ADCE President Reveals ADCE Festival 2017 Theme

Ami Hasan, president of the The Art Directors Club of Europe (ADCE) has issued a challenge to marketers: “change everything in your agency, or become irrelevant and die”.

Hasan’s opening address at the ADCE Festival ‘17 will highlight major issues that face the industry, including transparency and technological apathy, which he believes too many marketers fail to face up to.

His speech sets the scene for the Festival theme of “Imagineering Creative Intelligence”, which explores three areas – Ideas, Business and Experiences. All speakers will share their vision for these categories and how technology influences ideas.

Hasan says: “Like it or not, the glorious lazy and boozing days of Mad Men are gone. Flashes of genius - call them big ideas or snappy headlines - still have a place and value.  But the environment where our creativity and storytelling capabilities are found, changes so fast that every marketer has to study new things daily.  

“This means every agency has a responsibility to continuously train, educate and inspire their creatives. Those who don't will become obsolete, die or sink lower in the value chain and loose strategic significance.  Many will become subcontractors to more meaningful competitors, while those who refuse to learn and change will perish.”

Hasan will be joined on stage by Steve Vranakis, ECD Google Creative Lab and current D&AD President.  Vranakis will explain how and why we should all aspire to be “creative activists”, which builds on the Festival’s theme of “Imagineering Creative Intelligence”. 

Other speakers will address topics including:

How behavioural psychology can change your creative culture (Tom de Bruyne, founder of Sue Amsterdam).

How “innovative experiential design uses expected technologies to turn bold ideas into unexpected surprises (Julio Obelleiro, co-founder of Wildbytes in New York).

Transforming the creative industry and Imagineering Creative Intelligence (Helge Tennø, transformation strategist and founder at Jokull).

Digital Transformation is the most urgent challenge for leaders in every business today (Isaac Pinnock, founding partner at Made by Many).

Kris Hoet, chief innovation officer at Happiness Anywhere and the festival curator, said: “The next industrial revolution will be a creative one – this is the good news – but you will need to rethink how you work, if you want to play a part in it. That’s where Creative Imagineering comes in.”

Click here for the full ADCE Festival ‘17 programme.

Friday’s programme includes sessions from some of the top creatives in the industry who explore the relationship between imagination, technology and creativity.  

A pop-up exhibition, ‘SELF’, features self-portraits from 20 illustrators and aims to provoke discussion on how artists define themselves in the selfie era. London-based artist Patrick Tresset will conduct a live demonstration of human portraits drawn by robots.

Saturday is dedicated to hands-on learning in one of seven diverse creative workshops, an opportunity for young creative talent to meet with major industry players from European agencies.

Attendees will also have the opportunity to delve into the daily lives of Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec through the data themed postcards featured in the Dear Data exhibition.

ADCE Festival ‘17  is at the Disseny Hub Barcelona from 9-11 November 2017.  ADCE Members, students and members of professional associations can book discounted tickets, available to the public from €60, at www.europeancreativityfestival.com.