This weekend saw the 18th annual Adfest 2015 Awards take place at PEACE, Royal Cliff Hotels Group in Pattaya, Thailand. Here we'll be running through a few of the most notable wins.
Young Lotus
Abigail Montana and Margarita Salvador from Lowe Philippines in Manila, were the winners of this year’s Young Lotus trophy, which they collected at the first of two Award Presentations on Friday night last week (20 March). They were one of 14 teams competing in the Young Lotus Workshop hosted by the Dentsu Aegis Network. This year's brief was to create a campaign in 24 hours that they thought would help them new a job at their dream agency. The duo also won the Young Lotus Popular Vote, which was determined after the ‘Dentsu Aegis Network Presents Young Lotus 2015 Fresh Blood’ Speaker Session on the same day when delegates were invited to vote for their favourite team. The other four finalist teams were Kroekkiat Chanthakitnukul and Menaka Chakritthakul from Leo Burnett Thailand in Bangkok, Sahil Monish Gunesekere and Tara Stephanie Weerasinghe from Grant McCann Erickson in Colombo, Sarah Ramadhania Putri and Reza Putranta from the Xion Advertising Agency in Jakarta and Alan Choong and Wendy Aw from TBWA Singapore.
Abigail Montana and Margarita Salvador from Lowe Philippines in Manila, were the winners of this year’s Young Lotus trophy
Ted Lim, regional chief creative officer for Dentsu Aegis Network Asia Pacific, who was co-chairman of this year’s Young Lotus Workshop alongside Dick van Motman, chairman and CEO for Dentsu Aegis Network Southeast Asia, said “Advertising is a tough business and as you grow more experienced, you face a lot of rejections.” As a result, he says “After a while senior creative get jaded and they don’t bother to try new, dangerous things anymore, whereas young people don’t know better.” He believes that “It’s very important to get the brightest and bravest young people into the business, and a forum like this is great because it focuses on young creatives and what they can bring to the table.”
Lotus Legend
The theme for this year's Adfest was “Be Bad,” a theme that suited Lotus Legend winner Neil French down to a T. The controversial, boundary pushing advertising legend was unable to attend the presentation, so it was collected by Adobe Magazine publisher and chief editor Angel Guerrero, who has known French since he started his career in Singapore back in the 1980's. Guerrero said “Neil is the legend of legends and can be credited with bringing Asian creativity into the limelight. He was a fantastic mentor and would drive everyone to deliver award-winning work. In fact he was meticulous at keeping score of awards won by creatives.”
Neil French was awarded the Lotus Legend title at this year's Adfest
French made his name and built his legend throughout the 70's, 80's and 90's in Singapore at agencies such as Ogilvy & Mather, Batey Ads and The Ball Partnership. Some of his most famous work includes campaigns for Chivas Regal, Kaminomoto Hair Tonic and XO Beer, a fake beer that was so successfully promoted, people were actually asking to buy it in bars. He returned to Ogilvy in 1995 as regional creative director and was named worldwide creative director for the agency in 1998, rising to the same title for the WPP before he resigned in 2005. Now in its fourth year, Lotus Legend is given in honour of long-serving creative excellence in the region. Previous Lotus Legends have been Akira Kagami (2012), David Droga (2013) and Yasmin Ahmad (2014).
Special Awards
The Special Awards are compiled from the tally of ADFEST Lotus Awards won throughout the festival. Agency of the Year for 2015 was awarded to Dentsu Inc., Tokyo, with the agency also named as Interactive Agency of the Year. Leo Burnett won Network of the Year, meanwhile, with Direct & Promo Agency of the Year going to Whybin\TBWA Group, Melbourne. Finally, Production Company of the Year was awarded to Tohokushinsha Film Corporation, Tokyo and Advertiser of the Year went to Suntory.
As for the rest of the winners? There are far too many to warrant going into any further detail here, but you can check out the FULL 2015 WINNERS LIST for a handy look into the specific winners and losers of the weekend.
