Spikes Asia: Pundits take a look at the contenders

Campaign Asia Pacific asked senior adlanders from the region for their top picks heading into Spikes Asia 2017. We asked each person to choose two pieces of work they expect to shine at the festival: one from their own network and, in all professional goodwill, one from another network. 

Primus Nair, ECD, BBDO Singapore

1. 'Guinness - Rise' by BBDO Singapore: Guinness is one those brands that allows for powerful storytelling. Executed by an excellent production team, I think this is a great example of that.

2. 'The Human Catalogue' for Ikea by BBH Asia Pacific: I really like this. It’s so wonderfully random while still capturing just how iconic, yet unassuming, the catalogue actually is.

Jessica Davey, chief marketing officer, McCann Worldgroup Asia Pacific

1. 'The Immunity Charm' for Ministry of Public Health, Afghanistan by McCann Health India: In our industry we strive to create meaningful work, something that will impact people’s lives in a positive way. In this case, McCann Health India created a beautifully simple, culturally insightful design that is genuinely saving lives. We have high hopes, as this won 13 Cannes Lions, including the Grand Prix for Good.

2. 'Unilmited Stadium' for Nike by BBH Singpaore: Another favourite of international juries to date. Big visual impact, hugely shareable for maximum ROI and designed to leverage a powerful human truth: our greatest competition is ourselves. Really lovely work that brings another dimension to the Nike brand experience.

Rohan Lightfoot, regional managing director, Isobar Asia Pacific

1. 'V-Showroom' for Chevrolet by Isobar Singapore: The work genuinely pushes the capability of a brand-new technology platform to solve a real problem, for a real client, at scale. After the team conducted a demo of the platform to the client and to the dealers, the client revised their original order of five units to more than 200 units. To have that kind of passion for innovation by the people who will actually be using the platform is a true demonstration of their confidence in our product.”

2. 'Meet Graham' for Transport Accident Commission of Victoria by Clemenger BBDO: “I think 'Meet Graham' is probably one of the strongest contenders at Spikes Asia this year. It combines a really interesting insight, a compelling conceptual leap, and an incredible focus on craft and creativity, to bring the whole idea to life. It had my favourite response to any of the works I’d seen this year—‘You can’t unsee this’—and once you’ve seen it, you’ll know what I mean.”  

Matt Scotton, chief strategy officer, IPG Mediabrands APAC

1. 'Sounds of the Suburbs' for Optus by UM Australia: A lovely example of creativity that used data as its genesis, the team showed surprising listening behavior of different Australian suburbs demonstrating the benefit of streaming with Optus.

2. 'Meet Graham' for Transport Accident Commission of Victoria by Clemenger BBDO: The beauty of this campaign is how they brought together crash scientists and sculpture artists—it’s a literal creation of science meeting art to create something beautifully ugly.

David Haddad, managing director, IPG Mediabrands Singapore

1. 'The Late Shift' for New South Wales Transport by UM Australia: Here is a great example of traditional media being used in a radically new way to address a real problem on the roads in New South Wales and a cause of many deaths: driver fatigue. It’s one of those campaigns that on the surface looks simple enough though you can appreciate the amount of research and effort that went on behind the scenes to get this right and create a relevant connection with a very specific audience.

2. 'Capacity Based McDelivery' for McDonald's by OMD Singapore: A fantastic yet simple idea that was superbly executed. I really like this campaign as it used a deep understanding of customer data to highlight a real business problem and also an opportunity for McDonald’s to do something about it. The delivery of the campaign was creative and timed perfectly around genuine consumer behaviour.

Takahiro Hosoda, senior creative director, TBWA Hakuhodo

1. 'Green Light Run Tokyo' for adidas Japan by TBWA Hakuhodo: Tokyo is said to be the city with the most traffic lights in the world. And many runners in Tokyo dream of an urban run without being interrupted by traffic signals. But no one has ever tried to make that dream a reality…until now. Big data is not only used to analyse markets, but can actually change behaviors and realise a better life for people.



2. 'The Unusual Football Field' by CJ Worx Bangkok for AP Thailand: Design does not only represent an ad that fills a square frame. This work teaches us that we can design landscapes, experiences and even a brighter future for the communities. For creatives who work in Asia, we might be blessed with opportunities to design 'growth'.