After the international focus of the first day, the Asia Marketing Effectiveness Festival turned to insights from the region on the second.

Things kicked off with some interesting research presented by Dave McCaughan, Director, Strategic Planning Asia-Pacific at McCann Worldgroup, on changes in consumer sentiment in Japan following the huge earthquake. Key findings include a shift toward sustainable products and behaviours that will help Japan recover. A majority of consumers believe the private sector has a role to play in recovery, and that finding dovetails nicely with research from JWT released this week.

China's digital media scene featured strongly in the programme, with presentations from Sam Flemming, Founder and Chairman of internet word-of-mouth measurement firm CIC (who recently wrote for Admap) and Aiyang, Director of Sales Strategy at Sina, who spoke about the factors driving the phenomenal rise of microblog Sina Weibo.

Returning to the core theme of effectiveness, however, the highlight of the day was the presentation by Ogilvy & Mather's Beijing-based Global Effectiveness Director Tim Broadbent. He built on the previous day's presentation by Peter Field (who had presented his UK research on creativity and effectiveness) by extending the study to around 30 Ogilvy campaigns from Asia.

He concluded that Field's findings of a link between creative award winners and campaign effectiveness held true in Asia. If anything, emotional campaigns are even more powerful in Asia than in the UK.

There's only one problem - Chinese TV ads, said Broadbent, are "ghastly". They contain too many messages, too many rational product demos and have low production values. They are, he added, stuck in 1950s America.

Broadbent concluded with five practical tips for clients:

  1. Be wary of quantitative pre-testing that can dilute creativity.
  2. Ask whether the creative approach is streamlined. How many people need to sign off work, and how many management layers does it have to pass through?
  3. Invest in high production values.
  4. Incentivise agencies for creativity.
  5. Ensure "pervasive creativity" - keep challenging agencies to do better.

Warc will run full coverage of the conference next week.And watch out for a piece by Tim Broadbent on his research in a future issue of Admap.