Someone perfectly said, ‘young people aren’t the leaders of tomorrow. They are the leaders of both today and tomorrow’.
Visiting Spikes Asia was an afterthought of participating in the ‘young spikes competition’ last year. We finally made it to the event only to be in total awe of what the future of advertising holds. And the future is now. While these events are a great place to network and learn, we saw only a few young leaders from the indian ad industry. The event is booming with ideas, connections and future trends and here are our five key takeaways from day one and two at Spikes Asia especially for all the to-be leaders of our industry.
1. "Speed is the new currency" said Wendy Clark, CEO, DDB. Our first session was a shot of some awe-inspirational points by the boss lady on how bravery, belief and being underestimated can fuel brands, agencies and careers. Creativity is subjective hence our industry has one of highest number of underestimated employees because you and your leader won't always be on the same boat of thoughts. Although Wendy Clark had a way out of it. She believes, when you are underestimated, always use it to fuel your tank and once others lower the bar for you, you just crush their benchmarks. Don’t stop, keep moving.
2. “The main engine is hunger” said Nicholas courant co-chief creative officer, Ogilvy Singapore. How many times have we gone through the phase of ‘I have a great idea, but this is not a great brief’, but to be honest there are no boring briefs, only boring advertisers. Nicholas emphasised on how the youth today is waiting for the right brief to do great work. If that is true, most of an advertiser’s life would be spent waiting.
3. Creativity X Technology - “I am a creative who loves to grow with nowadays technology” that is how Bill Yom the global creative director of Cheil worldwide describes himself. Which is also the mere requirement for any advertising agency. Technology alone, won’t take you anywhere. We’d like to look at it more like a pizza. The base of creativity needs to be great and constant, the toppings can be keep changing with the times.
4. “It took us 2 years to create this video” said an agency folk from Hakuhodo Inc. Persistence and belief are the two biggest ingredient of any great idea. Their 3 minute video for the music band OK GO is worth everyday of the 2 years they spent trying to flawlessly conceptualise and execute this masterpiece.
5. फिर मिलेंगे (See you later). While most of the participants/audience at the international events like Spikes Asia try hard to sync along with the judges or jury, It takes great efforts to be rooted and be yourself at events like these. Of the multiple presentations we saw and sessions we attended, this specific one by Dheeraj Sinha (managing director, India and chief strategy officer, South Asia, Leo Burnett) on the campaign - #RoadsThatHonk will be remembered for a long time.
Creativity comes from anywhere, and so does innovation. Every industry at some or the other point innovates and transforms creating a spike for the rest of the decades to come. The first two days at Spikes Asia clearly witnessed the bend that innovation will bring when merged with creativity for the coming years and how the young leaders are going to lead it.
(Avni Kanakia is manager - innovations and new initiatives and Pratik Hatankar is head of innovations)
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