Creativefest in Manila: A packed two days of outstanding presentations and panel discussions
Creativefest in Manila proved to be a great success with over 650 delegates from agency and client side of the local industry attending the two-day festival.
The first day of the 4As Creativefest saw Burger King’s global Chief Marketing Officer Fernando Machado take the stage and put forward the case for clients and agencies to be braver and take risks as the worst thing that can happen is nothing. If you don’t take risks then all you are doing is helping the market leader in your category get stronger. It was an inspiring and entertaining presentation from Machado who, under his leadership, has seen Burger King named Client of the Year at D&AD in 2016 and Creative Marketer of the Year in Cannes 2017, in addition to being recognized by Adweek as Grand Brand Genius twice.
Prior to Machado taking the stage, delegates were welcomed to the festival by Philippine 4As chairman David Guerrero and Creativefest chair Merlee Jayme. Day one saw a panel discussion on digital, date and media with clients and creatives followed by another discussion on local women leaders and their journey to the top and how they manage family and work commitments.
Then Jollibee CMO Francis Flores and then McCann Worldgroup’s Raul Castro (pictured above) gave different perspectives on agency client relationships and how important working together is to get the best campaigns up.
The final panel saw jury heads giving their perspective on some of the great work they saw from the judging. Why they liked it and why it was awarded.
The evening turned into a huge night with the Adobo Magazine VIP cocktails with Angel Guerrero laying on a great spread of local food and drinks.Then everyone headed out to the Manila nightlife area in in Poblacion for a “Pob-crawl” around 4 cool bars.
The next day saw a video hook up with the US-based Carla Echevarria one of The Philippines’ local industry heroes who is the “Safety Check” Facebook inventor and today she is working at Google as a lead designer.
The digital panel discussion headed by Leigh Reyes followed, before another local hero Budjette Tan from Lego in Denmark took the stage followed by Facebook China’s Kitty Lun .
Mon Jimenez, former Secretary of Tourism of the Philippines and highly respected former adman (pictured above), then gave a presentation on Creative Purpose.
Then top Dentsu Inc Japan creative team Takashi Koyama and Rosuke Sakaki looked into the future and showcased the project that they have been working on. Rather than taking the problem-solving approach, Open Meals “Food Singularity” is creating a whole new market around food by presenting a vision for the future, and collaborating with specialists with various backgrounds including clients, startups, universities and government organizations.
To end the day of sessions professionals from the production and post production industry discussed issues that agencies and clients need to consider in across the production process.
The Kidlat awards concluded Creativefest with TBWA\Santiago Mangada Puno starring – winning both the Best of Show award for “Disgusting Stories” and the overall Agency of the Year title.
