Last night at the first of two Award Presentations, Vinit Suraphongchai, Chairman and co-Founder of ADFEST, reflected on how the Asia Pacific’s advertising industry has evolved over the past two decades. He also revisited some of the TV commercials that put Asia on the creative map.
Here’s what he said:
“First of all I cannot believe that ADFEST IS 20 years old, and secondly, what to say about it in 15 minutes or less?
Well, let’s start with our objectives in 1998, when the first ADFEST took place. Advertising is something imported to Asia, something we borrowed, so there is a danger of perpetual imitation, even today. And the biggest fear is that we might lose our identity in the process.
As such, our objectives when we launched ADFEST were to raise the standard of creativity in advertising, and to encourage greater use of one’s own heritage and culture.
It seems that from the beginning most of us were very much aware of our culture and heritage. Some of these ads are indeed created 20 years ago. I have to say that right from the beginning works from India always retained their distinctive Indian characteristics, no danger here.
Today, local heritage is alive and well, and our job at ADFEST is simply to encourage and maintain awareness of it. In fact we have an award category called the Lotus Roots. The name speaks for itself.
You can never talk about advertising without touching on humor. Sometimes I think humor is often specific to that country. And Japanese humor is quite unique, I think.
Many years ago Thailand was famous for their funny ads and they were all very funny, but suddenly, it is all gone, they simply looked too similar to each other.
We are also witnessing the birth of social awareness and responsibility – a trend that was not there a number of years before. It is of course social advertising which has evolved beyond the corporate advertising that we used to know.
One cultural trait that many Asian people are missing is from Australia and New Zealand. They have a unique ability to laugh at themselves. I think many nations in Asia take themselves too seriously. (I don’t want to be political here but if you look at some footage from North Korea, you would know what I mean!)
I want to stop here and make the point. To be able to laugh at oneself is a sign of self-confidence, an entirely different way of looking at oneself and the world.
To sum it up, I think we are very lucky to live in the Asia Pacific region, with so much diversity, and a richness of culture that is alive and well. I would like to challenge China and Korea to compete more strongly here. These are strong countries economically and producing some very famous TV series, but let us see more winners from them at ADFEST.
I have been talking about awards just now but let me give you one word of caution.
ADFEST is NOT just an Award Show, it is much more than that. It is a festival of learning, about advances in production technology, about the progress of advertising in the region and thanks to the Gunn Report, also in the world. It is about listening to gems of knowledge from experts in their chosen fields, about seeing and being inspired by the best works everywhere. Last but not least it is also about meeting people new and old. It is about a few precious days of breaks from the office, a time to relax, to refresh and reflect.
It is time for me to reflect, too. We at ADFEST consider ourselves as primarily a public service provider, providing a forum of knowledge and entertainment to people in this industry in this region.
Have we done what we set out to do? I like to think so. I hope you agree.”
Watch the video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSGaBMEyXjc
