He has done it again. To get to Creative Guild’s Kidlat, he and then creative partner Peepo David had to pit their worth against Iron Creatives, then continued to get the freebies to compete in Cannes Lions. This time, Nicolas ‘Kulas’ Abrenilla and teammate Aston Martin ‘Ryder’ Aquino had to register at the eleventh hour to join the Spikes Young Creatives, and only upon the insistence of DentsuINDIO Managing Director Angeli Lambsdorff. At the end, the tandem gets to fly to Singapore as Team Philippines to the 1st Spike Asia Advertising Festival in September.
Given the brief: How do you reposition the Philippines away from the negative image—Abrenilla and Aquino bested 14 other teams from 13 agencies. “(Lambsdorff) sent us specifically because of the no-line/integrated campaign brief, despite the short time to prepare. During the talks, we had an inkling the brief might be related to the Philippines, and also because we were talking about Manila Design Week+Design Dialogue,” Abrenilla related.
This is Aquino’s first time to win a local award that would send him abroad. Both acknowledging the competition as a fun time to touch base with their counterparts in the industry, Aquino goes further, “It was fun to test skills with other young creatives. The entries of Creative Juice and TBWASMP were very good, but the judges appreciated our ideas. We had the fewest slides, we only had five.”
Without surprise, Competition Chairman Eugene Demata, whose goal it is to make “the Philippines the country to watch in Spikes” reportedly tasked Abrenilla to do his best in Singapore.
“
It was good that we could for us to showcase our no-line capabilities and tying it with a patriotic brief,” enthused Abrenilla.
Of the partnership, Aquino quipped, “ It is challenging because we are both artists. We could only write less than 250 words. So, two artist made for one good writer.” And that explains the five slides.
First runner-up plaudits go to Team BBDO Guerrero’s Cloyd Dennison Nierra-Art and Teresa Margarita De Guzman-Copy.
The 1st Spikes Asia Advertising Festival is from September 16 to 18 at Suntec City, Singapore. Visit www.spikes.asia for further information.
