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Philippine News

SPIKES 2008

By Angel Guerrero

 

Now on its 22nd year, the Asian Advertising Awards is the region’s most established regional awards show. More popularly known as the Spikes, it gets its name from the its eponymous trophy.

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For the second year in  a row, the high-powered conference sessions and equally high-powered judging were held at the six-star Ritz Carlton Bali resort. The awards night  was staged at sunset in the famous Ku De Ta resort. This year, the organizers displayed the Gallery of Top 500 finalists in a white air-conditioned tent at the Ritz Carlton grounds for all to see. All from April 16th to 18th.

The Spikes is definitely the most prestigious awards show in the region, and proof is the impressive number of entries for the awards, an enviable selection of jurors headed by Jeff Goodby, and close to 200 of Asia’s leading ad men and women who mingled at the event.

On the awards front, the Platinum Spikes went to Leo Burnett Sydney’s Earth Hour interactive campaign. The energy conservation campaign that encourages cities to turn off their lights simultaneously in a show of solidarity, also scored a Titanium Lion at Cannes last year.

The Gold Spike in TV went to Leo Burnett’s Petronas spot titled “Tan Hong Ming” by Leo Burnett Advertising Malaysia.

Antonio Navas, worldwide creative director of Ogilvy & Mather, applauded this charming commercial and said, “ It tackles racism between Malaysia’s different ethnic groups,” and described it as a  “gem, because it was legit—it captures the truth.” 

Yasmin Ahmad, who wrote and directed the commercial said, “We interviewed 60 children, and if it hadn’t work we would have given client their money back.”

A notable TV spot is the Silver winner, “Non-Blinking Woman” by Dentsu Tokyo. It was wonderfully  funny and so hard to forget.

A ponytailed and relaxed jury president, Jeff Goodby took in the Asian scene for the first time.  Having won every major advertising award possible, he observed that in Asia, “the biggest problem you have is a weird combination of the big-budget stuff that doesn’t need to be great in an idea sense, so they rely on the money to carry the day. At the other end, you have really small budget stuff that you have to be really ingenious with the idea.”

Goodby was impressed with Asia’s strong art direction and craft.  He remarked that Asia had “very strong art directions and a lot of effort in craft, whereas in the US, we tend to spoon-feed everything!”

Goodby was also  amazed by the level of Photoshop capability and “ the ingenuity with imagery is great! I call them puzzle ads, they have a slow build kind of cycle, compared to ads that have massive and sudden impact.”

WWF “Tree”, Ogilvy & Mather Thailand’s excellently crafted print work, won the sole Gold in Print. Eight Silvers were awarded in Print, exemplifying Asia’s strength in this category.

The Platinum winner and the Gold Spike winners in Interactive, TV and in Print were all public service ads that either promoted social values or environmental protection. A good sign for an industry that, at one time, thought public service ads had an unfair advantage over the regular work.

The Outdoor Gold Spike saw a billboard in Auckland literally exploding to raise the profile of Deadline Courier service. The billboard  featured a digital timer that self-destructed when hit zero. Over a million people viewed the event on national news. Colenso BBDO in New Zealand was the brains behind this low-budget campaign.

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Japan lorded the Digital category with Hakuhodo’s “Color Japan” for Sony Bravia, when it won the Gold Spike. (This also scored at the recent ADFEST.)

TBWA\Asia’s Creative-At-Large John Merrifield won the Gold Spike for Direct Mail for the  TBWA\Asia 10th Anniversary Commemorative Book. The book offered a different level of interactivity with each turn of the page and a most entertaining  way to show the agency’s best work.

ADFEST’s Best of Show in Radio was also the Spike’s biggest winner in Radio, but it only managed a Silver, Y&R’s Colgate “Brushing” radio commercial.

The lineup of big-name jury members included Antonio Navas, worldwide creative director of Ogilvy & Mather; Jonathan Harries, worldwide chief creative officer of DraftFCB; Jonathan Kneebone of The Glue Society Australia; Prasoon Joshi, regional creative director of McCann Erickson South and Southeast Asia; David Guerrero of BBDO Guerrero Ortega Philippines; Masako Okamura of Dentsu Japan; Gary Caulfield of Ogilvy & Mather Jakarta; Calvin Soh of Publicis Asia,; Adrian Miller of Saatchi & Saatchi Malaysia, and Andy Blood of  TBWA\Whybin New Zealand.

A total of six Golds, 39 Silvers and 64 Bronzes were handed out. Thai and Singaporean contenders received the highest overall number of awards—20 and 18 respectively, while Ogilvy emerged as the most highly awarded agency, receiving a total of 17 Spikes  (one Gold, five Silver, and 11 Bronze).

The inaugural Young Spikes, led by Merrifield, saw a total of seven two-person teams participate. They were from McCann Erickson India, Dentsu Malaysia, JWT Indonesia, Grey Singapore, TBWA Australia, BBDO Thailand and a collaboration between BBH Singapore and DDB Indonesia. The teams were given 36 hours to develop a campaign on water scarcity and to promote the TapWater conservation project (inspired by Droga5’s Tap Project in New York) in Bali, an island where “tap water doesn’t exist”.  This involved the re-branding of filtered water as Bali Tap Water for restaurants, and the promotion of Bali seawater as a souvenir, with proceeds going to the improvement of local water sanitation. The winners of the Young Spike for the Bali Tap Water Project were the collaborative team of BBH/DBB.

The Spikes was started by Media Magazine founder and published Ken McKenzie in Hong Kong. The judging and the awards ceremonies were held in the city for nearly two decades. When leading publisher Haymarket took over Media Magazine, the show found in Bali “a new home, one that would be inspirational, aspirational and motivational,” said Atifa Hargrave-Silk, group editor of Media.

 Next year’s Spikes will be staged in Bali between 22 to 24 of  April, 2009.

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