BUSAN – International advertising festival AD STARS 2014 has opened in Busan on its seventh year, its biggest iteration ever with a total of 12,591 entries from 62 countries.
Of these 1,666 entries across 23 categories were named finalist. 92 of the entries come from the Philippines.
The competition was judged by a panel led by BBDO New York executive creative director and executive vice president Lauren Connolly.
“The work has been top-notch. A lot of the work we’ve seen perform at the other festivals,” Connolly said.
Connolly talked about the trends that she noticed while judging the entries this year.
“If I look at the trends, and usually creative people don’t like to talk about trends, I look at a few things and see them in this festival and I hope they are things that carry forwards into the future,” she said.
“One is that brands are doing good and making people feel good; the other is the convergence of storytelling with technology, innovation and craft; and the last I think transcends advertising, and that’s applying the power of creativity to make the world a better place, and I’d like to see more of that in the future,” she continued.
Meanwhile, jury member and Taproot India co-founder and chief creative officer added, “The quality of work has drastically improved.”
Padhi was also part of the jury at AD STARS 2010.
“I’m sure in another three to five years this will outgrow all the international awards shows,” he said.
Isobar regional executive creative director Graham Kelly, also a jury member, added, “The work that is winning that we’ve been judging from my perspective is excellent work, top of the class work.”
However, he noted that the mobile entries still have room for improvement.
“Interestingly enough, there were lots and lots of entries in the mobile category, but not many went through. Mobile has to catch up with a lot of the other digital entries,” he said.
“You’ll see more mobile, I just hope the quality will increase. There’s not a huge amount of awards that are being given out for mobile,” he continued.
Apart from the competition, AD STARS also includes a program with seminars that discuss various issues in global advertising.
This year the festival places focus on China in a series of seminars called “China Special.”
With talks such as ‘Turn on the TV, open the Chinese market,’ ‘Trends Towards Integrated Marketing of Universal Internet,’ and ‘Evolution of Chaos: Chinese New Trend Marketing Communications,’ the AD STARS China Special takes a comprehensive look at the country’s growing ad industry.
AD STARS executive committee co-chairperson Hwan-Jin Choi said that AD STARS is different from other festivals in that it is open to the general public.
“Other international advertising festivals only allow professionals, but we open our door even to the general public. For example, we open the exhibition hall to everybody, and we also run the Creative School,” he said.
“I think the main customer of advertising is the general public so they should have access to our festival,” he added.
Ad Stars 2014 will run from August 21 to 23 at the BEXCO in Haeundae, Busan, South Korea.
View the festival program here.
