SUBIC BAY FREEPORT—Ad Summit Pilipinas 2018, the country’s biggest gathering of advertising and marketing agencies, formally opened on Thursday here for the third consecutive time.
Organized by the Association of Accredited Advertising Agencies of the Philippines (4A’s), Ad Summit Pilipinas, a biennial gathering, will run until March 10 at the Subic Bay Exhibition and Convention Center.
With the theme: “DIY Your ROI” (Do-it-yourself your return on investment), organizers said this year’s event is set to evaluate current mindsets on marketing campaigns and explore new ways of determining brand success beyond the return on investment.
Event over-all chairperson Norman Agatep said Ad Summit Pilipinas 2018 hopes to open the eyes and minds of the 2,000 participants on different ways to measure the returns on their brands, and not just by counting monetary profit.
“The world has changed today, it is not only the opportunity of measuring money, there are lots of forms of return of investment to consider,” Agatep said. “If we look at a hammer, we only see a nail. But if we look closer, we will see ideas or innovations, or influence.”
Meanwhile, Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) chairman and administrator Wilma Eisma boasted of the experience of Subic as what she described as the biggest and most successful DIY undertaking the country has ever had.
Eisma noted that after the Mount Pinatubo eruption and the closure of the former US Naval Base in 1992, there was nothing left in Subic but destroyed buildings, abandoned spaces and a great challenge to turn this place to become the catalyst of development in the region.
“Through malasakit (concern) and volunteerism, we turned the impossible into miracles. From scratch we made Subic rise again to become a successful Freeport in Asia. Truly the best DIY ever. Look how beautiful this place now is,” she said.
To start the day, Anselmo Ramos, co-founder and chief creative officer of David Miami, talked about the “Return on Ideas” which gave the participants new suggestions on how to convince a client and sell new concepts of advertising.
Other speakers invited to the summit include Lionel Carreon, global director of Creative Recruiting at R/GA, who will talk on “Return on Identity”; Mara Binudin Lecocq — who has worked for agencies AKQA, and Tribal DDB, and whose latest achievement being her founding of Secret Code New York — to talk on “Return on Inclusion”; and Josy Paul, the brain behind agencies such as David and BBDO India, and currently holds the position of chairman and chief creative officer of BBDO India.
Aside from the talks and other activities, the most awaited highlight of the Ad Summit among the advertising community is the Creative Guild’s Kidlat Awards, which is intended to institutionalize “Kidlat” as the country’s most prestigious creative advertising competition. (PNA)
