All About: Spikes Asia

The second edition of Spikes Asia, since the Cannes Lions organisation took over the festival, is scheduled for September 19-21, 2010 at Suntec City, Singapore. Jury chair David Lubars has this to say about why he’s excited: “According to the Gunn Report, the most awarded print campaign on the planet last year was created by an agency in Malaysia. The Big Won named an agency in Japan as being the most awarded digital agency. And, as president of the ’09 Cannes Film and Press juries, I witnessed myself brilliant pieces coming from all points in Asia. Clearly, some of the best work in the world is being done in Asia.”

1.Spikes has been around as a festival since 1989, "the region’s oldest and most prestigious awards for creative advertising" According to Terry Savage, chairman of Cannes Lions, "It held two important strengths when we got involved. The first was the reputation of the awards was high - it was seen as being difficult to win. The second was that although the festival side was small, the people who did attend were industry leaders as such we knew it. It had a level of awareness which would enable quick growth in the future in terms of delegate numbers."

That Asia-Pac is working its way up the charts in terms of the number of awards won at festivals around the world, speaks volumes about the importance of the region. “The performance by Australia and New Zealand in the last few years at Cannes has been outstanding; they clearly punch well above their weight on a world scale,” said Savage. “Countries such as India, Japan, Singapore and Thailand - in fact the whole of Asia as a region - have improved their performance at Cannes dramatically in the last few years from 27 Lions in 2002 to over 100 in 2010 which speaks for itself . Centres of creative excellence are now everywhere and Asia - Pac has its fair share of them.”

2.The learnings of Year One, translate into the new things to expect in year two. "There are always leanings from any festival, be it Spikes or Cannes," said Savage. "In year one of our involvement, we were happy with 900 delegates attending - what we wanted, however, was for people who will never get to Cannes to be able to attend a strong regional festival such as Spikes and enjoy the great learning opportunities they present. So in fact, despite our success in year one, we reduced the price in year 2 to try and encourage more people from more markets to attend, and attend in greater depth." The field has been thrown open to Australia and New Zealand as well this year. "Our vision was to have a festival that embraced just Asia, not Asia-Pac," explained Savage. "However, the reaction from the market was very solid in terms of this was a wrong move, and following representation from many industry leaders, we’ve introduced Australia and New Zealand back in for 2010." There were things to think about for the agencies last year as well. "Other than Japan, digital seems to be a weakness in terms of award - winning work, right through the Asia-Pac region," emphasised Savage.

3.So what’s on the agenda this year? Most of the big, network agencies have seminars lined up. "Microsoft has a seminar and, of course, marketers will participate in some of the seminars," said Savage. And the festival chairman is also hopeful that marketers will be filling some of the seats, a trend that was one of the talking points at Cannes this year. "Clients made up 12 per cent of the delegate base at Spikes last year and we anticipate it will be in that region again this year - with the quality of speakers we have attending, they have good reason to be there," he believed. The speakers, too, are bigger and better. Among the speakers announced for Spikes Asia 2010 are Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, Andrew Robertson, president and CEO of BBDO Worldwide, Howard Draft, executive chairman of Draftfcb and Bob Jeffrey, chairman and CEO of JWT Worldwide.

4.There are no new award categories this year, but it’s a certainty in the coming years. "We will do what we need to do to ensure that Spikes is relevant. PR is an obvious one but areas like mobile will also be looked at some time in the future," revealed Savage.

Visit www.spikes.asia for further information. Delegate registrations are open.

What it means for...

YOUNG ADLANDER

1. Lower delegate fee, including for young marketers, makes the festival more accessible
2. Seminars by JWT, Ogilvy, Draftfcb, Naked, Dentsu, AKQA, Arc Worldwide, Leo Burnett, Euro RSCG, BBDO, Publicis, DDB, Microsoft Advertising, Grey, TBWA, Cheil, R/GA and Sir Martin Sorrell
3. On the second evening of Spikes Asia 2010, JWT, Ogilvy & Mather (Singapore), TBWA\ Singapore, Euro RSCG Singapore and Starcom MediaVest will open their agency doors for an evening of networking.

WHAT IT MEANS FOR INDIA

1. A chance to improve the tally of 39 metals won last year
2. Get a perspective for next year’s award season