Saigon in 60 Seconds: Aw, Okay, I Lied, It's 1:58 - WWED Reporting for The Morton Report

60 seconds is not long enough to see Saigon, but 1:58 works. Quickly. See all about it here at TMR.

D a v i d E v e r i t t - C a r l s o n

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3 Big Shows: Two big ideas

So everybody knows I did 3 advertising, marketing and digital events last week - and writing about all will take some time. So with three shows, I have three comments for each. Take it in stride, I have a bad cold and no time for BS.

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The Vietnam Digital Marketing and Technology Conference

What a crappy name. Too bad it was a great event. Lowly promoted, highly attended, this event made people talk, all day long. As opposed to what the Vietnamese call seminars, where old professors stand up and deliver all day, this conference got everybody talking - and served up more Chivas than anyone could drink at the end. Sponsored by Golden Digital I loved this event because it brought all companies together to sell an idea, and the sponsor won for being a sponsor, not a sales shill. Key points:

1) Fast talking man from Brandtology.com who presented that Tiger Woods won public sentiment with his extra-marital activities because the Chinese value a man's prowess by how many mistresses he has - and China is Nike's biggest future market. Hello Accenture? Didn't you used to Be Arthur Anderson? Those slimes who sold us Enron's accounting? Who are you to talk about morality?

2) Tony Troung from Golden pulled this off almost all by himself and is an absolute rock star. Plus, you gotta love his freakin' hair. He does, we know that!

3) Todd from Golden also rocked. Why? Because he didn't give a PowerPoint presentation. He worked from a sheet of internet linked notes on screen and the audience took his presentation apart - but directed it in ways that made everybody care. Tired of being lectured to, the participants bonded here. Open forum = open ideas.

The Big Show/Vietnam Advertising Festival

Hey kids! Let's put on a show! Right. Isn't a festival supposed to involve people, engage people, make them talk and discuss? This festival seemed designed to put us all to sleep. From the three old men, the only guys to hit the stage, it seemed like Sun Flower Media, The Creative Circle and Vietnam Marcom were just three old dudes doing this for themselves. So they gave them flowers. To put on their own graves? Festival? I didn't see anyone dancing. A drab display of old media as if no one saw that digital had already wiped out most of their business. Next year, we'll call it the BIG Dinosaur awards - and we can still have it at the zoo. But, yes, there were highlights.

1) TBWA's YouTube moving announcement. It features gay dudes, bitches, more bitches, and the ever so hot but camera shy "George". That bitch. The biggest film idea of the show - but way too long. It's a 140 character world girls. Next time. Audience loved it.

2) Grey print. Like I care about Grey? They're uhh, gray. But their print and copy rocked. Unfortunately Indian creatives did the work and took the credit. And nothing against people from India. If the expats around here aren't putting Vietnamese creatives front and center and passing on the knowledge, that just sucks. We didn't send you here to get famous, expats. We sent you here to teach other people how to get famous. Stop sucking limelight.

3) The Young Lion's school student necktie campaign. Everybody else on that assignment over-thought it. You nailed it. Thank you. True. Clear. Brilliant. And totally on target. Cool. The other teams thought the judges were the target. You nailed the target. Kids in school.

BarcampSaigon

What a mess. And that's what we like about it. "My PowerPoint fucked up.". Okay. "Geez, people kept walking in and out of the room." Yes, com se, com sa. Shit happens? But sometimes good shit happens. And BarcampSaigon is the place for it. I saw no other advertising agency people at this event. May describe the death of dinosaurs while they're still walking - slowly, through the old rubble they used to make a living out of...

1) Sun at Little lives. com has 40,000 kids, little kids, on an educationally based social network in Singapore. "Dad, can you help me with my math homework?", sez kid. "Make you a deal, can you help me with my Facebook profile?", sez parent. Oh, da times dey are-a changin'.

2)Time/People/Money/Heart/Community

Vietnamese guy explains Silicon Valley culture (in Vietnamese). A mix of capital and ideas that becomes a business in itself. How to make it here. Sorry no direct link.

3) John and IPR

Audience lost. Even trouble asking questions. "Wait. My idea is an intellectual property? Like I thought of it and it has value?"

You've gotta love the idea that anybody is even listening to this idea. "So wait, can't I just steal an idea from another guy?"

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These events should make us all think and talk. The Vietnam Digital Marketing Conference and BarcampSaigon did that. The Vietnam Advertising Festival/Big Show was just an outdoor display without even an internet community to discuss or any social activity at all. Why or why not? I don't know why or why not. And nobody else will either because the organizers don't seem to want that. They want a kingdom. And so they have one. At a zoo. And then the people leave.

