Inclusion & Diversity, Gender Equality, and Creative Development.
