Emir Shafri’s Spikes Asia Diary: Day 2
Young & Rubicam Singapore’s Digital Lead Emir Shafri (pictured third on right) is a jury member of the Innovation category at Spikes Asia, here’s his take on day two of the Festival.
Day 2 was truly the day of convergence.
Art and code. Science and tradition. Circuitry and emotion. I was thrilled (and frankly envious) to see how the shortlisted entrants fused different domains together to give birth to their innovations. Of course, some did this fusion better than others, and our job was to find these gems.
In an age where adland oracles often profess how technology, data and digital are kings, what really stood out for us were ideas where the person was at the centre of it all, not technology. In fact, some of best ideas managed to apply tech in a way that was so natural for the user, it’s as if technology moved into the background so humanity could take centrestage. Some of the innovations managed to did this without any cutting edge drones or holograms, but instead with cultural icons that were millennia old.
We also examined how practical and scalable the ideas were. While we may be used to timeframes of a few months when we develop our usual ad campaigns, it was heartening to see that some of the entrants were already thinking where to take their ideas a few years from now, with concrete plans on how to achieve this. That’s after already spending a year or more bringing their ideas to this present state.
Unlike most work in other categories where ideas are supposed to be in their finished state, a lot of the ideas in the innovation category were works-in-progress, and rightly so. With some of the top ideas, we were really excited with the potential impact these ideas will have years from now, not so much on adland, but on the communities that are at the heart of these innovations.
I sincerely hope the innovators will genuinely carry out their ambitious plans, not to fill their trophy shelves, but for the people these promising ideas can touch. That, I feel, is the best award you can win in a business that’s about understanding and communicating to people.
Indeed, day 2 was the day of convergence. Of tech and humanity. Of culture and creativity. But more importantly, of our desires to win, to innovate, and hopefully, to find a larger purpose for what we do.
Photo Caption: From left to right: Kentaro, Issa, Merlee, myself, Cassie and Hisashi at Dentsu Aegis Network and MassiveMusic’s amazing Neuromance party.