COLLiDE AT ADFEST 2025 – day 1
ADFEST 2025 has opened its doors at PEACH, Royal Cliff Hotels Group in Pattaya, Thailand, welcoming 783 delegates from 55 cities attending the three-day festival from 20th – 22nd March 2025. There is a packed program full of ideas and inspiration, featuring 55 back-to-back speaker sessions, interactive workshops, an exhibition of all the entries submitted for the Lotus Awards as well as the presentation of the awards themselves. This year’s theme, “COLLiDE” provides the perfect environment where delegates can engage with and discover new ideas and inspiration from content, colleagues and peers throughout the event.
Kicking off Day 1 at ADFEST 2025, Guan Hin Tay, APAC Regional Director from The One Club for Creativity explores the moments of friction when the collision of different worlds and cultures collide. His session is called The One Club for Creativity: Where Worlds Collide.
Christian Greet, Creative Director at Cirkus took to the stage next with his session Artificial Insanity, to help delegates navigate the use of AI technology in advertising and help them understand it better.
Following on and continuing ADFEST’s COLLiDE theme, Creative Expression of Cultural Collision was presented by Seiya Matsumiya & Eric Reiff from Black Cat White Cat Music. These two used musical projects to explore the way that innovation is awakened when contrasting forces come together to reveal deeper layers of creativity.
Jumping shift, Rob Sherlock from Yefiro Group moderated a group to discuss how creative entrepreneurship collides with the commercial reality of building and selling an agency. The group included George Kypraios from Yefiro Group, Randy Duax from Stagwell Asia Pacific, Emma Daines from Fin Design + Effects and Dissara Udomdej from Yell Bangkok gave delegates useful insights for Buying and Selling an Agency: The Ultimate Creative and Commercial Collision
The last session before lunch was The Collision of Sound and Vision. This session was given by David Guerrero from BBDO Guerrero, Nick Wood of Syn Music and Arthur Tsang from BBDO Greater China.
After lunch, Drowning in Content: Embracing the Era of Abundance brought together two seasoned industry voices in Alexei Golob & Paul Copeland from The Mill. They tackled some of the most pressing questions facing the industry today, including content quantity vs. quality, the challenge of prioritising data or creativity and how to deliver artistic vision when presented with shrinking budgets and timelines.
The Mill session was followed by an all-female group discussion, moderated by Valerie Madon and including Siddhi Yadav Machado, Preet Kaur & Barbara Bian from McCann Worldgroup. The session, “What Happens when Generational and Cultural Norms Collide?” explored how to unlock the potential of young female creative talent across Asia and retain them in the industry, when currently only 24% of creative directors worldwide are female.
Next up was Thomas Hongtack Kim & Saffaan Qadir from Paulus, who presented: “Logic to Magic: The Alchemy of Technology and Creativity”. Their session provided delegates with how to use technology to power solutions, fusing technology and creativity to create those “WOW” moments that great works delivers.
Continuing the theme of creative application, Carlos Camacho & Belynda Sim-Mak from GUT Asia looked at brave work. The session called “When Bravery and Business Collide” provided real examples that demonstrate that bravery means business for clients and the ad industry.
Finally, the day’s events on the main stage concluded with “The Power of Fast, Flawed and Fierce Content”, presented by Pei Ling Ho of Publicis Chemistry. In his thought-provoking session he proposed that raw, scrappy, fast-turnaround content is thriving because it’s immediate, culturally tuned and unpredictable, which gets audiences to sit up and listen.
BREAK OUT STAGE
Simultaneously with the main stage speaker sessions, ADFEST’s Breakout Stage has scheduled a full broadcasting schedule over three days of the festival. The program includes the INNOVA Lotus Shortlists Presentation on Thursday, March 20th, followed by INNOVA and Lotus Roots Screening in the afternoon. On Friday, 21st March and Saturday, 22nd March, delegates can see the Juries Insights for the different Lotus Awards categories, ending with the Winners Showcase from the Friday night’s Awards Presentation on Saturday afternoon.