Stay tuned for Saigon/CreativeMornings starting in January.

Washington DC lawyers invade Saigon?

Damn. Tourists land at the airport in Saigon, see the shiny new buildings, the advertising on hundreds of billboards and see even the basic Vietnamese motorbike drivers playing totally capitalist poker with prospective riders and say, "Looks like America won the war!".

Enter John, who represents Alkimie and advises companies on Intellectual Property Rights issues. Irony? The country who tried to steal the whole country now advises the country on how not to let other countries steal just little bits of the whole country - like the trade secrets for really good flipping pho! Go figure.

"Que Sera Sera!" - oh damn. That's French.

Two Communications Events You Should Not Miss

Yesterday I wrote about a planned marketing event for spring of next year, that if goes as explained, with be the communications equivalent of a used car salesman's convention. The next two events won't. Make sure not to miss them.

The Big Show

This year The Big Show will be part of the Vietnam Advertising Festival, organized by Sunflower Media . The official opening ceremony of The Big Show will start at 6pm Friday 10th, Dec 2010, and will showcase the best creative work from Vietnam's top advertising & marketing agencies. The venue will be The Zoo, Thao Cam Vien.


Barcamp Saigon

BarCamp is a user-generated event — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on technology as well as teaching and learning. Sunday, December 12th, 2010 From 8:00a.m to 05:00p.m. RMIT International University. 702, Nguyen Van Linh Str., District 7, Ho Chi Minh City.

Both events are free, and that's truly good news in a market where professional conference organizers come in, put on a lackluster show, and then leave with all the profits. Both these events not only come from the creative community but give back to it in inspirational and educational ways.

Finally, after years of competing unsuccessfully, the Big Show and the Golden Bell Awards will now exhibit together under the banner of the Vietnam Advertising Festival. Organized by Sun Flower Media, this event promises to showcase the best advertising work of the city at a venue that truly gets the Young Lions inspired. The Zoo. - Correction: The Golden Bell Awards, organized by The Vietnam Advertising Association, will not be participating. Why not? I don't know. They did two years ago. Another mystery only the VAA can answer.

Barcamp is a more unusual and not really marketing oriented event. Most geeks will know it as a good place for geeks - but I attended the first event two years ago and found it inspiring creatively. No big star speakers, no awards, but a truly collaborative environment that sparked thought and inspiration.

Do give these two event your full attention. They'll both be better than any profit making conference coming into town anytime soon.

Saigon/CreativeMornings?

900,000 people per month check into the SwissMiss blog for tasty design tips and commentary from Tina Roth Eisenberg, AKA SwissMiss. Along with running the blog and her studio, she manages a creative speaker forum that brings thought leaders in a number of creative disciplines in to speak and illuminate the creative process on a monthly basis. Free. Her series has become a huge hit and reservations for the 50 or so spots go in an hour of posting. A number of us thought we could use a forum like this on the Saigon creative scene. And so we had our first organizational meeting on beginning the process on November 19. I hope to have good news shortly on a 2011 schedule for these Saigon/CreativeMornings.

The Bitexco Financial Tower Conspiracy Theory

It's a 74 storey tower with 3 basements, wait, it's a 68 storey tower with 7 basements. It's the tallest building in Vietnam according to Wikipedia on their 'Tallest Buildings in Vietnam' page but wait again, that fact is quickly usurped by the Wiki page for Bitexco Financial Tower which claims the Keangnam Hanoi Landmark Tower to be the tallest, but it's not finished yet. Depending on the websites you visit the stats vary accordingly. It's the architectural equivalent of penis measurement depending on whether you count floors or metres or whether you count floors below ground the same as floors above ground. I shudder to think how the inverted pyramid design, submitted for the Chicago Tribune Tower Design Competition in 1922 would have been counted, had it been built - a pyramidal negative space buried deep into the earth.

But on Bitexco in Saigon one thing is clear, it will not be the tallest building in Vietnam, it will only be the tallest building in Ho Chi Minh city. The tallest building in Vietnam designation seems to be owned by Hanoi, now and for the foreseeable future. And that's where methinks a conspiracy has taken hold. A conspiracy to nip Saigon's newest phallic symbol in the bud so to speak (the tower is fashioned as a lotus bud) to keep Hanoi on top of the building boom around here. Take a look at the difference between the architectural drawings and the actual building. Doesn't it seem as if a few planned storeys have been lopped off the top? I certainly think so - and various accounts about the development of the building support that. I wonder who will be arriving on the helipad for the grand opening, since only military helicopters are allowed in Vietnam - the Americans again? Doubtful, although the building's architect, Carlos Zapata is based in New York. Conspiracy? You decide.

