Pat Baron’s Adfest Diary – day three

Pat Baron, executive creative director at McCann, Melbourne was on the Film Lotus & Radio Lotus jury at Adfest, in Pattaya, Thailand. He writes exclusively for Campaign Brief.

Adfest 2015, it’s a rap. It’s the morning after the awards ceremony and it’s time to head home to Melbourne. There was a lot BAD to like last night as our Film & Radio Jury President Bechara Mouzannar, Chief Creative Officer for Leo Burnett MENA, announced the winners. The jury made the call not to award a single Gold which meant no Grande this year. According to Bechera, “The radio campaigns we heard at ADFEST this year were not as insightful as the films we judged, I would have liked to see more rigorous and insightful work entered into this category.”

We did hear some very good campaigns from the region and out of Australia in radio. We did though award silver awards to Leo Burnett Sydney for Bundaberg Rum ‘Men Like Us Like: Polar Bear/Tasting/Brave’ and Impact BBDO Dubai for Travel Insurance ‘Lebeau/Pedro/Timmy’. In summary Bechera called for more story telling in radio, to better understand and utilise the unique power the media offers creatives.

“The Film Lotus Jury was fairly unanimous in terms of which films we felt should be recognized and honored with awards this year,” Mouzannar said. Very true. Though it wasn’t without some disagreement in the room. The jury felt the overall quality of film and storytelling wasn’t as strong as previous years and there was no ground breaking work in the category. Bechera said, “There is a wonderful history of storytelling in Asia, and the films that did win a Film Lotus this year were really different and told in an exciting way.” My thoughts are that the craft evident in Film throughout Asia remains as impressive and innovative as ever.

We awarded 12 Bronze, 12 Silver and 2 Gold but no Grande again in Film. The two Gold awards were won by Wase-Be Advertising Inc. Tokyo for Freshly Ground Coffee with the Creamiest Milk ‘Farewell’ and Lowe China, Shanghai for Buick ‘Human Traffic Sign’. Most of you will be familiar by now with Traffic Signs but check out “Farewell” on the Adfest website.

McCann Melbourne had another positive night winning an Effective Lotus for L’Oreal Paris ‘The Winged Eye’ and a Branded Content & Entertainment Lotus for Tiger Air ‘Tiger Air – Infrequent Flyers Club’ in Best Integrated Campaign. That was on top of the previous evening’s Gold for ‘Tiger Air – Infrequent Flyers Club’ in Direct. A couple of Bronze’s topped of a successful start to the year for our agency and hopefully a road sign of good things to come. 

Farewell Adfest, we leave with BAD memories and BAD friends. We came to participate and learn. Now we leave inspired. Thank you.