Spikes Asia opens with new theme, new Spike for 2019

Spikes Asia, the largest creativity festival in Asia-Pacific is now open for delegate registration and entries for 2019, including those for a new Creative eCommerce Spike this year. The Festival's overarching content theme will be ‘Asia Rising’, reflecting a renewed focus on celebrating the best of this region's growing creative communications industry.

"We are a Festival in Asia, for Asia," said Joe Pullos, Festival Director of Spikes Asia. "This year’s programme will feature more regional speakers and will better reflect the creative challenges and opportunities for the creative community in APAC”

Category changes

A new Creative eCommerce Spike will honour creative, commercial ecommerce, payment solutions and innovation, recognising Asia-Pacific's global leadership in these areas. Entries for the award will need to demonstrate how the innovation and optimisation of the customer journey led to increased consumer engagement and commercial success.

To reflect changes in the industry and market trends, many of the 22 Spikes Awards categories have been refreshed and some new categories introduced including:

• ‘Challenges & Breakthroughs’ section across five Spikes – celebrating work with a specific focus on local campaigns and cultural insights as well as challenger brands and breakthroughs on a budget.
• ‘Sports & eSports’ section added to the Entertainment Spikes to recognise creativity that taps into fan culture and leverages the power of sports and eSports in connecting people to brands.
• ‘New Realities & Voice Activation’ category added to four Spikes to group all VR and new realities work together.
• Creative Effectiveness includes two new categories: 'Collaborative Creative Effectiveness', which celebrates collaborative efforts that drive tangible business results and cultural change, and 'Multi-market Creative Effectiveness' which recognises the measurable impact of creative work implemented across different markets.

The Festival's content programme will continue to revolve around the five key content tracks of communication, effectiveness, innovation, experience and reach. Programme themes have been shaped to directly address the challenges faced by the creative industry in APAC. Sessions on the main stage translated live into Mandarin, Korean and Japanese.

The 2019 Themes

• Brands in culture: will include discussions around the many different cultures within APAC and how brands focus on localising and intersecting for enhanced cultural relevance.
• Proving creative effectiveness: will see local and global speakers focusing on marrying short-term ROI with long-term creative strategy
• Embracing inclusion, equality and diversity: will see diversity and inclusion examined from an APAC perspective with some best practices and examples
• Understanding the changes sweeping the creative industry across APAC: will include an examination of the current state of the industry and what capabilities are required for brands and agencies to survive and thrive
• Driving digital and technological transformation: will review the advancements in technological innovation across APAC and how brands can maintain customer relevance in a mobile-first, 5G-enabled, voice-stimulated world.
• The new rules on brand purpose: will focus on best global and regional practices for authenticity and hone in on specific APAC markets
• Creating connected brand experiences: will look at multi-channel customer journeys and the technologies that enhance and impact them
• Creative strategy and reaching the reluctant consumer: will examine the ideas behind the idea and the insights that change how the industry thinks and measures
• Re-imagining storytelling: will bring people from across the worlds of arts, film, literature and design to gleam insights into how to create work that moves audiences
• Trust, ethics and transparency: will interrogate how to drive meaningful value exchange and navigate a world of proliferating communications

Entries are now being accepted for both Spikes Asia and the Tangrams Effectiveness Awards. These have been aligned to provide an integrated experience for entrants and Festival attendees with the final deadline for entries into the Tangrams on 2 August and Spikes Asia 16 August 2019.

Key Dates

• 17 April: Entries Open
• 12 July: First entries deadline
• 02 August: Tangrams entries deadline
• 16 August: Spikes Asia entries deadline
• 25 September: First shortlists announcements (Brand Experience & Activation, Design, Creative eCommerce, Digital Craft, Digital, Direct, Film, Film Craft, Media, Mobile, Outdoor, Print & Publishing, Print & Outdoor Craft, PR and Radio & Audio)
• 26 September: Entertainment and Music shortlists announced
• 27 September: Creative Effectiveness, Integrated, Healthcare and Glass shortlists announced
• 27 September: 2019 Spikes Asia Awards Show