Spikes Asia gears up for next week’s festival – Australia 4th most entries with record 309

A total of 3,058 entries from 22 countries will be competing at this year’s Spikes Asia Festival, which kicks off on Sunday at Suntec City in Singapore, which is a 14% increase on last year.

Highest growth has occurred in the TV/Cinema Craft, Radio and Direct & Sales Promotion competitions. India is the country with the highest number of entries with 452 entries, followed by Singapore with 379, Japan on 333 and Australia with 309 entries.

Commenting on the entries, Philip Thomas, CEO of Cannes Lions, joint organisers with Haymarket of Spikes Asia said, “This year we have seen growth across practically all categories, and in some areas the entry levels have more than doubled. Awards provide recognition, inspiration and motivation and we are delighted with the support the agencies are giving to Spikes Asia, now the largest awards in the region. With a record number of attendees expected, Spikes Asia is proving to be the leading industry event to attend.”

Delegate registrations are still being taken throughout this week buthave already hit the 1000 delegate mark and Festival organizers expectthis to grow to at least 1200 or 1300 by the time the Festivalcommences. Delegate numbers have been helped this year for two reasons:AdFest’s cancellation of their March Festival due to political unrestin Thailand, and the new reduced Spikes Asia fee level this year thattargets clients and students.

“The idea for our regionalFestival strategy was to build festivals that allowed people who maynever get to Cannes or could not get there at this point in theircareer to experience the amazing learning and Networking opportunitythese events deliver,” said Spikes Asia Festival chairman Terry Savage (pictured).

“Cannes is expensive and we wanted to achieve drill down into the widest base possible in our regional events. After running Dubai Lynx for three years we consulted with the industry and reduced the price to enable more participants to come. This was so successful in Dubai, where we doubled the number of delegates, we decided the same philosophy should apply to Spikes. Make the price point such that the learning and inspiration these events give was available to as wide a base as possible from as many countries as possible.”

This year’s Festival certainly boasts a world-class line up of speakers, including Sir Martin Sorrell, David Lubars (BBDO New York, pictured left by CB at Cannes this year), Bob Greenberg (RGA), Paul Kemp Robertson (Contagious), Bill Rosen (Arc Worldwide), Rei Inamato (AKQA), novelist and former Australian adman Bryce Courtenay, David Jones (Worldwide CEO of Euro RSCG), Howard Draft Worldwide (CEO of Draft FCB), Akira Kagami (Dentsu), Charles Wigley (BBH), Paul Heath (Ogilvy) and Andrew Robertson (Worldwide CEO BBDO).

Savage believes the market has responded well by wanting to be at the Festival in terms of both speaking and visiting: “We will have an open plan so that the speakers can be viewed from anywhere in the hall – the boxes of last year have gone… we will have a Cannes retrospective on the Sunday looking at the great work from Cannes in 2010 and we have condensed the Festival into a tightly packed two and a half days.

Last year’s criticism of Suntec City was listened to by Savage who said they looked at relocating to one of Singapore’s new Casinos this year but they were not able to do site visits before the booking period was required.

“Next year we will certainly look at them again. We are open minded we want what we consider is the best available venue in Singapore for this event.

“On a social level we have retained The Networking After Dark event where our delegates will visit five different agencies for a party, plus the Award ceremony and closing Gala. This year The Award ceremony will be at the prestigious Esplanade Theatre. Fact is however that these events are now more about inspiration and learning than anything else. You go there to learn because at a time when the pace of industry change is so rapidly you must be up to speed on everything or you become irrelevant.”

“Be it Cannes, Eurobest, Dubai Lynx or Spikes the one thing we know is that our delegates must take learning away from them. These Festivals are no longer about just a good time they are about knowledge and a good time and the two are not mutually exclusive. Our mission in life is to inspire, educate and make advertising a more creatively driven environment given that creativity works – it works for our clients – it works for the consumers and it works for people who work in our business.”

The winners will be announced and honoured during the Spikes Asia awards ceremony that will be held during the evening of Tuesday 21 September at the Esplanade Theatre, followed by the After-show Party at IndoChine Waterfront.