Claire Davidson’s Adfest Diary: Day 2

By Claire Davidson, executive producer,

Donald Gunn, Founder and Emma Wilke, Managing Director presented Adfest today with the Gunn Report’s Global Index of Creative Excellence in Advertising, highlighting the winners from the past 12 months. 

The most awarded Agency Network of the Year for 2013 was BBDO, for a record 8th year in a row.  A big congratulations to BBDO. Ogilvy and Mather were second, followed by DDB, Leo Burnett and McCann. The most awarded agency in the world was shared by Wieden +Kennedy (Portland, New York) and McCann (Melbourne). Top honors for the most awarded digital agency in the world went to R/GA.  Nike topped the table as the most awarded advertiser in the world, followed by Volkswagen, Axe / Lynx, Coca Cola and Google.

The Sweet Shop was awarded Production Company of The Year for Asia Pacific for 2013.  Whoop Whoop!  Having only been operational with our office in Bangkok for two years this is a remarkable achievement for us.  I am very very proud of the company and my team.  Our own Steve Ayson was also awarded the Number 5 director position in the world (Australia, NZ and Thailand) with Steve’s Carlton Draft “Beer Chase” also being the third top awarded commercial in the world for 2013, behind Metro Trains “Dumb Ways To Die” and Southern Comfort’s “Whatever’s Comfortable – Beach”.  On Friday night we also won Production Company of the Year for the 3rd year in a row at New Zealand’s Axis Awards.  What a great wrap up for us for 2013.

Now, back to more of the Adfest seminars at hand.  Mark Beckhaus, Director of Music and Karla Henwood, Executive Producer for Nylon Studios today brought us “Sticky Music”.  More than ever today when music is catchy and you can’t get it out of your head, you just have to share it.  Beckhaus looked at how advertisers & brands can harness social share-ability of ‘hit’ commercial music, and how utilizing the power of music networks can magnify PR, improve brand awareness and mine the cultural zeitgeist.

People form powerful emotional connections with music.  It touches us on a very deep level, and people share the music they love, regardless of where it comes from.  The phenomenon of sharing pop music is now being replicated with sharing advertising music.

We spent a lot of the session looking at the ‘earworm’ phenomenon.  An earworm is a catchy song or tune that runs continually through a person’s mind.  98% of people experience earworms.  Songs with lyrics account for 73% of earworms, advertising jingles 15% and instrumental music only 7%.  Simple tunes are more likely to get stuck in our heads than complex melodies.  Earworms are part of the human condition.  Earworm triggers are recent music exposure, word triggers, situation and people triggers, stress and mind wanderings.  Earworms are cross-cultural.  Take Psy’s Gangnam Style which has had over 1.9 billion YouTube Views, been in the Top 10 in 30 countries, and had over 3 million downloads.

So how do we create an earworm?  Is it possible to formularise?  There are rules that can greatly increase the chances of creating an earworm.  These include using vocals that are high pitched overall, with a number of pitches in the hook.  Certain lyrics are more effective than others.  The top words used in earworms include oh, love, like, baby, boy.  Rhythm plays an important part in memorability.  Rhythm alone can even be enough, if it’s distinctive.  Many of the world’s most famous songs use the same chords.

And how do we connect earworms and advertising?  Simply we create a unique earworm specifically for a brand.  Make a song with a piece of music that is relevant to the brand.  Look at what musical tribe you are appealing to.  Look at the brand message you want to communicate through music.  This will help you to make a connection to your audience.  This in turn will determine instrumentation and tempo.  Work out what musical styles relate to your brand.  Make the 30 second edit feel like it’s cut from a song-length track.  Nylon recommends avoiding or minimizing the voiceover where possible.  No one remembers the voiceover.  Create an artist from the track – this adds more soul to the project.  So in essence this is how we can make sticky music, have the jingle stick in your consumer’s head and thus, have the brand stick in your consumer’s head.

New technologies have allowed people’s innate desire to share music to take flight.  Harnessing this desire by including effective music can extend the reach of a campaign immensely, but the music has to be right.  It has to be sticky.

Next up Yoshi Matsuura, Strategic Planning Director of TBWA Hakuhodo and R&D Director, Hakuhodo brought us “Welcome to The Global Wonderland”.  Globalisation has accelerated since the start of the 21st century, changing the game and the rules we play.  This in particular applies to the world of communication.  We have many, many great opportunities ahead of us, but there is also great competition.  Rivals today are everywhere, coming from all around the world.

So how do we survive this turbulent revolution?

Up until the 1800’s the key players in our world were countries, up to 2000 it was companies, and today it’s the individual.  Today the world is about connection, collaboration and content.  If content is good enough it can travel the globe across the world – look at campaigns such as Metro Trains “Dumb Ways to Die” and Dove’s “Real Beauty Sketches”.  A global audience has grown.  Clients have changed.  They are organically expanding their networks.  Companies now have a worldwide recruitment system with a focus on skills.  The rise of Asia also has an impact on this globalization and will continue to do so.

With the world changing at this rapid speed we need to change as well.  We need to globalize ourselves and influence the world. Matsuura gave us his six secrets to live in the global wonderland:

    •    Dive out.  Shift out from convention and change your environment.

    •    Embrace difference.  Socio-economic structures of countries, companies, and people are all different.

    •    Rediscover your human instincts.

    •    Be an earth citizen and think from an earth citizen perspective.

    •    Cherish your well and cherish your starting point.  Rediscover the fascinating aspects.

    •    Be generous.  Think generous and act generous.

It was a short day for me today at the speaker sessions, as this afternoon we had our very successful and very beautiful Campaign Brief, Sweetshop, Fin Design & Effects and Gunnery Adfest Sunset Drinks.  Cheers!

Claire Davidson, Executive Producer ASIA & MENA @ The SweetShop, reporting for Campaign Brief Asia at Adfest 2014