ADFEST: Mangada gives AdFest a big wrap

It was no surprise to anyone present at this year’s AdFest in Pattaya: there was a significant drop in the number of delegates and entries, at least 40% from the previous year. 

The organizers mentioned this fact on the first night of the awards. Jimmy Lam, AdFest president, even joked at one point that the upside to this is that there won’t be long lines for lunch! Despite the attendance, AdFest still felt like THE festival of the region. 

Putting heft into a true festival was the presence of John Hegarty, Mark Tuttsel, Piyush Pandey and Akira Kagami. Neither did the quality of the speakers wane. Notably engaging on the first day was Nick Souter’s ‘How to Build a Whole-brained Agency.’ 

Defying the convention of presenting award-winning work to make a point, Souter brought along with him multicolor charts to illustrate an interesting discovery that defied the accepted belief of the right brain left brain function. The audience was captivated.

The discussion on How to Innovate Ourselves Out of This Downturn was also insightful particularly on the point that agencies shouldn’t see themselves as client’s business partners, but rather as part of client’s business. 

John Ziegler’s ‘Can Gossip Sell Products?’ uncovered something we all knew but never gave much attention:  gossip is our business!  The ebullient presenter, Jessica Greenwod, made the topic on the ‘Art of Two-Track branding’ more interesting.

Awards given out seemed less than previous years (our agency thankfully brought home a metal for the country). It was quite tough particularly on print and poster.  Someone close to the jury speculated that it was probably necessary so as to flush out scam work as toxins are during colonic irrigation.  An early favorite of mine, a print campaign from JWT Shanghai romped off with practically every major award in its medium. 

The work was an elegant execution of traditional Chinese paintings but when seen up close is a depiction of what urban decay has done to China’s natural resources. Brilliant.  Winners in Craft on print and TV were a showcase of great and hard-to-imagine-scam work from the region and were showered with more metals than any other category.

Sure the numbers were less this year.  In fact I was reminded of the AdFest five years ago – a bit cozier, which isn’t a bad thing. Surely this shall pass, as we too hope for the global economy.  But one thing’s for certain – delegates know how to party, as evidenced at the Kodak event at the Sheraton, which according to one of the organizers, my friend Jane Albito, had the same number of guests as last year!  Here’s hoping everyone made a silent toast to a bigger year for the AdFest in 2010!