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ADFEST, which had been held online since 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, took place March 23–25 this year on site in Pattaya, Thailand.

Four people from the Hakuhodo DY Group were there as jury members. Here they share their impressions of this year’s ADFEST and talk about the winning works.

 

Kazoo Sato
Chief Creative Sustainability Officer, TBWA\HAKUHODO
• Jury President, Design Lotus and Print & Outdoor Craft Lotus
• Jury Member, Innova Lotus and Lotus Roots

This year’s ADFEST was held on site for the first time since 2019. Could you share your impressions with us?

At ADFEST, unlike Cannes, the venues and accommodation facilities are compactly located in one place, so you can share lots of information with festival participants from many different countries and backgrounds. That’s the great thing about it. It’s incredibly stimulating to get away from the office for a while and hang out in Thailand talking about the future of the creative industry while networking. We’d all started to lose sight of the Pole Star, and this experience should help bring it back into focus. My honest impression, though, is that things are still not completely back to normal. It will still take time for attendance to bounce back and the old excitement to return. By the same token, the level of the entries hasn’t fully recovered either, though the works submitted were more hard-hitting than during the pandemic.

How would you describe this year’s Grande winners in the categories you judged? What was the secret to their success?

I judged five categories this year, so I can’t talk about all the winners. But I can’t shake the impression that almost all of them were virtually one-trick ponies. Many of the works did a great job of identifying the challenge, but when it came to actual execution, it wasn’t clear whether they succeeded in solving it (however slick the entry video was). To be more specific, I often felt that a work was still too early along to be submitted. It was still at the embryonic stage and had yet to get results. The role of creative work is to have an impact on business and society. Forgetting that shakes the very foundations of what an advertising award is for and who it serves. Our creativity only means anything when, in the face of a challenge for a company or society, we drive business results or societal change with great ideas and breathtakingly beautiful craftsmanship. And we must never forget it.

Kazoo Sato
Chief Creative Sustainability Officer, TBWA\HAKUHODO

Kazoo Sato began his professional career at a major recording company in 1997. Then, after a stint at a major international advertising agency, he joined TBWA\HAKUHODO in 2009. He has won many awards for big ideas that transcend the bounds of media, including Gold at Cannes Lions, Clio Grand at the Clio Awards, Yellow Pencil at the D&AD Awards, Grand Prix at the ADC Annual Awards, and awards at the Japan Media Arts Festival. Kazoo has served on juries at international awards in such wide-ranging domains as music, design, digital, and promotion, including the Film Jury at Cannes Lions in 2012, the Product Design Jury at Cannes Lions 2017, and the Entertainment Lions for Music Jury at Cannes Lions 2022. He was a JAAA Creator of the Year Medalist in 2011, Campaign Asia-Pacific’s Japan/Korea Creative of the Year in 2013, and Pen’s Creator of the Year in 2019. His hobby is ad watching.

 

Genta Ito
Communication Design Director, Hakuhodo Kettle Inc.
• Jury Member, Digital Craft Lotus, Digital & Social Lotus and Mobile Lotus

This year’s ADFEST was held on site for the first time since 2019. Could you share your impressions with us?

A dialog as opposed to a one-way conversation.

With ADFEST being held on site for the first time since 2019 the jury members and the local support staff seemed a bit at sea at first, not having interacted face to face for so long. But everyone was soon full steam ahead as the judging got under way.

Online, conversations inevitably end up being a one-way affair, with one person doing the talking and the others listening. But when you meet in person, a dialog takes place. Debate among the jury members thus becomes more heated, and you can build a deeper relationship with jury members and participants in other categories as well.

To be honest, I couldn’t help feeling that the turnout was mediocre (especially from Japan). Still, I was reminded that ADFEST is the advertising festival where dialog most comes into its own, because it’s held on site. The very atmosphere of Pattaya fosters lively dialog.

How would you describe this year’s Grande winners in the categories you judged? What was the secret to their success?

If it’s digital, keep it simple.

One thing really struck me. Neither of the two Grande winners in the three categories I judged (no Grande was awarded for Mobile) was the unanimous choice of the jury.

“City Hall of Love” and “Dot Pad” are both undoubtedly marvelous works. But there was debate as to whether they could truly be described as “mind-blowing,” the criterion for the Grande. The reason, I think, is that they tried to do so much that they were a little overcomplicated and abstruse (which could be said of the entries in general). In the ever more advanced and complex digital realm, advertising needs to take a form that simplifies digital technology so sei-katsu-sha* or the target audience will readily accept and act on the message. A case in point is “Knock Knock,” the only entry chosen unanimously (winning the Grande for Humanity).

Genta Ito
Communication Design Director, Hakuhodo Kettle Inc.

Genta Ito began his career at Hakuhodo in 2006. He is a skilled practitioner of integrated communications, an art he mastered through his experience in account service, interactive, working on site at a client, and in strategic planning. He joined Hakuhodo Kettle in 2016. He is proficient in a wide array of fields, from planning business and communication strategies to digital activations, TV commercial production, and media planning and tracking. Genta has won numerous advertising awards including a New York Festivals Advertising Awards Best in Show and a Spikes Asia Grand Prix.

 

F.E. Devi Attamimi
Institute Director, Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living ASEAN
Executive Director, Strategy, Hakuhodo International Indonesia
• Jury Member, Effective Lotus and Entertainment Lotus

This year’s ADFEST was held on site for the first time since 2019. Could you share your impressions with us?

