South American, African radio spots impress Cannes juror Mangada

MANILA, July 17, 2013- Cannes 2013 radio juror Melvin Mangada was impressed by radio’s strength in longhaul markets particularly South America and South Africa.

Mangada, the managing partner and chief creative officer of TBWA\Santiago Mangada Puno, described South America work as innovative, while reserving special praise for spots from South Africa.

“The BMW ads from South Africa were stunning.  The Strepsil’s spot was entertaining. My favorite was the campaign for Whirlpool from DDB Dubai, using the sounds of a centipede, a roach and a spider to highlight its new and ever-so-quiet washing machines,” he said.

Mangada spoke to adobo on his recent stint as a judge in the Cannes radio competition, which divided jurors into three groups to judge the 1,500 radio entries. Each group was assigned 500 spots.

Radio, like other categories, also showed the results of brands co-opting social responsibility in a big way in their communications. Mangada is no stranger to such work – Boysen’s ‘The Biggest Air Filter’ to beautify EDSA is a fine example of a brand doing good and winning. It bagged two trophies in Design at Cannes.

When a brand does something good for a community or stands for a meaningful value, the audience respects the brand more.

McCann Worldgroup Philippines took home a Lion for its work with the Philippine Cancer Society with ‘Press’ and ‘Hold’, two cheeky ads with a serious message. According to Mangada, the jury thought the campaign was funny and rewarded the agency with a Silver Lion.

“When a Latino judge asked me if the spot was aired in English (as it would have only worked in English), I had to remind him and the rest of the jury that the Philippines is the third largest English speaking country,” he explained.

Speaking of TBWA’s winning Boysen work, Mangada said the client wanted a longer visual scale than the first suggestion that it use Ayala Mall’s open spaces as a canvas to demonstrate the air purification qualities of the brand’s new paint variant. Manila’s congested EDSA throughfare was deemed an appropriate canvas, leading the agency to collaborate with artists from around the world. Its second win came with the ‘Koi Fish Feed Invite’ campaign in which developer Ayala wanted to increase foot traffic at its new residential and commercial hub of Nuvali. “The creatives from Design suggested edible Koi fish feed for one of Nuvali’s biggest attractions – a huge man-made lake with thousands of perky koi fish.  The design piece was just a component of a much bigger activation campaign,” Mangada added.

Fresh from his judging stint, Mangada said the Philippines should focus on developing better scripts and improve crafting to improve its win record at the festival.