Spikes Asia – open for entry, new categories available

Creativity, Festivals & Awards

Spikes Asia, Asia Pacific’s awards and festival for the creative communications industry, is now open for entries across 18 categories ahead of the 2014 awards.

Reflecting the growth and development of the industry in Asia Pacific, two new entry categories were introduced at this year’s Spikes Asia: Innovation (to award breakthrough technology and innovation) and Healthcare (brave and innovative communications ideas within the health, wellness and pharma industries).

Heading up the Innovation jury will be Emad Tahtouh – Director of Applied Technology FINCH Australia. He started his career as Network Engineer and moved into production following his passion for the way technology changes storytelling. He’s gone on to develop and curate a range of technology solutions for multi-award winning campaigns.

His most notable work includes his 2012 Gold Lions for Pedigree Donation Glasses and The Great Crusade; The Most Powerful Arm, a petition-signing robot he built to raise awareness for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, won numerous accolades including a Digital Gold at Spikes Asia and Gold at the IAB MIXX Awards in 2013. More recently, Emad and his team brought a robot orchestra to life for Intel’s Intelligent Sounds campaign with award-winning recording artist, Flume. His current project for the Royal Automobile Club of Western Australia saw him build an attention-powered car that goes when you’re paying attention and slows when you’re not. The campaign has already been honoured at Adfest, AWARD and at One Show for Intellectual Property.

Innovation and Technology are quickly becoming a necessity in our industry. Helping to shape and define the standard we choose to judge the best pieces of work with is a tremendous challenge, and I’m excited and honoured to be a part of it

 Emad Tahtouh

Director of Applied Technology, FINCH Australia

June Laffey, Executive Creative Director McCann Health Australia, will preside the Healthcare jury. Since joining in 2010, June has helped McCann Health Sydney become recognised as APACs most awarded healthcare agency.

Writer based, she began her career in mainstream advertising.  At the start of the new millennium, following her desire to make a difference to people’s lives, June decided to move into healthcare communications. She is excited about technological advances that are positively impacting health, the growing focus on the person not the patient, and the increasing quality of healthcare communications. June and her team have received a range of accolades, across numerous clients and channels, including the Global awards, Clio Health, One Show, IPA best of health awards, Campaign agency of the year, and Spikes.  She has judged at most of the international health awards shows, namely the Globals, Clio Health, IPA best of health and Rx.

The fact that Spikes Asia is extending into the healthcare industry is both important and exciting. Innovative, creative, game-changing solutions in the health/pharma space don’t just have the potential to win in a world-class festival such as Spikes, they have the ability to change and save lives. So a credible awards competition such as Spikes that encourages and recognises creativity in this area can only be a good thing.

June Laffey,

Executive Creative Director McCann Health Australia

We are delighted to be able to announce jury presidents of such high calibre in line with Spikes Asia opening for entries. It is fantastic that the first ever Innovation and Healthcare categories will be judged by such formidable professionals as Emad and June.

Terry Savage,

CEO Lions Festivals

Judged by the regions’ top industry experts, the award categories available to enter are: Branded Content & Entertainment, Creative Effectiveness, Design, Digital, Direct, Film, Film Craft, Healthcare, Innovation, Integrated, Media, Mobile, Outdoor, PR, Print, Print & Poster Craft, Promo & Activation and Radio. Winners of this year’s awards will be revealed and honoured at the annual Awards Ceremony taking place in Singapore on Friday 26 September.

All of the shortlisted work will be on display through exhibitions and screenings throughout the Festival offering attendees the chance to get an up-to-date view of the region’s creative output. Anyone wishing to enter the awards can find further information on how to submit, along with rules and fees at www.spikes.asia. The deadline for entries submissions is 25 July.

Spikes Asia is celebrating and inspiring Asia-Pacific creativity in communications.  Building on 27 years of the illustrious Spikes Awards, the Spikes Asia Festival of Creativity is the result of a collaboration between the Lions Festivals, organisers of Cannes Lions, Lions Health, Dubai Lynx and Eurobest, and Haymarket, publishers of Campaign Asia Pacific. The Festival provides the region’s growing creative and advertising industry with a platform to network and exchange ideas, bringing together some of the finest creative thinkers from across the region and around the world.

Spikes Asia, attended by over 1,800 delegates from 30 countries in 2013, offers an inspirational program of seminars and workshops focusing on creativity and learning, exhibitions of creative work from Asia-Pacific, networking events in the evening and the Spikes Asia award show.