After last year’s issues, CAANZ gave the Axis Awards a good going over for 2013. And, as well as some changes to the judging and a new Getty Images Creative Exhibition, it’s also created a new event featuring six international speakers.
The
Axis Speaker Event, which will be held on 9 May at the Viaduct Events Centre, replaces the former creative function and the presentations are based around the brief ‘How does (or how might) creativity change the world through solving business or societal problems’.
CAANZ is keen to raise the profile of Axis and show that creativity can help business, so the event is therefore targeted at not only the advertising
industry but at clients, chief executives, chief financial officers and the wider business community.
As for the speakers, Fairfax Media and Newsworks NZ have
delivered well-known Australian author Don Watson and Google is bringing Tom Uglow, creative director of Google Labs in Sydney, who will present what the future of the internet
means to a normal person and the challenges of the next web (as distinct from
the original web).
Other key note speakers include Michael
Hillard, from Finch in Sydney, Damon
Stapleton, executive creative director from Saatchi & Saatchi, Sydney and Feh
Tarty, creative director from Mother
in London.
Completing the line-up is Chris Wall, vice chairman at Ogilvy & Mather, Chicago, who will present ‘The Billion Dollar Letter’, the
story of a major global brand on the cusp of disaster, saved by something so
deceptively simple and powerful that every major competitor missed it: a single
letter, and a creative idea that changed everything (Wall, Stapleton and Tarty are also acting as international judges).
“This is a
world-class line-up of speakers that will challenge the audience and stimulate
their thinking,” says CAANZ chief executive Paul Head. “It is a first for Axis and a line-up
of this calibre is very rare in New Zealand. We’re delighted to be able to bring these
speakers together with the support of Fairfax Media, News Works NZ and Google.”
Tickets for the Speaker Event are available here.
The
inaugural Getty Images Axis
Exhibition will be running concurrently, showcasing the amazing creative work produced by this year’s Axis Awards finalists. The exhibition is free of charge, open to the public and will be located
in the lower ground floor of the Viaduct Events Centre.
Axis Award winners
will be revealed at the Axis Awards Gala Dinner to be held later that evening. Get your boss to buy you a ticket here.
Speaker bios
Tom Uglow, Creative Director, Google Labs, Sydney
Tom Uglow started
Google’s Creative Lab in Europe and now works in Sydney, Australia on
exploratory projects and creative ideas that help connect Google, Android and
YouTube with users. Previous projects
include the build with chrome, Web Lab, Life in a Day, and the YouTube Symphony
Orchestra. Most of his projects are collaborations with charities, agencies and
cultural organisations around the world to find new forms of practice using
digital tools. Tom speaks on
innovation around the world; tweets, posts and blogs on digital creativity; he
is a trustee of D&AD and AWARD and has judged, presented, and enthused on
TV, online, and in print. He is a Sunday-coder, a traditional creative, and a
fuzzy strategist. Occasionally he knits.
Don Watson, Author
Don Watson is one of Australia’s most
distinguished writers and public speakers. He wrote three books on Australian
history before turning his hand to TV and the stage. For several years he combined writing
political satire for the actor Max Gillies with political speeches for the
Victorian Premier John Cain. In 1992 he became Paul Keating’s speech-writer and
adviser and his best-selling account of those years, Recollections of a
Bleeding Heart: Paul Keating Prime Minister, won numerous awards. In 2010 Don was awarded the Phillip Hodgins
Memorial Medal for Australian Literature. In addition to regular books, articles and
essays, in recent years he has also written feature films, including The Man
Who Sued God, starring Billy Connolly and Judy Davis. Don’s most recent book is the hilariously
funny Bendable Learnings (2009), a successor to Death Sentence
and Weasel Words. His website weaselwords.com has been running since
2003 and in that time has unearthed many more examples of the downfall of
modern language.
