Luke Hawkins Spikes Asia Diary: Day Two

Clemenger BBDO Sydney creative director Luke Hawkins is in Singapore sitting on the Film, Print & Publishing, Print & Outdoor Craft jury at Spikes Asia. Here’s his report on Day Two of the judging.

Last night all the jurors got together for the welcome dinner here at the Mandarin Oriental. The place was packed with people from all over the region and it was a great chance to meet jurors from other categories and get to know those I am judging with a little better. They’re a great bunch comprising of our president Tony Granger (Global CCO – Y&R Global), Damon Stapleton (CCO – DDB NZ), Satit Jantawiwat (CCO – JWT Bangkok), Troy Lim (ECD – Publicis Singapore), Jody Xiong (CCO – And Creative Lab China), Spencer Wong (Creative Chairman – McCann Hong Kong) and last but not least Miwako Hosokawa (CD – Dentsu Tokyo) who wins this year’s Grand Prix for nicest human.

Today kicked off with the reveal of the initial film shortlist. It’s a healthy looking list but there’s a bit of culling to do and some more voting to establish rankings which takes up most of the morning. It’s the first time we’ve all seen the entries together after being split into two groups yesterday. There are a few standout pieces I hadn’t seen before and a noticeable shift in excitement as we reach the pointer end of things.

My main observation after day two is that no matter how much an insight or idea resonates, having work that follows the trends I outlined in yesterday’s diary post (pulling on the heart strings and/or real world experiments) is a clear disadvantage. It feels a little harsh on a couple of the entries but it’s the reality of placing that style of execution in front of a jury hungry to see stories that are told in ways we haven’t really seen before.

We settle on a very solid looking shortlist after lunch and move onto Print & Publishing and Print & Outdoor Craft. Again, a little culling is required so we review the lowest scoring entries and tighten things up a bit, but overall it’s a powerful body of work. There are a few really strong categories, Illustration in Print Craft comes to mind as particular standout, which will make for an interesting day tomorrow when we determine the metal.

Once we’d wrapped for the day our president Tony kindly offered to shout us a few drinks at Raffles, the birthplace of the Singapore Sling. After a unanimous ‘fuck yeah’ we found ourselves there 15 minutes later with a table full of pink drinks and Tony holding court with some epic ad tales from back in the day. It’s a great couple of hours and we leave excited and ready to get stuck into day three.