<font color="#FF3333"><b>AdAsia 2003:</b></font> A showcase of contemporary legends

Powerful ideas and clutter-busting creativity is what delegates were exposed to on the concluding day of AdAsia, thanks to Serpa, Goodby, Droga and Tarsem Singh

What do you get when you cross a Marcello Serpa with a Jeff Goodby, a David Droga with a Tarsem Singh? An overdose of powerful advertising ideas and clutter-busting creativity. And that is precisely what delegates were exposed to on the concluding day of AdAsia 2003, during the course of the session titled ‘Great Campaigns that Build Great Brands'.

The session - chaired by Stefano Hatfield, contributing editor at Advertising Age and Creativity Magazine - began with Serpa (creative director & co-CEO, Almap/BBDO) presenting some instances of good Brazilian advertising. There were some very humourous ads in the showcase, including one for Brahma beer (‘crabs', where a couple of crabs dash across a crowded beach to savour some Brahma) and one for Volkswagen. The second, in particular, was excellent, and goes something like this. A shoe-shop assistant is helping a customer try on a new shoe when his gaze falls upon a sexy Volkswagen cruising down the street. Open-mouthed, the assistant follows the sleek lines of the car till it disappears from view. Dizzy from the experience, the assistant promptly passes out. Cut to the customer who stares at the slumped assistant, then looks at his old shoe, which he is holding in his hand. Gingerly, he raises the shoe to his nose…

"Sex sells in Brazil," Serpa had said earlier during his presentation. Six films for a variety of brands - from Havaianas (footwear) to Pepsi to Volkswagen - were proof enough for anyone who doubted the veracity of the statement. There were enough smouldering smooches, stringy bikinis and never-ending legs to give Baywatch a serious complex, prompting Hatfield to comment, "Brazilian advertising is the least politically correct - which is why its appeal crosses borders and works so well."

Another Brazilian ad that caught attention was one for Skol Beer Nite. The entire ad has shots of bottles of Skol beer going through different stages of packaging in the assembly line, all set to funky dance-bar music. Of course, here, execution was everything. The commercials for Mizuno (performance shoe brand) also had ad folk raving. One Mizuno ad, for instance, had a runner making a 100-meter dash wearing a Nike on one foot, a Mizuno on the other. Each step the runner took, the voiceover said, ‘…Nike in front… now Mizuno in front… Nike… Mizuno…' As the runner reaches the finishing line, the Mizuno-clad foot crosses the line first, proving which brand eventually wins. Totally tongue-in-cheek. The Latin American creative director's showcase also had the ‘Beckham's shirt' and the ‘bow' ads for Pepsi, and many ads for Volkswagen, including the simple yet beautiful ‘double check' commercial. "How much of all this could be copy-tested… it's so much from the heart," Hatfield wondered. Rightly.

Goodby, co-chairman/creative director, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, spoke about the evolution of the famous ‘Got milk?' campaign for the California Milk Processors, and demonstrated why the campaign was such a hit. "We realized that the importance of milk is realized only when milk is not there, which is why the entire focus of the campaign was to show what happens when consumers want milk and can't get any," he said. Goodby said the agency used exaggerated situations and humour (like the chap who dies and goes to lovely heaven only to realize that all the milk cartons in heaven are empty) to highlight the importance of milk.

He also spoke about HP's ‘Invent' campaign and showed some of the advertising for the Saturn. In fact, the commercial that really grabbed us was the one for Saturn, where cars go shopping for consumers - instead of it being the other way around. The entire ad is about cars roaming around, checking out people standing on revolving displays and the like. The ad's logic is that people always find the right cars. Er… we mean the right car finds you, that is.

Publicis' Worldwide Creative Director Droga - who believes that campaigns should be "honest" and should have "a point of view" - used the example of the campaign for the British Army to make his point. "The campaign had to sell the army for what it was, and not as a fancy thing," Droga explained. "Which is why we even used death or the implication of death in the advertising. We needed to raise the caliber of people recruiting for the British Army, which we did with this campaign." The campaign (titled ‘Think again') is all about the possibilities and dilemmas that soldiers are constantly exposed to at the time of battle. "It was honest advertising, and it had a point of view."

Another campaign that Droga spoke about was the one devised for recruitment agency Monster.com. "The human truth about jobs is that there is a lot of anguish and anxiety about jobs in people's minds, and they tend to over-think the implications of their actions," he said. "Our job was to communicate that Monster gives impartial advice on jobs." One Monster ad is all about what goes through the mind of a middle-level employee who is defending one of the goalposts in a friendly office football match. His problem is that his elderly boss (who is playing for the opposite team) is running towards him with the ball, bent on scoring. Should he defend the goal for his team or let the ball through for his promotion, he debates frantically. To his great relief, he is saved from making a decision when a rookie brings the boss down in a tackle. The rookie apologizes and helps the boss to his feet. The boss good-naturedly puts an arm around the rookie's shoulders.

Voila! Our goalkeeper's got the trick to impress the boss. As the elderly boss walks away, our man hurtles across the field and cannons into his retreating superior, sending him flying on the grass… ‘Don't listen to those inner voices,' the Monster voiceover warns. Droga also took the audience through the Lion-winning ‘cartoon kid' ad for the NSPCC (the National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children) and the controversial Club 18-30 advertising, to show how agencies should be selling ideas and not scripts to clients. "We are hung up with selling clients scripts, while we should be selling strong media-neutral ideas instead. Only then will we create powerful long-term advertising," he said.

Tarsem Singh's reel was certainly one of the high points of AdAsia 2003. The reel contained some of the greatest work done by Singh, including the ‘voodoo', ‘blind man' and ‘pool' ads for Levi's, the ‘good versus evil' ad for Nike, the ‘swimming elephant' and ‘passion has a colour' ads for Coke and last year's ‘elephant tower' ad for Pepsi. As already mentioned in another story run by agencyfaqs!, Hatfield termed the reel "visually arresting and emotionally engaging", while a visiting delegate could only gasp, "An orgy for the eyes." Such is the sweep of Singh's canvas.

Take the ‘good versus evil' ad for Nike (Singh, in an aside, told the audience that that ad had actually been aired as a seven-second edit in Japan!). Or the ‘gladiator' ad for the same brand. The manner in which a modern American street becomes a Colosseum - in the story of a boy on a skateboard being chased by a Roman gladiator - is simply amazing. Similarly, the Crouching Tiger-like choreographed action in the Mountain Dew ad is stunning. In fact, such was the magnetism in Singh's reel that his suggestion to the backroom boys that his reel be switched off half way was greeted with protests from the delegates. And after the pre-lunch session came to a close, Singh ran a reel of his most recent work, compiled over the past year - on popular demand.

For ad folk in this country, day five was well worth the wait. © 2003 agencyfaqs!