Feh Tarty, Executive
Creative Director, Mother, London
Feh was born in Monrovia, Liberia, West Africa
and moved to Providence, Rhode Island, USA when he was seven years old. His
full name is Feh Arwonie, which means “Wait, I’ve heard you”, in his
native language. But kids, being kids, shortened his name to “Feh” or
simply “Wait” after struggling with the pronunciation. Feh moved to DDB Los Angeles in 2000 and later
picked up an Emmy amongst other awards including a One Show Gold and a Cannes
Lion for his Ameriquest Mortgage Super Bowl work. Moving to Goodby, Silverstein
& Partners San Francisco in 2005 he helped the agency win their first ever
D&AD Black Pencil, for his Get The Glass Got Milk? campaign. His previous Got Milk? campaigns picked up a
flurry of awards including a Gold Cannes Lion and helped Goodby, Silverstein
& Partners garner AdWeek’s Agency of the Year and Advertising Age’s Digital
Agency of the Year. Feh currently lives in London, where he cycles
to work, rain or overcast.
Chris Wall, Vice President, Ogilvy & Mather,
Chicago
Chris has worked over the years for some of
the most cherished and enduring brands in the world, including IBM, Apple,
Microsoft, UPS, CDW, Coke, Pepsi, Nike, Kodak, American Express, Morgan
Stanley, SAP, Volvo, Ford and many others. Chris’ work for these major brands is notable
for both creative excellence and marketplace effectiveness — and has been
recognised with hundreds of awards for both, including Cannes Lions, One Show
Pencils, CA, the Belding Awards, the Andy Awards, ADDYs, Graphis, London
International Awards, New York Festivals and the Art Directors Club of New
York, and more than four dozen Effie awards including the Grand Effie for
both Apple and IBM.
Damon Stapleton, Executive Creative Director, Saatchi
& Saatchi, Sydney
Damon has worked on global brands such as BMW,
Nissan, Heineken, Visa, the World Cup 2010 campaign for Adidas, Toyota and
Cadbury. He is most famous for his ‘Trillion Dollar’ bill campaign for The
Zimbabwean paper, which in 2010 was recognised as the most awarded
campaign. Ever. It is now a permanent collection in the
British Museum. He was also recognised as one of the top 10
Executive Creative Directors in the world by Creativity Magazine (USA) in 2010.
In 2011, Finance Week awarded him ‘Achiever of Year’ in South Africa. He’s had
a variety of short stories published as well as articles for various magazines. Damon has collected many awards at some of the
most prestigious international advertising festival shows, receiving D&AD
Pencils – including a Black Pencil. He’s
won 20 Cannes Lions, including 8 Gold Lions and a Grand Prix, a Grand Clio, 10
One Show pencils – 8 of which were Gold and the first ever ADC Black Cube
awarded.
Mike Hilliard, Partner, Finch Productions, Sydney
Michael is a film, television and transmedia producer. His work with a range of
award-winning actors, musicians, artists and sports figures including
Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Cate Blanchett, Will Arnett, Tom Ford,
Jeff Koons, Kobe Bryant, the Beastie Boys, Good Charlotte,
Michael Stipe, Paul Simon and P.Diddy blends pop culture with
documentary and television. His work has been recognized by the
Cannes Lions, the ONE show, the Directors Guild of America, and the Emmys,
and has become part of the permanent collection at the Museum of
Modern Art in New York. Michael is a
member of the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the
Australian Film Institute, the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts
(AACTA) and the Screen Producers Association of Australia.
Axis Timetable:
Axis Speaker Event – 9.00 am to 4.00 pm (Kawau Room)
· 9.00 am – Tom Uglow
· 10.00 am – Damon Stapleton
· 11.00 am – Don Watson
· 1.00 pm – Feh Tarty
· 2.00 pm – Mike Hilliard
· 3.00 pm – Chris Wall
Getty Images Axis Exhibition – 8.00 am to 4.00 pm (Ground Floor)
Axis Awards Gala Dinner
· Pre-dinner drinks from 6.30 pm – 7.30 pm (Kawau & Rangitoto rooms)
· Show starts 8.00 pm
· Bar closes 11.30 pm
· Ends midnight
