Spikes Asia has long been a high-profile forum for creatives to get together to view and celebrate the best work from around the region, and to explore the industry’s biggest trends. Now clients are getting into the mix.
For the first time this year at Spikes Asia in Singapore, J. Walter Thompson Asia Pacific and Spikes Asia partnered to Think Tank, a one day, closed-door program event held on Sept 9 for 18 senior regional marketing directors from a range of global and regional companies.
Think Tank has been a fixture of Dubai Lynx since 2013; this is the first time it was held in Asia.
The focus this year was on digital marketing. Social media, mobile apps and other online platforms have upended the old publishing models and news cycles and the road ahead is far from clear. Indeed, attendees peppered the speakers with questions, looking for new rules to the digital landscape.
Terry Savage, Chairman of Lions Festivals, introduced the session, which was moderated by Elena Sukacheva (below), Managing Director of Global Content Solutions and Global Events at The Economist Group.
Savage said of the program, ““The J. Walter Thompson Think Tank is exactly the sort of initiative that helps the industry address the complexities of the world we live in today. The opportunities to deep dive and question the way forward in a unique forum such as this Is an invaluable addition to the Spikes program.”
Speakers included Angela Morris, Executive Planning Director of J. Walter Thompson Australia, and Alistair Leathwood, Executive Director of TNS, who unveiled “Participation – Beyond the Hype,” a report based on a big regional survey on online participation.
The bottom line, said Morris, was that brands need to stop using online participation as a key performance indicator: “Stop giving agencies a brief that say I want a participation idea. Ask us to deliver an idea that engages people’s interest. And participation can be at the back of that.”
Tom Doctoroff, CEO of J. Walter Thompson Asia Pacific, laid out the fast-changing content world, while underscoring that the basic tenets of advertising remain – that even today, or maybe especially today, content needs to be true to a brand idea and ultimately change buying behavior.
Google’s Mike Glaser talked real time marketing and mobile devices. He shared graphs that showed online searches spiking right after TV commercials aired during big events like the Super Bowl in the US, urging marketers to run online campaigns concurrently to catch those spikes.
Meanwhile, Twitter’s Steven Kalifowitz noted that people are spending seven out of every eight minutes on their smartphones in apps, not browsers, so ads need to be targeted at apps too.
Christine Andersson, Managing Director of Hyper Island Singapore, discussed re-organizing business teams to be more agile to get ahead in a digital world.
Finally, Neil Stewart, Head of Agency, APAC for Facebook warned marketers against “lazy targeting, creepy targeting” on Facebook.
Just as Indian television has become overrun with ads that turn off viewers, he said, Facebook sometimes serves up ads that irritate users because they already use a certain product or service.
One marketer who attended Think Tank, Pallavi Chopra, Senior Brand Director of India’s RedBus, said the session was “very, very enriching” and “well worth the time spent.” Adding, “We’ve all been talking this digital language, but the conversation is often about the tools –what I found interesting at this session was that the whole focus on communication.”
— Find more pictures from Think Tank at Spikes Asia 2015 below.
