Listen to the signal and not the noise.
It’s been a crazy year since the last Festival of Ideas back in 2014 with the theme of “The Truth in Advertising”. This year, in a somewhat related note to IMMAP’s theme of Disruptive Economies, Adobo Magazine went for “Driving the Creative Economy”.
They had a roster of amazing speakers, and quite honestly it was a splendid talk. It’s sad it lasted longer than planned, but everything is a learning process. There wasn’t much improvement from last year’s registration hassle (long queues lead to indeterminably long waiting times which then extended the event beyond set time frames). It was the only frustrating thing about the event – it needed a little bit more innovation when it comes to registration. Perhaps digitizing the system would be better.
SESSION 1: What Can the World of Design Learn from Silicon Valley
The first session was by Kenneth Cobonpue and Manny Ayala. They started off with a discussion on how great creatives have their own prodigies, and sometimes each prodigy earns their own prodigy. Creativity is a cycle, and is further cultivated by honing another’s brand of creativity. To be successful in the industry – no, in all types of industries – having a mentor helps out a lot. This couldn’t be stressed out even further as this was also discussed in last year’s Adobo FOI, although briefly.
SESSION 2: Creativity: The Success Currency
The first session was followed by Lou Dela Peña and Paolo Mercado – both Filipinos working abroad. They discussed how Creativity is some sort of currency, a means to an end, a solution to an economic problem. They enlightened everyone in the natural, innate creativity that is present in all Filipinos – in fact, in every individual in the world, and the Philippines is one of the few countries that are truly open to accepting diversity. I agree with what they said, that we as a nation and as a country should start learning how to capitalize on our own creativity.
One very striking line that got through me was during the joint Q&A and I quoted Dela Peña on her definition of confidence.
It was definitely an energizing thought that mobilized me to do better.
SESSION 3: Good Design Makes Good Business
Dan Matutina closely followed with his session. He was a fun presenter, without all the fuss of being formal and uptight. He had a casual and straightforward demeanor with his talk, and almost everything he discussed hits the right mark. He basically discussed about how design affects the overall performance of a business – that perspective of a thing is everything.
SESSION 4: Future Forward
Eric Cruz and his buddy Buboy soon followed and they discussed about the future of advertising, and pretty much the future of the world. Although I find it ridiculous that the future will be composed of a lot of automated processes and robotics, it’s definitely something we can’t prevent. With the fast pace of development and progress, it doesn’t sound impossible.
SESSION 5: Inspiring the Business of Storytelling: From Comics to Branded Content
Budjette Tan and Mike Constantino had a fun discussion, too. I liked this duo the most, with their crazy perspectives on how we can convert a common idea to become timeless and memorable. I like how they were able to manifest an idea into something tangible, or recreate an existing thing into something else. They recognized the usual practice of imitation, but still promote justice against plagiarism. It is true that there are ideas that we’ve all heard before, but we have to throw in our best ideas to make people appreciate our creation more, to make it more memorable with impact.
The memorable part of the talk was the determining the difference between storytelling and story-yelling.
SESSION 6: Marketing at the Speed of Culture
Margot Torres and Ed Mapa takes the talk a little further by showing how listening to the signal and not the noise as well as taking current situations and turning them to your advantage is key to successful marketing and advertising. With the impressive acceptance of McDonald’s to new and exciting ideas and executions, it’s no wonder their company is doing so well and is so wonderfully received by the market.
SESSION 7: Creativity that Travels
David Guerrero is joined by Ramon Jimenez, Jr. to discuss about various good case practices on advertising, and of course focused on BBDO Guerrero‘s “It’s More Fun In The Philippines” tourism campaign.
It was wonderful to see so much beautiful advertising art that is so under appreciated by people but is so well-received by foreigners. It makes you wonder how we could move past this, and how can people understand and appreciate creativity even more.
SESSION 8: Innovation is Human: The Art of It
It’s sad that I didn’t get to finish the event. I had to leave early and due to the circumstances that the entire event was delayed, I had to get out of the theater to find a way for myself to get home. But from what my officemates say, it was great. This session was done by Leeroy New.
So aside from the talks you learn a lot from, what else do you get?
Well, for one, there are a lot of free food. The AM Coffee didn’t really deliver, so they substituted with Max’s Corner Bakery butterscotch and Kitkat. It was nice, but we had to scour the mall to find water. Lunch was provided by Greenwich, which tasted great with the macaroni and cheese side dish and the single slice of their new Cheesy Steak and Fries Overload. But I found myself still unbelievably hungry so I went out to purchase a Big N’ Tasty at the nearby McDonald’s. PM Snacks was a Burger McDo and a juice from Zesto. We were very well fed, actually. The long queues just didn’t help with people’s temper.
The loot bag didn’t have as much as I hoped it would. There was a free magazine (I got Chalk which was a major downer as I was hoping it was an issue of Adobo Magazine, given the event), fliers and brochures from the event and a box of Dove Soap.
Photo Courtesy: Elizabeth Fondevilla
I went to the event with my officemates, and it was fun to go to such an educational event with them.
Overall, the event was great. I feel bad I wasn’t able to complete it, but I definitely went home with a lot of learning. I wonder how fun the after party was. I asked my officemates and none of them went. We all had a part of our Saturday spared for another activity.
On a sidenote, while waiting for my ride home, I managed to snipe a snazzy new pair of shoes from Call It Spring, thanks to the app SnipePH. You might want to give it a try when you’re out shopping! Check out their video below to find out more, or the article on Spot.PH. You can download it here for Android; it will be available on iOS soon.
//SRV
STEPHEN VELEZ 