Singapore to host the first World Effie Festival 2008
28 -29 February 2008
Suntec City Convention Centre
Singapore

Singapore’s Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew to speak at first World Effie Festival

Singapore has been chosen as the venue for the first-ever World Effie Festival, a global event dedicated to understanding, inspiring and celebrating creative effectiveness in communications. Singapore's Minister Mentor, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, will grace the inaugural World Effie Festival which will be held at the Suntec City convention centre in Singapore on 28th and 29th February 2008 and presented by The Effie Organisation and the Institute of Advertising Singapore (IAS).

Minister Mentor Lee will speak about the creation of “Brand Singapore” and how the Singapore Government developed its positioning as a regional and now a global business hub. Mr Lee will be interviewed on this topic by Jean-Marie Dru, worldwide CEO of the advertising group TBWA.

Stephen Mangham, Chairman of the World Effie Festival Supervisory Board and Group Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Singapore said: “We are deeply honoured that Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew has agreed to speak at the inaugural World Effie Festival. This highlights Singapore’s position in the forefront of Asia’s emergence as a global force in advertising and marketing communications”.

Other speakers already confirmed to appear at the World Effie Festival include Lord Sebastian Coe, the former double Olympic gold medalist and now Chairman of the 2012 London Olympics, together with heads of global advertising agencies and marketing chiefs of some of the world’s most powerful brands.

Stephen Mangham, chairman of the World Effie Festival Supervisory Board and group chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Singapore said: “If Cannes is about celebrating creativity with an eye to effectiveness, the World Effie Festival will be about celebrating effectiveness, with an eye to creativity”.

The World Effie Festival is designed to bring together globally-recognised leaders in communications and related fields to discuss how to deliver and measure creative effectiveness, and ultimately how to create value in communications. The speakers will include creative leaders from outside the advertising industry, looking at models from architecture, design and entertainment.

There will be a full suite of success case studies, which will showcase winners of previous Effie Awards from all regions of the world, together with successful Asian brands and the “Best of the West”.

The event will also feature the presentation of the Global Effie Awards – the first time this has occurred outside New York, where the Effie Organisation was founded in 1968. The first-ever Asia Pacific Effie Awards will also be presented in Singapore, celebrating the most effective campaigns developed by advertising and marketing agencies across the region.

The Asia Pacific Effie awards are designed to honour the best of Asia’s most effective local and national campaigns, and will be open to winners of national Effie Awards from China, Hong Kong, India, New Zealand and Singapore, together with entries from other countries around the region which do not yet host national Effies. The other participating countries will include Australia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam and four countries from the Middle East: Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

IAS President James Yip said: “Asia has come of age in marketing and advertising practice, and it is appropriate that we launch these prestigious awards at the first-ever World Effie Festival here in Singapore. As the quality of entries for the national Effie programmes in Asia has increased, industry professionals need to know how the effectiveness of their work compares with that of their colleagues across this diverse region. The Asia Pacific Effies will demonstrate this, using the world’s most widely accepted benchmark of communications effectiveness”.

More than 2,000 advertising and marketing professionals from around the world are expected to attend the event at Singapore’s Suntec City Convention Centre, which is organised by the New York American Marketing Association and the Institute of Advertising Singapore (IAS), and supported by DesignSingapore Council. In addition to those attending in person, a global audience of “virtual” delegates will be able to view the highlights via blogs and webcasts. The World Effie Festival is intended to become an annual calendar event, with the second festival already confirmed for Singapore in February 2009.

The following are the Finalists of the 2008 Asia-Pacific Effie Awards :

About the Effie Awards

The Effie Awards honor the most significant achievement in the business of marketing communications: ideas that work. Known by advertisers and agencies globally as the pre-eminent award in the industry, the Effies recognize any and all forms of consumer engagement that contribute to a brand’s success. Since 1968, winning an Effie has become a global symbol of achievement. Today, Effie celebrates effectiveness worldwide with the Global Effie, the EURO Effie, the Asia Pacific Effie and more than 35 national Effie programs.

For more details, visit www.effie.org.

Edited by Eugene Tang. Photographs Courtesy of ICON International Communications All Rights reserved