The Tay blog - live from ADFEST

Re-invent may have been this year's theme. But most of work was re-cycled.

Out of the 500 entries that were submitted, it's no surprise that less than 40 pieces made the shortlist. Even less after they were scrutinised before any discussion on metal winners.

Overall, I had a challenging time chairing the Outdoor Lotus, as most of judges were experts in the field, like John Merrifield (sorry no pun intended), a Grand Prix Outdoor winner in a major international show for his work on Adidas. And Guy Rooke, who used to work in Crispin Porter+Bogusky, which produces some of the best out of home creatives. Other judges include Andy Soong, creator of the one and only Cannes Outdoor Grand Prix for Asia, Toru Fujii from ADK Tokyo, Ashish Chakravarty from McCann Erickson Delhi and Trevor Kennedy from Leo Burnett Colombo.

For the first time, Poster and Outdoor are judged separately so anything that was a flat poster stuck somewhere was thrown out. We were on the lookout for truly outdoor pieces. Creative work that managed to use the outside environment. In short, ideas that fitted the right media, with the right message, at the right location.

Right from the start, I didn't want them to be ‘witch hunters' but to be ‘gold miners'. Most of the time, our debate centred on the quality of the idea rather than the authenticity of the work. Because I feel strongly that it's the organiser's responsibility to validate the work.

We used PDAs to calculate the individual scores and openly discussed to see if the work truly deserved to win. The finalists were then ranked in their respective categories, from the highest to the lowest score.

All in all, the standard wasn't high this year; the other jury members echoed this. I was expecting more innovative work that made better use of new media.

Judging was tough but fair. Since only three medals were allowed in each category, we had to deliberate at length if each piece fitted in the right space.

We were quite liberal and moved work round in order to "save" the best pieces.

As usual, the ambient /guerilla category had the highest number of entries.

The judges were far more critical in this category when it came to awarding metal, as it's probably the easiest to "get away".

Work that won made full use of the environment. Videos that were not done well really destroyed the entry, so in future please edit to the bare minimum. Three to five minutes is good enough.

One of my favorite pieces was for ‘Color Tokyo' done for Sony Bravia. Sony produced an interactive indoor/outdoor media experience by combining the web and an entire building. By selecting a color from Sony Bravia's TVC online with a syringe, consumers are able to change the color of Sony's building ‘live'. The actual building is in the center of Tokyo and they can choose from a palette of 16 million colors.

Next year, hopefully we'll see less re-cycled work. Perhaps we should start looking outside of our familiar environment in order to deliver your next award winning outdoor execution.

Tay Guan Hin is regional executive creative director SE Asia, JWT Worldwide. He is also ADFEST 2008's president of the Outdoor Lotus Jury.