Read my post about the highlights from day two of Spikes Asia.

Read my full reports from Spikes Asia.


This week Warc is reporting from Spikes Asia in Singapore. The event - organised jointly by publisher Haymarket and the Cannes International Advertising Festival - is one of Asia's biggest marketing conferences, culminating in the Spikes creative awards.

Monday 19th September was the first full day of conference sessions, and speakers included John Wren, President and CEO of Omnicom Group. He didn't give much away, other than that, despite the recent crises, he is starting to see signs of confidence return to the market, and that Omnicom is keen to hire ("smart, hard-working and nice - that's [the people] I'm looking for").

Some of the highlights included an interesting talk by Stephen Kim, General Manager for Global Creative Solutions at Microsoft, on storytelling in digital. There was also a presentation by James Hurman, planning director of Colenso BBDO, on the link between creativity and effectiveness (based on his recent book - read our summary of The Case for Creativity), and a TBWA talk on gamification. Some interesting titbits so far:

  • In a session on emerging Asian markets, Dean Bramham, CEO of Publicis Worldwide for Malaysia and Indonesia, argued that Facebook's huge popularity in Indonesia has made it the perfect platform for small businesses. And in a fast-growing, highly entrepreneurial market, that means Facebook is becoming a commerce platform. He also pointed to a company called Go-Jek - a company using mobile, the internet and Jakarta's chronic traffic problems to build a business.
  • According to Matias Palm-Jensen, Chief Innovation Officer for Europe at McCann Erickson, four-year-old gaming company Zynga has a bigger market capitalisation than the four biggest agency holding groups combined. (Having made his point that digital start-ups are conquering the world, he added pointedly: "I joined McCann - I don't know why.")

Warc will be posting fuller reports from the conference in the next week - watch out for them on the Conference Reports page.