A quick peep into the first day at Spikes Asia in Singapore Day1- with some images and some short points :

• The goodie bag: The bag itself was of good quality- and rather than a polythene bag- they gave a proper sling type bag which was good. Some stuff inside was crap, as is usually the case. That makes one wonder- what were these companies thinking? They had one opportunity to market to the smartest creative brains in the region- and they probably blew it off. But some others were quite cool as well. Like Ogilvy with a Smirnoff miniature- with an invite to their after festival party.
• What is an idea? Workshop by Frederic Haaren of Interesting.org: I have covered Frederic earlier- and it was a good chance to meet him and see him in person. Good session but as it started getting a bit heated, I had to leave to catch on to something. I contributed or rather stirred the discussion in the room by choosing the debate on the formula of
  • X ideas=p(k+i) i.e. Number of ideas equals number of people multiplied by the knowledge they have and the information they have access to.

• Digital Storytelling in Korea:Interesting examples from Korea on digital Storytelling. Though examples from Nike Women were around the creative rendition of “Impossible is nothing” the one I really liked was the Digital interactive commercial (again from Nike women)- where a digital diplay outside a showroom is placed. A celebrity (I think Tae-Hee Kim) is shown doing exercises. When someone comes and touches the screen with their palm- the celebrity suddenly walks over- in the video and touches the screen thus establishing a physical connect with the person. It is a great concept (winning has the same feeling as love- or something like that) and is extremely scalable. Also the cool factor makes people talk about it- which is one of the main purpose. Quite engaging marketing.

Koreans do some cool work across the Digital mediums and one does not get to see or hear much of it. So quite cool to get this stuff.

• Bands, Brands and Fans: Use of music in marketing: Another workshop- this time on the use of music in commercials and how brands could make use of it. Conducted by Diederik van Middelkoop of Massive Music and Archie Hamilton of Split works. The ads shown were way cool- the only problem was the programme became less of a workshop and more of a company creds sales presentation. Considering their target audience was right there- they did pull of a coup. And because it was on music everyone seemed to be enjoying it as well.
  • I have myself done some music based brand marketing- with conceptualizing, writing, composing and singing a musical piece for a brand a few years ago. Posted it here and here. Ahead of times?

Two cool slides on Music in Advertising:

Research on Asian consumers and music consumption habits:

• Panel discussion on the vision of future: I took the photos in a cool wide angle with Sepia tone- and they came out really well. On the discussion, well let us say- what was substantiated- was what everyone is saying nowadays- engage your customers and think customers before your interests.

The panelists: Left to right: Richard Dunmall from Microsoft. Rob Campbell from Sunshine, Ashutosh Srivastava from Mindshare APAC and Anna Kirah from Kirah Consulting

Anna Kirah from Kirah consulting, who is also an anthropologist, had a small session- where she spoke on, well, how you should not focus on what you want- rather what the customer wants.

Want some more? I could post some interesting ads from the festival. Ping me.

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