SPIKES ASIA: A Platform for Creative Young Minds

Festivals promote diversity, creativity breaks established patterns. Spikes Asia is where the region's creative communications community come together to celebrate advertising talents, debate the industry's key issues, update their knowledge, network with industry professionals and be creatively inspired. I had the opportunity to attend this year's festival as a "Young Spikes Competitor" for being the champion (Team The Daily Star) of Cannes Lions Edit Competition Bangladesh 2015, organised by Bangladesh Brand Forum. 

From avant-garde seminars by the industry's most inspiring speakers to splendid networking events, training, and showcasing of the region's best creative work – the spectacular three-day festival (September 9-11) was held in Singapore. It was all about discovering new and interesting perspectives that influence current advertisement trends.

The content programme of this event was divided into three stages: inspiration, discovery and silent. 

The inspiration stage focused on getting a fresh perspective of driving creative communications with varied talks from some of the world's most inspiring speakers. Sessions in this stage included speakers from YouTube, Facebook, Grey Group, Google, Twitter, BBC and many other top brands of the world. Facebook's head of Creative Shop, APAC said that a three second attention span in Facebook can be vital for advertising in his session on "Creativity in a mobile world". The head of brand strategy, Asia Pacific of Twitter, Steve Kalifowitz asked the participants to stand out by fitting in, while describing the power of #now.

The discovery stage was an innovative one, where the region's most exciting innovators gave unique insights into the future of tech and biggest creative leaders shared their experiences and lessons that drive creativity. 

The most creative stage, however, was the silent one, where one discovered practical take-home tips covering industry's biggest challenges and trends through headphone sessions. Some interesting sessions in the silent stage were "Smart solutions driven by data insights," "Creativity matters – for business, for change, for good" and "Understanding your client's zodiac and find happiness."

Best advertisements of the region including press ads, outdoor communications, integrated marketing campaign and digital marketing contents were showcased at the event. Moreover, there were out of the box kiosks from Instagram, Ogilvy & Mather, Panorama Stock, etc. At the Instagram booth one could take photos manipulated by optical illusions that showed your rotated pictures at 90 degrees. SoftBank Robotics introduced "Pepper", the world's first personal robot to the delegates of Spikes Asia at their stall. Pepper is the first humanoid robot designed to live with humans. Young Spikes competition on media, integrated, Facebook Hackathon and digital marketing was also held during the festival where participants had to solve real marketing cases. At the end of the festival, the prestigious Spikes Asia Award ceremony was held.

Spikes Asia is a huge platform for young creative minds of Bangladesh to meet inspiring leaders and other young delegates from around the globe. As Manuela Garcia from University of Navarre, Pamplona, Spain, whom I met at Spikes, said, "The festival allowed me to engage with different ways of creativity, given the fact that participants came from all over Asia and the Pacific."

The writer is a young marketing professional who is living in this world because there are brands everywhere.