This year, I returned to Pattaya for ADFEST 2023, not as a speaker but as a jury member for the Entertainment Lotus and Effective Lotus categories. It was exhilarating to be back for offline judging, where the discussions truly matter. The diversity of the panel added an enriching element to the experience, with a balanced mix of genders and backgrounds, including agencies and entertainment platforms. We all brought our unique perspectives and biases to the table, resulting in lively and thought-provoking discussions.

As a jury member for the Entertainment category, it was undoubtedly enjoyable to review the works. There weren’t too many entries in the Effective category, but I think there should actually have been more, since there were a lot of entries in other categories that deserved recognition for their effectiveness.

However, regardless of the category, the discussions always returned to the roots of creativity, which is providing a solution. Our aim was to demonstrate how creativity can change and create meaningful impact. While we appreciated the use of technology, we were careful not to let it overwhelm the ideas and insights. Some campaigns scored higher due to their bravery in significantly changing the brand’s direction, while others stood out for showcasing how the agency had fun answering the client’s brief, revealing a good relationship between the agency team and the client.

We also recognized a lot of work that successfully played a role in engaging subcultures. Such solutions that understand sei-katsu-sha’s perspectives deserve recognition. Finally, the use of data played a significant role in many entries, turning hard, cold facts into entertaining and creative solutions, which I personally loved about this year’s judging journey.

How would you describe this year’s Grande winners in the categories you judged? What was the secret to their success?

While we did not select a Grande winner for the Effective Lotus category, we did award a Grande for the Entertainment Lotus category to “Bundy Mixer,” a mixed-gender fantasy league created by rum brand Bundaberg Rum. Although we were judging the Entertainment category, we decided that to be worthy of the Grande, a work had to have the power to change the world. “Bundy Mixer” brilliantly achieved its objective with a sharp twist of idea, and we thought it deserving of recognition for its outstanding execution and contribution to promoting gender equality in sports.

As someone who is passionate about championing equality, I find it refreshing to see a campaign like “Bundy Mixer” that breaks away from the usual clichés and judgmental attitudes that often come with these types of campaigns. “Bundy Mixer” provides a solution that utilizes data to achieve equality without undermining any gender, while promoting honest responses. By liberating people from their biases and relying on cold, hard facts, it made the issue human again. The systematic analysis of statistics allowed for a fair comparison of performance and dispelled any misconceptions about the abilities of female athletes.

One of the things that I particularly appreciated about the Bundy Mixer campaign is that it combined the entertainment factor of games with a dose of reality. While games are typically enjoyed as a form of escapism, this campaign surprises players by awakening them to a reality that many people try to ignore or deny.

F.E. Devi Attamimi
Institute Director, Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living ASEAN
Executive Director, Strategy, Hakuhodo International Indonesia

Devi Attamimi is the first woman and first non-Japanese to head Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living ASEAN. Her leadership has also brought success to Hakuhodo International Indonesia. With colleagues across the network, she has delivered not only business growth, but also prestigious accolades including a Pencil at the D&AD Awards, most awarded Indonesian agency at ADFEST 2017, and Campaign Brief Asia’s Indonesia Creative Agency of the Year in five consecutive years (2017–2021).

Devi was selected as one of Campaign Asia’s Women to Watch 2020. She is Co-Chairwoman of Citra Pariwara, Indonesia’s largest advertising festival; Co-Chairwoman of APMF, the Asia Pacific’s biannual marketing conference; and Co-Chairwoman of the Indonesian Association of Advertising Agencies (P3I), Jakarta.

 

Third Domingo
Chief Network Officer / Chairman and Founder, IdeasXMachina Advertising, Inc.
• Jury Member, Film Lotus, Outdoor Lotus, Press Lotus and Radio & Audio Lotus

This year’s ADFEST was held on site for the first time since 2019. Could you share your impressions with us? How did you see the judging process?

Serving on a jury this year was a wonderful experience. The judging process was very well organized, and the organizers were really accommodating. Overall, it was really impressive. There are, though, a few things I’d suggest to ADFEST for next time.

Judges can choose to (a) consolidate several entries into a single campaign entry and exclude some components or (b) transfer an entry to another category. That’s not a problem if the entry is likely to win a better award as a result. But if the transferred or combined entry isn’t going to win an award anyway, there’s not much point in this procedure. On the contrary, it may actually be unfair to entrants. Some agencies pay and submit multiple entries in multiple categories as a competition strategy. Such agencies may lose a number of chances to win multiple awards this way. A good way to accommodate them, I think, would be to allow them to submit entries as “campaigns.”

Second, shortlisted entries are ranked in each category before the prize winners are chosen, which I think is great. If it’s done properly (which means just that: properly and expeditiously), it greatly simplifies the judging process.

But since juries can already score entries in remote judging, maybe there’s no need to rank the finalists in each category before deciding the prize winners. Those scores could serve as the basis for the ranking, which would speed up the ranking process.

Third Domingo
Chief Network Officer / Chairman and Founder, IdeasXMachina Advertising, Inc.

Third Domingo is the Chairman and Founder of IdeasXMachina. For two years running, in 2015 and 2016, IdeasXMachina won Gold in the Philippines Independent Agency category of the Agency of the Year awards held by Campaign Asia-Pacific, Asia’s leading advertising magazine. The agency also won Silver in 2017. Third himself was selected as one of Campaign Asia-Pacific’s 40 Under 40 in 2016. The average age of IdeasXMachina’s workforce is twenty-something, and Third is making waves as its young and dynamic CEO.

 

Official ADFEST website: ADFEST 2023