Spikes Asia Creative Campus, a one-day learning experience on the transformative power of creativity from some of our industry's sharpest minds in Asia-Pacific, is underway at Singapore's National Design Centre.
Sessions explore the trends shaping today’s creative landscape—from short-form video and online commerce to storytelling, AI-powered creativity, and the influence of local culture on ideas that resonate globally. Celebrating the region’s unique ideas, perspectives, and cultural influence, the Creative Campus showcases how APAC creativity is shaping and inspiring the world stage.
Spikes Asia Creative Campus kicked off with an opening note from Lions CEO Simon Cook, who set the tone by exploring how creativity holds the power to meaningfully shape society and why marketing that matters is more critical than ever. Cook shared a preview of today's agenda, filled with insights, learnings, and intelligence set to define the industry in the year ahead, before turning the spotlight to this evening's Awards Gala.
Below are rolling updates from the day. We will continue refreshing this page; check back often.
Welcome Keynote: How to Win in 2030
Rica Facundo, Lions Intelligence
'We are seeing an attack at every level of human need'
"I have some bad news. It is getting really, really, really hot." Asia is warming at twice the global average, Facundo noted, and the consequences go far beyond discomfort.
"I'm from the Philippines. Living in the broader South and Southeast Asia region, we are at higher risk for what they call compound disasters. That's just a fancy way of saying we are at risk for more extreme weather happening more consistently than any other part of the world."
'It could take 14 years of salary to buy a home'
The pressures don't stop at the environment. Facundo turned next to Asia's housing affordability crisis, one quietly hollowing out the financial security of an entire generation. "30% of Southeast Asians would take on debt or loans to buy a house. 37% will take on debt for immediate funds at the expense of their savings. Six in ten Southeast Asians are in debt."
Even in Singapore, one of the region's wealthiest nations, unpaid credit card balances have hit a 10-year high. "$90.1 billion in unpaid credit card debt. So let's do a collective sigh of relief."
'37% of companies would rather hire AI than a junior employee'
The jobs market, Facundo said, is undergoing a fundamental transformation, and marcomms is not exempt.
"According to the Contagious Radar, 79% agree that the total number of jobs in our industry will decline."
Author Joseph Browning, she said, put it most starkly: "The underlying purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skill, while removing the field and ability to access wealth."
"What that means in practice is that the person above you gets replaced with AI. Less opportunity and value are distributed among fewer people. It becomes a race to the top."
So how do brands win? Her answer was clear: "The brands that will thrive will move from creating desire and selling products, to defending needs and becoming a scaffolding for people's lives."
Creators - From Influence to Innovation: Maximising Full-Funnel Creator Partnerships
Jimmy Lee, Head of Global Clients & ANZ Creative Shop, APAC, Meta
- Lo-fi is ‘Hi-fun’. Content doesn’t need to be polished, it can be dynamic and energetic with real talk, points of view and personality rather than overly produced. Entertaining and sometimes surreal, it’s all good.
- Engage in shared experiences with creators. Creators can create their own events, games and activations for local followers to find and engage with. This leads to greater impact.
- Social series can be powerful. Brands are sponsoring short drama series for followers, leading to the “Netflixification of Social”.
Key takeaways
“We have to stop thinking about optimising for social. Let’s start thinking about where the creative space can be on social.... Let’s start exploring working with traditional, conventional influencers. Creators shouldn’t just be a budget constraint, but should be seen as collaborators. They can help you influence your audiences, but more importantly, their agility, their talent, their craft, their ability to move at the speed of culture is what we should be optimising for.”
Panel Discussion: Innovation in Practice: The Brand × Creator Partnership Playbook
Isaac Tan, Chief Creative Officer, Hepmil; yuuno_小琦; moderator: Nicole Tan, Managing Director, Singapore, Meta
With this many stakeholders in the game, how do you stay aligned?'
Scaling creative partnerships, Nicole noted, is where the real complexity lives. Agencies, brands, and. The creators themselves all have different timelines, expectations, and definitions of success. She asked:
"Channelling positive tension is one thing — but when you've got this many stakeholders in the game, how do you stay aligned? Any lessons and wins?"