SEVEN INTERACTIVE WORKSHOPS
At ADFEST 2025, in addition to attending many and diverse speaker sessions and viewing the huge exhibition of entries, delegates can register for seven different interactive workshops.
On the afternoon of Thursday, 20th March, Steve Davies from Advertising Producers Association (APA) and the Commercial Film Producers of Europe (CFPE) will be running “The World Producers Summit”, which brings the region’s top producers together to gain valuable insights on the production industry, by brainstorming possible solutions to common issues and exploring new ways of working. This is a welcome annual event at ADFEST that continues the culture of inclusivity and collaboration within the industry.
The World Producers Summit will be closely followed by a pre-registered session, “About Connection Producers in Asia: Unlocking Production Collaboration Opportunities”, allowing a better understanding of the local production execution insights in the Asian Region & initiating potential production collaboration projects. This discussion session was moderated by Lien Dang and Yann Williot from ME Group.
On Friday, 21st March, in the morning, delegates can join the “Trend Immersion Workshop”, run by Paul Drake of D&AD. They will learn how to spot trends and use different techniques to apply to their creative process.
In the afternoon, Christian Mix-Lenzer, Emika Kusunoki and Ian Nagano from Tracks and Fields will be running Culture, Context, Curation & Craft: Unlocking the Formula for Brand Music Success. Delegates will learn how brand music & sound identities and strategies are developed and applied and work on a potential musical identity for ADFEST.
On Saturday, 22nd March, the first workshop of the morning is About How to Master Duration. 6 Seconds To 600 Seconds. Vishal Sagar from Black White Grey, Gurgaon will help delegates learn how to tailor stories for different timeframes and construct stories for various duration lengths.
The second workshop on Saturday morning is Strategy isn’t the Enemy: How to Elevate Creativity & Deliver Results. Nicole Ingra from Ingra Labs, Barcelona will show how strategy can elevate creativity and make campaigns more memorable.
The final workshop for ADFEST 2025 will be in the afternoon on Saturday, 22nd March, called Shape My Portfolio. Powered by McCann Group and headed by Valerie Madon, delegates can register for a 30-minute one-on-one session to discuss and improve their portfolio and get helpful tips on what employers look for when hiring creative talent. Up to six sessions are available and will be provided on a first-come-first-serve basis.
ADFEST PRODUCTION HUT
ADFEST 2025 has a dedicated space for production, post and visual effects, digital, data and technology companies to present their specialist services to the creative industry, providing a unique networking forum for delegates and exhibitors alike.
There are eleven exhibitor booths including eight from Bangkok, including: Benetone Films, Bullet Production, Chubcheevit Studio, Kantana Post Production, Number 24 x Shutterstock, The Studio Park, YGGdrazil Group and 80Root.
Other exhibitors include Black Cat White Cat Music, Primary Color Music and Tracks and Fields from Tokyo.
LOTUS ROYALE LOUNGE
ADFEST loves welcoming back old friends. The Lotus Royale Lounge at ADFEST is a meeting space for the festival’s most loyal delegates who have attended the festival at least three times. VIPs will have access to the VIP Delegate Registration line, VIP zoning at the award presentations, a VIP table at ADFEST parties and priority registrations for workshops. At the Lotus Royal Lounge, they will enjoy benefits including scheduled massage services, coffee, soft drink, and snacks. The Lotus Royale Lounge is located at the 2nd floor of PEACH, to the left of the escalator.
SPONSORS
ADFEST’s Silver Sponsors this year are long-standing supporters of ADFEST: The Department of International Trade Promotions (DITP), Ministry of Commerce, Thailand that promotes, assists and develops Thailand’s international trade, London International Awards, one of five global shows recognised by WARC and the shots family of creative resources, including Source, shots and Slate.
ADFEST is also proud to be associated with its other generous sponsors, including Boonrawd Brewery Co., Ltd., Dentsu, Tohokushinsha Film Corporation (TFC), Tracks & Fields, Black Cat White Cat Music, Chubcheevit Studio, Number 24x Shutterstock, McCann Worldgroup, Young Director Award and LA Shorts International Film Festival.