BORACAY — With judging underway at the 2015 Kidlat Awards, adobo sat with Creative Guild of the Philippines Chair Merlee Jayme to discuss how this year’s edition has the potential to change the way we look at award shows forever.
“The biggest challenge for a creative show like Kidlat has always been relevance to our clients. It has always been a show for creatives, by creatives,” said Jayme. “At some point…the client should have a buy-in to creativity.”
Armed with this notion, Jayme conferred with TBWA\SMP’s Melvin Mangada and BBDO Guerrero’s David Guerrero discussed how to go about making this particular award show more relevant to clients. Their solution: While traditional craft categories would not be affected, Kidlat would be the first show in the world where entries were categorized and judged based on the products being advertised, a radical departure from the traditional model of conferring awards to campaigns based almost solely on media or creative components.
In this way, shared Jayme, Kidlat 2015 would “recognize work that is more for the brand, over the medium” and “recognize the best idea in a product category.”
With the overriding principle of ‘Brand over Medium’, conventional categories such as “Digital” or “Print” were out, replaced by the likes of “Food Products”, “Consumer Electronics”, and “Corporate Image”.
On the new categories, Kidlat 2015 Jury President Leigh Reyes weighed in: “This is different for us because the categories aren’t something we are used to. I likened it to sitting in the office and working on the brief with your creative team, and they’re coming to you with all sorts of creative ideas that aren’t (necessarily) channel-specific.”
“You have to detach yourself from the medium that’s used and look at it like, “Is this a great idea for food? Is this fresh and unexpected for telecoms? It’s a totally different lens through which to work. We started out slow because we were getting used to it,” said Reyes, on the judging process. “But it got faster as we got used to the process.”
When news broke last year of how Kidlat 2015 would be conducted spread, agencies were forced to rethink not just how their work would be judged, but even the manner in which they would be submitted. Indeed, with Kidlat’s newfound focus on brands over medium, creatives could now concern themselves with presenting which of their ideas worked best for their respective clients.
So far, the move has proven most promising; According to Jayme, the move has had no appreciable effect on the overall number of works entered in this year’s competition, despite agencies being forced to be more “selective” in their entries.
At the end of the day, “It’s good to value the work,” said Reyes, “not through one channel or what medium it appeared in, but (to) value the idea that inspired it.”
The Kidlat Awards is a yearly competition held by the Creative Guild of the Philippines to celebrate the best and most creative advertising work of the past year. Last year’s awards, held during the 2014 Ad Summit Pilipinas in Subic, saw Ace Saatchi & Saatchi being named the top-winning agency, while DM9JaymeSyfu won best in show.
The winners of the upcoming Kidlat Awards will be awarded on March 7, 2015, in Boracay.
