MAD STARS 2023 Day 1: Advertising Innovations and Insights

Some of the world's leading advertising and marketing minds converged in Busan, South Korea this week for the 2023 MAD STARS Festival.

The largest advertising event in the APAC region, day one saw hosted keynote speakers and panels drawn from the best and brightest across the advertising and marketing realms, all of whom came together to explore the theme ‘Reboot’.

The festival also includes the MAD STARS Awards, which will be selected from over 20,000 entries from 63 countries.

This was kicked off by UX Korea chairman Jinsoo Kim, who led a deep dive into digital display campaigns, and explored the essence of success in online digital advertising.

“69% of users ignore intrusive or annoying ads,” Jinsoo said.“Creative that considers the user, context, content, and format is the key to non-intrusive ads that have a high return. Ad experience can be evaluated by considering the projected versus actual ROI.”

Generative AI later took the spotlight in a compelling session delivered by Jun-cheon Chang, general manager of KOBACO. The discussion unmasked the profound impact of the technology’s capability to craft sentences, images, and videos in the human language, heralding a paradigm shift in industries, daily routines, and work dynamics.

“People and computers can communicate in human language,” Jun-cheon said.“We are leaning into a world in which well-made creative is becoming less specialised, and more democratised.”

The afternoon’s speakers included Chermine Assadian, global creative lead at Wunderman Thompson, who challenged the audience to embrace failure, to fail fast, and to fail deliberately.

Pulitzer Prize-winning American photographer and columnist Hyungwon Kang then took to the stage, captivating the audience with a display of visual journalism and encouraging all present to pursue and to value visual literacy.

“Korea is a special place for photography,” Hyungwon said of his country of birth. “In advertising, you are communicating visually, and authenticity is a tool for you.”

Steaph Huang, founder and chairman of D&S Media, took the audience through the upcoming content revolution, during which user-generated content is expected to largely be replaced by AI-generated content.

Immediately after, the event’s executive jurors were welcomed to the stage, ready to introduce the finalists for the MAD STAR Awards, of which the winners will be announced on Friday.

Tasked with determining the best work from 20,000 entrants across 63 countries, jury members included Artwell Nwaila (Google head of creative, Sub-Saharan Africa), Bruno Bertelli (global CEO of LePub, global CCO of publicis worldwide, and CCO of publicis groupe Italy), Chow Kok Keong (CCO INNOCEAN Indonesia), Fabio Seidl (director - global creative development, Meta), and Sharon Edmondston (group creative director, M&C Saatchi).

Speaking on the process, Artwell said, “The biggest consideration is, does this serve a brief, or is it creative for creative’s sake?”

Following this, the day’s keynote speaker Tom Goddard, president of the World Out of Home (OOH) Organisation, proved a crowd-favourite, offering insights into the evolution of digital out of home (DOOH) as the emerging and pre-eminent OOH format.

“The global OOH spend is about $36.2 billion annually,” Tom said, “with the largest region being APAC, at $16.2 billion.”

The evening concluded with a banquet dinner, which included some initial awards presentations, and an address from the mayor of Busan, Park Heong-joon.