Photos: Spikes Asia Think Tank, presented by JWT

SPIKES ASIA - About two dozen senior marketers attended Thursday's Think Tank, Spikes’ day-long, closed-door session for CMOs.

The event, titled “It’s personal: Creative marketing that matters,” was opened by Terry Savage, chairman of Lions Festivals, and moderated by Nicole Fall, CEO of Asia Consumer Intelligence.

The day's content:

• Shereen Daver, global business lead on Female Tribes, J. Walter Thompson’s consumer insights initiative, talked about the importance of creating advertising that reflects modern women, instead of the dated stereotypes that still dominate popular culture.
• Ron Findley, ECD for C2K Communications, discussed the "next wave" of reality—virtual, augmented and mixed—and how something experienced through VR can create a more lasting and dramatic memory than mere video.
• Brian Wong, founder and CEO of Kiip, explained the concept of mobile moments in marketing: finding the right time to offer an unexpected reward to create “marketing as a service.”
• Joanna L Catalano, head of creative agency APAC business at Google, talked about how ads have to work more effectively in an era of stagnant or shrinking budgets.
• Josie Brown, J. Walter Thompson’s APAC director of digital, discussed why consumer health, retail and beauty are categories are ripe for the use of chatbots and artificial intelligence.
• Tatsuo Nomura, game director of Pokemon Go and senior product manager at Niantic, talked about how pressure to come up with a good April Fool’s joke each year led to him making up spoof Google maps and eventually creating Pokemon Go. “The fun is beyond what’s in the phone," he said. "It’s the places you go. It’s the people you meet."