Creative Summit



I just spent most of the day at the 1st Creative Summit organized by the Creative Guild of the Philippines. It was a morning and afternoon of sitting in the New World Hotel ballroom, listening to various speakers talk about the state of local advertising, the need for even more creativity in the ever-more-demanding times, and our country's prospects in winning in international ad competitions.

The predominant topic was how our local advertising is, to put it quite bluntly, still a ways off. We're fettered by a lot of things, not the least of which are difficult clients, the difficult economic situation and a whole host of other problems. Sad to say, we're very much behind countries like Thailand, whose cutting-edge advertising rises above much of the Asian ad landscape in terms of international acclaim. All was not gloom and doom, however. There were words of encouragement, of challenge and of course optimism for the hope that someday, Filipino admakers will find a voice that we can be proud of and win us Clios and Golden Lions aplenty.

But don't count on it being anytime soon.

Anyway, I picked up a tidbit or two and it was nice to listen to some good speakers and gawk at some cool ads. The food was also pretty good, and I got to bring home a souvenir bag! (I went all the way to the Creative Summit and all I got was...)

Well, tomorrow will no doubt see me back in The Salt Mines and hopefully mining away a bit wiser from what I have learned. I hope.