JWT Jakarta Named Agency of the Year at Citra Pariwara Festival

J. Walter Thompson Jakarta came out victoriously as Agency of The Year 2015, while Leo Burnett Indonesia retaining their Digital Agency of The Year title, and Group M Mindshare won Media Agency of The Year. These final awards concluded the whole Citra Pariwara 2015 on Friday, 27 November 2015, a 3-day event that had begun since Wednesday. 

The oldest creative festival in Indonesia, in its 28th year Citra Pariwara continued to elevate the country’s creative standard and sought bright new young talents. The creative competition encompasses 13 categories, from print to film craft, and the newly added Design category. Panel of jury consisted of local and international creative figures. Elvis Chau from Anomaly Shanghai, Hiroshi Hori from Hakuhodo Asia Pacific, Jaswinder Kaur from Carat Indonesia, Hendra Lesmono from Bates CHI Indonesia, and Hoh Woon Siew from Hakuhodo Asia Pacific presided the judging panels. More than 1,000 entries were submitted into the competition.

On top of creative competition, a 2-day seminar also discussed about the latest on industry trends. Fergus O’Hare (Facebook Creative Shop Asia Pacific), Nanda Ivens (CEO of Mirum Asia Pacific), and Daniel Surya (Group CEO of WIR Group) were some of the prominent industry speakers featured in the seminar. The seminar discussed and questioned certain norms in today’s fast development, like whether branding still makes sense in this era of instant gratification, or whether Facebook is a friend or foe to traditional advertising. 

This year’s theme is “Stop Making Sense”, inspired by recent disruptive new “sharing economy” business like Uber or AirBnb that initially did not make sense, yet proved to be brilliant. It was a call to return to the creative child within, unbounded by adult’s norm and “logic”. “Amidst the new trend of big data, digital measurement, and latest marketing jargons, sometimes we need to be reminded that by being unreasonable, even non-sensical, we can push our ideas to greater heights”, said DD “Lulut” Asmoro, Chairman of Citra Pariwara 2015 committee and also the CEO of J. Walter Thompson Jakarta. “We are also very pleased to see more more participation and quality ideas from our friends in Media and Digital agencies.”, he continued.

Resounding this year’s theme, the president of Main Category, Elvis Chau from Anomaly Shanghai also predicted that the agency of future would not make sense to today’s practitioners. He foresaw the reign of freelancers and how “Agencies will be smaller, and the advertising industry that evolved to be more like film industry”.

Perhaps a line from George Bernard Shaw from Fergus O’Hare’s session best concluded the spirit of the event, “All progress depends on the unreasonable man”. So here’s to those who stop making sense, and hence bring progress to the people!