SINGAPORE – BBC Worldwide’s Advertising Sales Asia/ANZ EVP Sunia Rajan welcomed delegates to the first session of Day 3, “The Business of Content, The Art of Storytelling”. The thrust of her talk was how content generation was less effective without meaningful storytelling to engage the viewer/consumer. She tied storytelling into human oral traditions, illustrating her points with video interviews of famed documentary filmmakers Mike Gunton, Neil Nightingale, and James Honeyborne.
Have you ever wondered how gamers can stay glued to their screens, fixated upon assigned tasks for hours on end, but have difficulty focusing at work? PHD Worldwide CEO Mike Cooper and PHD Australia’s head of strategy Chris Stephenson looked into the psychology behind such behavior, and how those principles can be applied to the workplace in “The Future of Work is Play”. A simple explanation for the phenomenon was that the system of (virtual) rewards and gratification often had no counterpart in the real world.
“Work is a game so badly designed that you have to pay people for it,” said Cooper. “The CEO of any organization needs to start to think like a game designer.” Concurring, Stephenson quoted Mary Poppins when he said, “In every job that must be done there is an element of fun. Find the fun, and snap.. the job’s a game.”
“Confidence” was “The Big C” in Campaign Asia’s ’s panel discussion featuring BBDO Guerrero’s David Guerrero, ADK Worldwide ECD Rob Sherlock, and McCann Melbourne ECD Patrick Baron. Moderated by Campaign Asia brand manager Atifa Silk, the discussion went back and forth on the how confidence was essential in pursuing a creative career, but not to the point of arrogance. “Weakness is a good thing if you allow it to happen sometimes,” said Sherlock.
On the question of acknowledging one’s mistakes, Baron fired back with a punchline, “I’m always right,” before confirming the importance of non-arrogance with, “A lot of creatives are insecure and that does help them. (to improve their work)”.
Of course, the importance of confidence could not be understated, as Guerrero said, “Creative people need the confidence of being well prepared, and also having done all the work so you can convince them (clients).”
DDB Worldwide Global CCO Amir Kassaei shared his veteran insight when he spoke on “Global Perspective: Imagine. Inspire. Influence. The Only Way To Build Successful Brands”. Kassaei stated that we were on the dawn of the Third Age of digital connectivity, but said, “”There is no social media, I believe that digital is an infrastructure,” Kassaei said. “The reason that 99% of everything that we are doing in online is failing in the marketing communication is because we are still treating it and defining it as a new media…Facebook is not a TV channel, it is a connected social network and we have to treat it that way, and if we do it that way, we can gain a lot of potential.”
According to Kassaei, the secret to surviving in the coming age of digital convergence when everyone will know everything in realtime is to intersect ournotions of creativity, humanity and technology in order to influence and engage people.
Day 3 also saw the release of the second batch of Spikes shortlists, as judging had ended the night before. The categories were Branded Content & Entertainment, Direct, Film, Film Craft, Print & Poster Craft, Promo & Activation, and Radio.
The winners of Spikes Asia will be announced tonight in an Awards ceremony held at the Marina Bay Sands Grand Theater, with guests ferried via water taxi to a by-invitation after-party at The Clifford pier.
