A ‘ranga’ in a foreign land: Josh Edge’s Spikes Festival of Creativity diary – Day 1

So with a couple of Cannes Festival trips under my belt it was thought prudent that I should pay a visit to the ‘other Lions’, Spikes Asia in Singapore.

Having a festival of this quality right on Australia’s doorstop sounded too good to be true, but the reports have been steadily growing of the quality of the speakers and networking opportunities over the past few years and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Thankfully, Day 1 has proved that we do, actually, have somewhat of a Cannes Festival right here in south-east Asia, and without any of the snooty French waiters or horrendously overpriced drinks. Wait, scrap that last one (this is still advertising, after all).

Some initial observations for fellow Spikes virgins (which sounds much more painful than it actually is):

1. The Suntec venue is absolutely incredible. From the world’s largest LG LED Digital Wall (over 600 screens) to the twisted metal escalators and hidden corridors, it’s a cool place to hang out for a few days. Although its confusing habit of placing multi-level escalators throughout the building meant that my first taste of Spikes was to accidentally attend the Sunday Morning Service at the City Harvest Church on level 4.

2. Spikes is physically much smaller compared to Cannes (which is like saying that a Mars Bars is small compared to the Cadbury Factory). Literally every part of the festival is tucked into one mammoth, aircraft-hanger sized room. From the boxy Forum rooms and new Tech Talks hidey holes, to the cavernous seminar areas, screening rooms and Young Spikes areas, it’s all within spitting distance (although they frown upon delegates testing that theory). It certainly makes running from seminars to masterclasses a hell of a lot simpler than crossing the length of Cote d’Azur.

3. It’s really, REALLY hard to get a coffee early in the morning. Hot water and bags of sugar are in abundance hours before the brown nectar appears. Grab a Starbucks before you enter the main conference room.

4. The pace of the day is absolutely relentless. The seminar program is only three days instead of Cannes’ five, but so far it feels like they’ve packed the entire Cannes highlight reel in. With the inevitable time overruns and short breaks between talks, you’re likely to spend the whole day running from masterclass to forum to seminar to tech talk. Again, the small layout is very conducive to this and there’s not a topless French bather in sight to distract you.

5. The drinks prices are enough to make a saint of you during the day. $16 Tiger beers would be hilarious if somebody else was buying them. I stuck to my $2 Pepsi cans and the generous helpings of free caramel popcorn to sustain my blood sugar levels. And eventually the free coffee did show up.

So onto the talks. Having numbed my brain via a sufficient number of live and online seminar programs, from Cannes and Circus to Ad:Tech and Contagious Insights, I’ve got to admit I was seriously impressed by the first day’s program. In a seven-hour day there were speakers and forums from W+K, Grey Group, Anomaly, Naked, Iris Worldwide, Microsoft, Lowe and Partners, JWT, Draftfcb, Dentsu, DigitasLBi, Contagious, eYeka, Wolff Olins, Starcom, Baidu and Unified Social – of which I saw about 90%. There’s no way in hell you’d pack that much learning into a single day at any of the other festivals, between the seminar overlaps and distance between venues.

Unsurprisingly, and again in line with one of the major themes of Cannes this year, talk of agency collaboration and co-creation was a common thread throughout the first day’s talks. eYeka and ADK Japan were to first to run with this issue, with an in-depth forum about the new creative eco-system and co-creation communities. eYeka (https://en.eyeka.com/) has formed as an online portal to connect non-agency-affiliated creative communities and creative customers to big brands, with the likes of Samsung, Duracell, Heineken, Unilever and even Milo basically crowd-sourcing creative on a massive scale. The obvious questions around the diminishing role of the creative team and, on a broader level, the need for an agency at all were tempered by Joel Cere’s new definition of creative departments as ‘social curators’ and ‘creative directors for communities’. His argument was that agencies have always presented themselves as treasure chests filled with rare jewels that need to be hidden and protected, whereas creativity is abundant in every brand community and it is the insight and curation of this ‘idea diarrhoea’ (my words, not his) that is needed.  

It was a compelling argument, especially when ‘brand love’ models such as Saatchis’ Lovemarks is under increasing pressure to become ‘brand participation’ models. The customers have become the media channel, content creators and, in many cases, active participants in the brand’s business model, and this overwhelming challenge is simply too wide-ranging for an art director/copywriter team. At the end of the day, ‘the agency that sells good ideas the most’ will win, so we’re going to need as many of those ideas as possible in the future.

Another take on the co-creation model was the cautionary (but happy) tale of Peter Vegas and Matt Williams from DraftFCB New Zealand. Peter and Matt were responsible for the Mini Driving Dogs campaign, and described the bewildering array of contributors and collaborators as an ‘orgy’. They rightly pointed out the disparity between the credits on an award piece from 1985 (art director, copywriter, client) to last year’s Toyota Tundra Space Shuttle ad stunt, which featured over 100 individual credits. Their advice to creatives was to start early, accept that you know nothing about the majority of your project, trust everyone on board, stay on the top of the food chain, and realise that it’s going to get messy. From the media department recommending that they drop the client’s name from the ad, from the PR department pulling guerrilla tactics with reporters from major networks, there were twists and turns that would turn most writer’s hair grey. But nothing great ever came easy, right?

Luke Nathans and Grant Hunter continued the collaboration theme with case studies from Adidas All In 2012, Team Messi Bob Parker’s ‘Christchurch Reimagined’ campaign and even the Bieb’s Gold Shoe Hunt. They argued that agency models aren’t changing fast enough and are too linear to work in today’s fluid market. By changing to a circular model of Account Lead, Creative Lead, Project Manager and Strategy all revolving around the core of the client, you ensure that nobody ever passes the baton from one department to the next – everyone holds the baton together and plays a role from start to end. Grant described a scenario where his creative department adopts an editorial mindset at all times, with innovation hardwired into every level of the business. His work with the Johnnie Walker F1 campaigns and production teams such as Firecracker (who are built for shock value and a 24/7 documentary style) ensure that the creative process is continual and culturally relevant right up to the minute. He also admitted that many clients aren’t ready for such an approach so they have focussed on the ones who are willing to work with them from a deep business level. Inspiring stuff.

‘Moving at the speed of culture’ was another buzz phrase that popped up multiple times throughout the day, especially in Emma Montgomery’s Starcom chat where she attempted to explain the fundamental difference between storymaking and storytelling (hint: storymaking is everything that happens in the lead up to an
d immediately after a story – see the Miley Cyrus Twerking phenomenon for a creepy case-in-point).

In fact, it was almost a relief when the occasionally acerbic Chris Clarke from DigitasLBi took the stage at the end of the day to deliver a sharply worded treatise on why the internet is making everything shit. Consumer empowerment was rephrased as consumer enslavement as he worried about the tradeoff that society was making by sacrificing their data and personal information for the price of a bit of personal branding on social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. His diagram showing the ascending axis of media platforms and the descending axis of attention spans, with a giant turd at the end of both paths, was compelling and hard to argue with. With such a constant demand for our attention we cling to the banal, he reasoned, citing his recent experience of attending a 6 person audience for director Danny Boyle at this year’s SXSW while the line for Grumpy Cat stretched around the block. It was a slightly depressing, yet oddly fitting, footnote to a day of inspiration in the brave new world of digital advertising.

This is Josh’s first time at Spikes Asia and the second time he has visited Singapore after his Nanna took him there in 1992. He has noticed much fewer Hypercolour Tshirts this time around. You can be relentlessly spammed by Singapore and Perth-related photography by Josh at instagram.com/joshbites or via Flickr at flickr.com/photos/27745483@N07/