For Yuuno, it was about protecting her own creative identity. “Preventing ourselves from being algorithm slaves — balancing good content with brand identity. You can buy into a trend and still be yourself. Trendjacking only works when it aligns with who you are,” she said.
Isaac's answer was to build lasting partnerships: “Localisation and figuring out how to work with the right creators without losing nuance,” he explained, adding: “When you work with creators long term, the work becomes more frictionless.”
'A life coach'
Nicole guided the discussion on the evolution of creator relationships. Isaac pointed out that brands work with creators across a wide range of ages.
“We meet them across life stages, so we have to figure out brand partners with authentic storytelling opportunities,” he observed. “Where do you want to be in five years? One creator told me they wanted to get their driver’s licence. Another said he is getting married and moving into a new house. Thinking about creators holistically, mapping that out together with them, is powerful from a marketing standpoint."
'Know the creator's personality—not just their follower count'
Yuuno expressed that genuine alignment is fundamental for brands to be successful in working with creators. She said: “Know the creator's personality, their lifestyle,” she said, adding: “There are still brands that are very rigid with their brand direction and force creators into a mould.”
'Social is in the middle of everything'
Nicole challenged a persistent industry habit: treating creators mostly as a top-of-funnel play. Isaac pushed back with a case study that reframed the entire conversation.
"SCDF (Singapore Civil Defence Force) is one of my favourite clients. Every year, they put out data on emergency versus non-emergency calls and how people are dialling the wrong numbers.”
“What we did was dig into the real challenge, and one year, we found it was really about seasonal moments and how people behave differently throughout the year. We partnered with the right creators and released content at the right time to be top of mind. And the numbers moved: user behaviour changed. Emergency calls actually dropped."
'AI is my film school'
Yuuno's take was personal: AI has raised the creative bar and empowered creators to create across different crafts. She said she uses AI across editing, storyboarding, and VFX.
“With the rise of AI, I've noticed a rise in talking-head videos, where a creator just picks up a camera and talks. That is a non-negotiable human element. Human expression, language, AI can't replicate that.”
'Don't lose touch of play'
Nicole asked what outdated assumptions brands and agencies had about working with creators. Yuuno went straight for the metric everyone is still over-relying on.
"Follower count doesn't matter. Brands should really look at shareability, creative style, and whether the creator's audience genuinely connects with what they create."
"The power of small ideas. The sum of all your creators working together is a great deal,” Isaac said, adding: “Don't lose touch of play.”
Beyond the Hype: Creative Workflows for AI Advertising
Armand De Saint-Salvy, Founder, Supaflr
In this practical session, live action filmmaker Armand De Saint-Salvy explained the process he uses to integrate AI into film production.
Showing a quick experiment using generative AI, he found that most LLMs will generate very similar assets.
“Agentic platforms that require minimal human intervention will give you volume, but also statistical predictability. So the most obvious thing is what it will turn out, i.e. slop. If you don’t want slop, don’t let go of your creative teams.”
Going on to explain the actual process of producing with AI, De Saint-Salvy points out that much of the human-led existing production process needs to remain in place,
Strategies, planning, pitches, inventories, casting, locations, all need to be explained and listed as you use AI to refine characters, costumes and sets.
Production in AI is then all in the edit, but you have control over your characters’ personality.
AI ‘watchouts’
“Showreels full of viral content is not that hard to make. What’s hard to make is stuff that’s specific where you have a big mandatory list of the things that have to be included. So make sure that [those commissioning the film] are explaining to you their processes, they’re collaborative, and make sure they don’t tell you that anything can be done in AI, because not everything will work.”
“AI is cheaper, but it’s not as cheap as you think because it needs time. And time is people, and people is money. So it’s a creative tool, it does not replace creativity.”
“The big idea, my friends, is back. When you get that $100K budget and you’re briefed-in, you’re like ‘oh we’re back to two people talking in a room’. Now, that room can be smashed by a meteor, you can do that bit in AI and shoot the rest of it as live action. So I see massive opportunity for creativity because when we’re getting hemmed in with small budgets, we now can think bigger and more crazy. You’re all weirdos, you’re creatives and that’s the best part, because that’s where the new ideas live.”
Source: Campaign Asia-Pacific
