Inside Day One of AWARD’s This Way Up Festival

The hotly anticipated This Way Up Festival returned to Sydney yesterday for the first day of 2023’s three days conference.

Billed as creativity’s breeding ground for worthwhile opinions, the Museum of Contemporary Art hosted the advertising festival, which united local leaders and emerging talent with some of the world’s most renowned and disruptive innovators. 

With interactive talks, panel sessions, workshops, courses, and networking events, the festival aims to push creative boundaries, champion the best thinking, drive marketers’ desire to do better work, and compel the broader business community to recognise that creativity applied to any aspect of business propels growth.

The day opened with a captivating opening address from professor Megan Davis, pro vice-chancellor society (PVCS) at UNSW Sydney concerning the upcoming Voice referendum.

The first panel of the day, ‘Can you afford not to craft?’ grappled with the industry’s expectation to create more with less, in a fraction of the time, as production budgets continue to be squeezed.

Discussing craft - and how it’s often the first thing to be compromised - were Lily Davis, film editor with The Editors, Stevie Ray, senior casting director at McGregor Casting, Steve Rogers, director at Revolver, Micah Walker, founder and CCO at Bear Meets Eagle on Fire, and moderator Jonathan Kneebone, director at The Glue Society.

Jonathan concluded up the robust discussion, featuring the presentation of spots made for less than $100,000, with the astute summation, ‘simple seems to work best – maybe it’s the simpler the better going forward.’

Following a brief intermission, the crowd learned ‘How To Swear In Another Language’ thanks to Cocogun co-founder and creative partner Ant Melder and Dentsu Creative CCO Avish Gordhan.

The pair introduced their grassroots movement ‘The Only One In The Room’, which aims to create tangible options to get more diverse talent into the advertising industry. 

Avish also announced the winners of a national competition to engage more diverse voices in the industry; the upcoming program ‘Adopt a White Dad’, as well as an upcoming web series currently in development.

The morning’s final speaker was Jeff Goodby, co-founder and co-chair of Goodby Silverstein and Partners in San Francisco, who asked the crowd, ‘Dude, Where’s My Job?’

How to be indispensable in the times of AI has been the pre-eminent question of the past twelve months, but Jeff isn’t too concerned yet.

“AI can’t make decisions,” Jeff argued.It can’t generate its own prompts, it can’t think creatively – because you have history. An AI’s history starts only as soon as you ask it a question.”

The festival continues today, with speaker highlights including Kim Pick, group executive creative director of VMLY&R New Zealand, and Jessica Montague, Vogue Australia executive editor.