Spikes Asia winners reveal trends in APAC creativity

Despite the challenges and constraints of the last two years, the APAC creative community mined harder than ever for original creative solutions, and the region’s creative companies spawned countless smart ideas.

The winning body of work from this year’s Spikes Asia Awards clearly demonstrates creativity’s power to drive business growth and solve some of society’s biggest challenges. It also reveals the current trends driving APAC creativity.

Inside the Spikes Asia jury rooms, the juries witnessed creative work that reinvented tradition and challenged perceptions, putting a spin on historical practices. Creative work that drew on tech to facilitate exciting experiences was also a recurring theme, and one we also saw coming through the Lions awards winners time and again in 2020/21. Let’s dive deeper into the Spikes Grand Prix work to see these trends in action.

Winner of four Spikes Grands Prix in Design, Mobile, PR and Radio & Audio, ‘The Unfiltered History Tour’ by Vice World News turned history on its head by revising the stories behind traditional artifacts at the British Museum. Using Instagram filters and immersive audio, visitors could take a tour of the museum’s disputed objects.

‘Another Live From Yakushima’ by music act Yakushima Treasure was awarded the Grand Prix in the Digital Craft Spikes. Live performance was reinvented by blending nature and technology in a 15-minute performance filmed in a Banyan forest in Yakushima, using hi-tech audio and video equipment to give viewers a new type of live experience. Described by Digital Craft Jury President, Jean Lin, executive officer, global, Dentsu Group Inc as “simple, visually stunning, and flawlessly executed”.

The Creative Data Spikes Grand Prix ‘Tuna Scope’ updated ancient fishing techniques using AI technology to assess the quality of tuna by inspecting the tail, a task more commonly performed by trained human experts. With few successors to carry on the occupation of tuna examiners, ‘Tuna Scope’ helped to guarantee the future standards of the fish market through harnessing the power of tech.

A hugely powerful creative execution ‘The Lost Daughters’ was winner of the Spikes Grand Prix for Good, produced for female sex-trafficking non-profit Sanlaap by Wunderman Thompson. Due to social stigma, Indian families often reject women rescued from human trafficking. During the Durga Puja, a festival honouring the Goddess Durga as the daughter of India, Sanlaap built a pavilion with no idol, reminding worshippers of the hypocrisy of abandoning their own offspring.

The juries were also drawn to creative ideas focused on storytelling, fuelled by real experiences and real people, as well as work that celebrated joyful optimism to entertain and grab attention. For a wide range of brands, from retailers to personal care, a bright optimism signalled a departure from the more serious tones that many Asian brands have adopted over the last two years.

Work like the double Grand Prix-winning ‘Give A Flybuys’ by Australian loyalty programme Flybuy, showcases this trend in action. A three-minute rock anthem, lip-synced by six distinct Aussie characters and voiced by punk-rock star Blake Scott, the music video by CHE Proximity Sydney showed how to attract and maintain audience attention with a fun music video. It promoted points collecting for a younger audience and reframed savvy as the new sexy, giving the brand a younger voice, and boosting sign-ups by 25%. It was described as “flawless, highly-targeted and edgy work” by Film Spikes jury president Paul Nagy, who is also chief creative officer at VMLY&R AUNZ. It won the Grands Prix in Film and Music, as well as four other metals in the Film Spikes award.

All of the ideas and creative work highlighted here also feature in our Spikes Asia Creativity Report, accessible via LIONS intelligence platform The Work. And as we prepare for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2022, we’re excited to see the body of Lion-winning work from APAC and uncover the trends and insights that will set the future agenda for the creative community.

The Spikes Asia Creativity Report is available to view in full on The Work. See the report for full APAC rankings, trends and case studies.

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Susie Walker is VP of awards & insights at Lions.