Lost: The Travis Diaries XXXX

"From Saigon to Hanoi to Frankfurt and Paris, Bamako, Munich, Philippsburg, nowhere, Frankfurt, Munich, Dalat, Saigon, Vung Tau and back to Philippsburg she travels, looking for something. But what she's lost is in the baggage she carries every day."- Travis

For more in the Travis Diaries, check here:

Sex: The Travis Diaries I
I'm a man, DAMMIT: The Travis Diaries II
Love: The Travis Diaries III
Tiger: The Travis Diaries IV
Ambivelence: The Travis Diaries V
Advertising People & Blogs: The Travis Diaries VI
What's Left?: The Travis Diaries VII
Year of the Tiger: The Travis Diaries VIII
She said: The Travis Diaries IX
Dreams: The Travis Diaries X
A Bad Day: The Travis Diaries XI
Svengali? The Travis Diaries XII
My Way: The Travis Diaries XIII

Word Up! - Never Mind The Bollocks Blogs

The Word is out - The Word meaning the monthly arts and culture magazine published by Nick Ross right here in Saigon. And no sooner did the Word get out that the entire staff here at the Wild Wild East Dailies (that means me) was happy to see their story on The Death of Print by Tim Russel. Causes of death, similar to those of the Michael Jackson case, have yet to be determined but the prime subjects in the investigation are blogs. Blogs like this one. The story begins like this: "Newspapers, apparently, are dying. Just as 30 years ago the punk hordes swept away the dinosaurs of progressive rock, so today the traditional press is being blown out of the water by news feeds, bloggers and citizen journalists." Make sure to give the story a look. The Wild Wild East Dailies are nicely mentioned and the race to the top of the journalistic pile is on. Also notice the crafty illustration of Othello Kanh, deep in thought at his laptop. Luckily, I've never referred to the writings here as anything remotely close to journalism and with your help I intend to keep it that way. I'm continuously pleased by the comments and notes I receive from you all that encourage me to stay on the fringe, report from the left and generally wallow in the seemingly marijuana induced stupor that has become the style du jour at WWED. You can join the group FOWWED (Friends of the Wild Wild East Dailies) on Facebook or get a free subscription in the sidebar here. Word up! My friends. Read it and weep.

For more on blogs, blogging and bloggers, check here:

Advertising People & Blogs - The Travis Diaries VI
How to Write the Best Damn Blog in the World
Throw That Blog a Bone!
If Blogs Are Free Are They Worthless?
What If Gutenberg Had a Blog?
If You Like the Blog, Read the Book>/a>
2008 Annual Report - The Wild Wild East Dailies
Blog Redesign WWED
BarCamp Saigon 2008
Attraction vs. Conversion - How to Power Your Blog
Are the Bloggerati Missing the Market?

An Ozomatli Day: Am I doing enough? III

My dad used to say I was "burning the candle at both ends" whenever I had a few things going on at one time. He didn't think it was a good idea but to me it was simply that I could do a number of things at one time and thought it a shame to not do any one of them. I was asked recently, after having been observed teaching a class, if I had ever considered acting as a profession. "Sure", I answered, "I did that from the ages of 13 to 20 in a semi-professional community theatre troupe", along with being a student, Boy Scout, newspaper editor, video game arcade owner, sign painter, son and boyfriend. And for all of that, I ended up in the advertising business - but there was never one thing that was more important than another - without them all, I would never have experienced the full effect of actually having done them, as opposed to just studying them. And sometimes all of whatever it is I happen to be doing at any one point in my life shows up in just one day. Here's just another one of those days.

Another one-day diary:

