April 16th to 18th, 2008
Bali, Indonesia

This week I was in Bali as a judge at the Spikes Advertising Awards. The Spikes are the oldest and most prestigious creative advertising awards show in the Asia Pacific region. Designed to encourage and celebrate creative excellence across all forms of advertising, the Spikes seeks to raise the bar for creative standards in our region.

The event is was held for the third time in beautiful Bali and incorporates an opening cocktail, a two day creative conference featuring leading global creative directors, an exhibition of the finalists work and two dedicated awards presentations, spread over two nights to ensure that the region’s best work is fully showcased.

The Clemenger Group did very well at the award show with ‘Self Destruct’ from Colenso BBDO winning GOLD for best Outdoor Campaign as well as picking up a SILVER in the Outdoor Business Products/Services category.

Self Destruct by Colenso BBDO

OMD New Zealand scored a BRONZE for the Air New Zealand ‘grabaseat Dart Around NZ’ program in the Sports/Entertainment/travel and leisure MEDIA category and Clemenger Wellington picked up a BRONZE for ‘Fly Buys Dreams’ in the Best use of Animation, Computer Graphics/Special Effects. Lingerie 4 Men from Colenso BBDO was a FINALIST in the Integrated category.

You just got to sit in the Yahoo Big Idea Chair.

‘Self Destruct’ from Colenso BBDO won GOLD for best Outdoor Campaign

With ‘Self Destruct a GOLD winner it competed for the Platinum Spike against all the other category Golds’ that included Leo Burnett Malaysia for its ‘Tan Hong Ming’ TV commercial, Ogilvy Thailand’s ‘Tree’ print campaign for WWF; TBWA for its own commemorative direct marketing campaign ‘The Book’. But the overall winner was Leo Burnett Australia for its WWF Earth Hour campaign that won in INTEGRATED. Earth Hour also won the competition’s inaugural Green Spike for demonstrating outstanding creativity in raising environmental issues. It’s the year of the Green awards.

In the Digital category Sony Marketing Japan’s ‘Color Tokyo!’ campaign, created by Hakuhodo, took home the only gold. The category, which was headed by Glue London chief executive Mark Cridge, also saw six additional silvers handed out to: adidas’ ‘The Rook’ by Ogilvy Shanghai; HP’s ‘Toyrama’ by Arc Singapore; ‘Pepsi’s Can’ by Agenda Shanghai; ‘The challenge of the crazy genius’, created by Dentsu for World Commerce Corporation; Honda Motors’ ‘The Ten Commandments’ by Dentsu Japan; and Tohato’s ‘World’s Worst War’ by Hakuhodo. Cridge, who also chaired the digital jury last year, pointed out that there had been a noticeable improvement in the quality of work, particularly in terms of the consistency of craft.

Jeff Goodby the co-chairman from Goodby Silverstein and Spikes 2008 chairman of the core jury exhorted delegates to focus on the power of storytelling at the Spikes 2008 conference keynote address. Goodby used the work of his mentor, the recently deceased Hal Riney, to demonstrate the importance of emotion, culture and characters in advertising – and pointed out that in today’s “multi-layered world”, these factors are critical. “You should see a way of using your own culture as a springboard for your work,” he said. “If you do that, it will be relevant, warmer and funnier.”
Goodby also pointed out that creatives must wean themselves away from a reliance on TV. “You just have to force yourself not to start from that platform of a TVC that is so pervasive.”