Judging AdFest 2022: BBDO Singapore’s Tay Guan Hin

Campaign Brief Asia asks BBDO Singapore’s Chief Creative Officer and AdFest 2022 judge, Tay Guan Hin a few questions about the recently completed award show.

1) What were your overall impressions of the standard of work you saw in the judging this year?
This year, the winners for the Digital, Digital Craft, and Mobile Lotus entries were quite exceptional. Our group awarded creative work with flawless design, masterful execution, and outstanding user experience for the golds and silvers. When we started to judge, we noticed a lot of predictable entries, but as time progressed, the extraordinary work elevated all the way to the top. The digital craft category demonstrated exceptional form and function.

2) What was your favorite ad/campaign from your judging?
My personal favorite was the YAKUSHIMA TREASURE. “ANOTHER LIVE” FROM YAKUSHIMA. It’s different from anything I have ever seen. “ANOTHER LIVE” presents an interactive, browser-based experience to observe a live performance by YAKUSHIMA TREASURE in the virgin banyan forests of Yakushima. This beautifully detailed work of art allowed audiences to participate in an entirely new way of watching a concert, unlike regular video captured with a camera.

Apparently, they staged and recorded a concert in 360-degree surround sound in the banyan forests of Yakushima in one take. Using advanced technology, Dentsu Craft Tokyo collected and reconstructed spatial data and sound image data from the site. Audiences can move up, down, and laterally anywhere in the forest and enjoy the live performance from any perspective, allowing audiences to get close to the artists without any physical constraints.

3) Highlight 2 or 3 other ads/campaigns that stood out for you and explain why?
These winners either solved a complicated problem or made it look easy. The juries were quite unanimous with our decisions with the Golds and Silvers. Here are my top 3 campaigns that stood out for me.

Lion Good News 2020 under the Overall Functional design category in Digital Craft blew my mind. It was created by Nikkei Inc., the Japanesere presentative office of the Cannes Lions. LIONS GOOD NEWS 2020 was designed as a substitute for the canceled show. The website’s interactive and beautifully designed content collected good news stories globally on creativity and PR. Ten papers were issued, each using various fonts and colors to represent how each illustration stood the test of time.

This innovative execution showed an unusual design of the content flying in like an actual leaflet; after reading, the effortless flying sheets of paper float in the foreground and disappear into the background.

The further it goes back in time, the further they decrease, signifying the depth of context.

Moving from left to right, it visualized the time of the ten-year history in a naturally seamlessly coherent manner.

Covid 19 killed the tourism industry. But this fantastic mobile entry in the category of use of data for mobile had a simple yet elegant solution. The “SLOW ROAD” is a beautiful detour map for domestic South Korean travelers. It’s a navigation service that offers a slow but beautiful route instead of the fastest. Jeju Island is one of the most scenic places globally, with designated UNESCO World Heritage sites. Using big data, the system processed thousands of interest points around Jeju, then cross-referenced them from social media and online searches via demographics, weather, and time for a personal travel adventure. It suggested 50 different paths that join famous attractions with hidden scenic spots.

Carbon Thumbprint submitted under Digital Lotus for Integrated digital campaign was in the perfect category. An excellent creative work brought data to life through AR and a digital campaign. Australians don’t know their data usage has a considerable environmental consequence. Deloitte Digital Australia created a measurement of one’s CO2 emissions based on mobile data usage. An AR experience computed and envisioned the quantity, while a digital campaign weighed all online activities in carbon. Was it successful? Over 95,000 Australians converted, canceling 135,000 tonnes of CO2.

4) Where is the best work coming from?
Most of the best work came from Tokyo, Seoul, and Melbourne. I thought Dentsu Tokyo and Chell Worldwide Seoul had a few strong contenders this year. Deloitte Digital Digital Australia delivered multiple winners for the Carbon Thumbprints. I expected to see bigger winners from China and Thailand. Maybe next year?

VIEW CB ASIA’S COVERAGE OF THE WINNERS

VIEW CB ASIA’S COVERAGE OF SPECIAL WINNERS

READ PAUL CHAN’S COMMENTS
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