7:00 am
Contrary to my last "am I doing enough post", I popped up like a piece of toast today and jumped onto a full plate of life.
8:05 am
By 8 I'm through two cups of the country's most famous and savory beverage, Bloomberg, and the olde shit, shower and shave. Almost ready to rock.
9:15 am
A bit more Bloomberg -only because I have fallen madly in love with Betty Liu, but fear she's been taken already, judging from the size of the rock she was sporting in the Warren Buffet interviews - and I'll be ready. Still under 30 with a Pulitzer nomination to her credit she is not so much a rising star, but a star who has already risen, and done it in record time. Certainly worth my time every morning. They could give that girl the nutrition panel off a bag of dog food to read and it would still be worth my TV time. And I'll eat the dog food too, if she commands me to whilst wearing calf-high black stiletto boots.
10:00 am
It's off to the bus station. Today I'm heading northeast to a part of town I know, Anh Phu, but have never been to on the bus, so figuring out which bus to take will be job #1. Job #2 will be getting on the damn thing and job #3 will be figuring out just exactly which stop, on a long crowded expressway, to get off at. A wrong decision could cost me miles, many minutes and any number of limbs. Yes, in Vietnam there are bus stops on the expressway. Right on the expressway.
10:15 am
This kind of travel requires keen eyes and as we all might be familiar with, the sharpening of one sense once others have been been lost - what happens here, or in any other country where one doesn't speak the language, is that your visual senses grow to fill the void of the listening and speaking ones. On a Vietnamese bus, that means sitting by a window, so you can see what's going on, because the bus driver never announces anything over the PA, if they even have a PA. Today, I'm looking for a big-box department store - similar to a Sam's or a Costco, called METRO. That's where I get off the bus. The man at the station who had limited English, but was extremely helpful, had never heard of the place but got me on the #56. The rest would be up to me.
10:45 am
Ever play Frogger? Once off this bus it's free, the only catch being that you are the frog and the cars, trucks and a few million motorbikes are real. I need to cross an 8 lane highway to find the smaller surface road that would lead to my two afternoon destinations.
11:10 am
The Australian International School (AIS) had an ad recently promoting their summer Journalism course and I thought I would drop by and submit my CV. The address was listed as a 4 letter acronym "compound" having nothing to do with Australia, International, or schools whatsoever so henceforth, none of the locals knew where the hell I wanted to go - even though I had a copy of the ad with the address clearly printed at the bottom - but as things go in the orient, nobody ever wants to tell you that they don't know something, so my motorbike driver assured me he understood the direction in which we were going and then proceeded to get us lost. Once we finally did find the place, - that wasn't really all that difficult - the driver whined incessantly about the final fee, looking all Paul McCartney-puppy-dog and such, and not considering at all that he had been the person to have gone off half-cocked and off-compass. We settled on my original offer.
11:30 am
AIS is a tiny place, but the compound, as it's called, is a nicely manicured land of peaceful lanes dropped down seemingly by aliens to be the home for, well then, aliens - foreigners of many a stripe. Once in the school I am showed to the office and meet a cordial lady who turns out to be of course, the office manager. We talk about the journalism program and I am informed that the school, at least as much as this manager knows, has nothing to do with the program itself. I am told that curriculum and promotion are being handled by a local magazine and that I should talk with them - so for the morning, a dead end so to speak.
12:05 pm
I'm hungry. Time for lunch. The smell of grilled meats in Vietnam makes it actually hard to walk around the streets without dropping in for a bite - everywhere - every few feet. I select a joint that's packed - that being the mark of decent eats - and park my carcass. The woman behind the food selection immediately points to a pork chop and sets up the requisite side dishes along with a cold cha da (iced tea). The entire staff chuckles at my request for more diced chillies and loves watching me mix them into my rice and chops. It's tasty.
1:00 pm
One o'clock rolls around and it's time to pack my kit and head off to Mad's photo studio. Mads Monsen is an absolutely wonderful fashion photographer and somehow I've gotten him off his stock and trade and into creating an image for a public service campaign that I'm not sure either one of us knew how difficult would be to create, but in our first meeting, when I was drawing the idea out for the first time, Mads jumped all over it and had a sketch out before me that absolutely matched mine - so we had a meeting of the minds and have been following that muse for the last few months.
1:15 pm
Arriving at the studio I am greeted by the barking dog and a young female staff who informs me that Mads has just left. The place is empty and whilst we have worked together in the space before, don't feel exactly comfortable going back into the workspace and getting on a computer that is not mine. Our job today is to do layouts with rough images married to copy and typography but without the owner of the place, it seems I just need to sit and wait.
1:30 pm
Instead, I take a nap on the sofa in the lobby.
2:30 am
I awake to an image of an alarm clock chiming 5 o'clock. Fuck! I have to be at another appointment at 5:45 and I am nowhere near the other location! Fuck again.
2:45 pm
Luckily it's only 2:45 in real life, but still no Mads. The studio door is now open and I do see a Macintosh on and functioning, so it's time to work. I get started and in another 15 minutes the missing man arrives and we talk about what a looney day it's been for the both of us so far. But my time is running out. I need to leave by 4:30 and get back to town to step in and cover for someone who can't do some work tonight. In the next hour and a half I manage to get one half-assed layout done, and although it's pretty shabby in terms of proper kerning and general balance, it's the first time Mads and I have seen our idea at least 90% close to completion and we both feel good to have jumped the precipice between concept and reality - to be continued another day.
4:30 pm
A motorbike ride back to town because Mads needs to pick up his son at school, we blaze through traffic that jams on the way out of town but sails fairly smoothly on the way into the evening rush hour. Earlier in the week Mads and I had made plans to attend an Ozomatli concert, sponsored by the US consulate but both of our schedules got attacked by paying work and I made plans to get to the show after 9 when my gig finished. We part on the street, once back in the city proper and agree to meet up later at the show.
5:45 pm
I show up for my teaching gig and whiz through three hours thinking about the show. A quick bike trip would get me there.
9:00 pm
Ask me how many rock shows I've seen in my three and a half years in Saigon and I'll give you a big fat "O", which now stands for Ozomatli. My Chemical Romance was here last year but that oddly escaped my radar and was reportedly prohibitively expensive. The Ozomatli show is a free show put on by - who in our government would have ever thunk up this one? the US State Department! Actually inspired - and certainly not a Condi Rice initiative. In all my years in Korea, 10 to be exact, I never saw the US bring in anyone except soldiers and as cultural experiences go, I can tell you, the Koreans have seen quite enough of that. Tens of thousands of drunk, crew cut, American high school graduates let loose on the streets of any foreign country has got to be a public relations masterstroke. But this show promised to be a complete turn of yet another American page. A more than welcome one, here where the apocalypse was once now.
9:15 pm
The Lanh Anh club is a proper in-city country club that anyone can access that includes 12 tennis courts, a full modern gym, outdoor pool, Czech microbrewery and a covered outdoor concert facility seating, I would guess, around 2500. It's a wonderful place. Truly.
9:20 pm
Handing the man my free ticket, I can feel the building moving. No shit. And once inside the entire place, packed, is on their feet - jumpin'. Really. Tejano-rock-rap is the order of the day and as an Ozomatli member explains on the band's website, their style is like pulling up to any street corner on Sunset Blvd. in L.A. and having the windows rolled down on every car to stir a multicultural musical stew that would be unimaginable in any other city outside of Los Angeles. And the Vietnamese are eating it up.
9:30 pm
The members of the band met through their affiliation with the Peace and Justice Center of Los Angeles, and all 8 of them are jumping all about the stage in their signature style, mixing rap, a Latin horn section and a rock and roll groove - not a radio hit in the mix but no one seems to care as they pound out their mildly political message of tolerance, social justice and loud music justice. It works. I've seen a number of Vietnamese shows at this and other venues and I can tell you - nobody jumps around. Not even for their own pop stars. This band played Myanmar (Burma) just a few days before and how many bands do you know who can say that? "I rocked Rangoon!" I don't think so. Heading for the end of the show the band members, one by one, descended the stairs from the stage and played in the crowd. Two very serious security guys were following the sax player until they realized it was just impossible to "body guard" the guy and they gave up. The music was fun, upbeat, danceable and groovable but where they excelled - and you never get this from local performers - was in showmanship. That and the fact that they were really singing and playing instruments which is all but unheard of at most Asian concerts. A huge hit for sure.
10:15 pm
No encores on this show but who needed them? These guys played their hearts out and the crowd saw to it that they were rewarded for their efforts on every song. After the show I found the backstage door and had a chat with one of the guitarists. I gave him a copy of this blog address and promised a review - little did I know at the beginning of my day, that it would turn out to be a review of my whole day and not just the band.
10:30 pm
Alas, it seemed that Mads had never made it to the show. He had had quite a long day as well. I wandered over to the Czech microbrewery and found plenty of friends there though, Interestingly enough I met a woman who had seen me at the Australian School in the morning - another small world experience in what is turning out for me, to be a very large world.
12:00 am
Arriving home at midnight, I make myself a salad, have a glass of milk and chill. "Am I doing enough?", I ask myself. I've found that to be a virtually impossible question to answer in that simply doing a lot of things is no guarantee of any sort of success. One must do something extremely well - and on this particular day I can say I certainly did that - because I lived my life, at least what God had given me that day, to the best of my ability, and it made me happy.

I should want for nothing more.

For more in the "Am I doing enough?" series, check below:
II Blimps & bullshit: Am I doing enough? II
I "I've spent many years making up for not being a genius": Am I doing enough?

Joyeux Noël - Perspective XVII: The Little Things X

This Christmas week began with 2 half-hatched eggs (a Vietnamese delicacy of partially developed chicken embryos in shell), a mix of rice cakes and eggs fried together served with spicy sauce, mint leaves and an avocado shake. Frogs were served the next day at a streetside restaurant and were a meal I had been so looking forward to. As a young man, my parents had introduced a tradition to me of being able to choose any restaurant of my liking for my birthday meal each year. My choice, every year that I can remember, was the Plantation restaurant in Moline Illinois. The Plantation was a grand old mansion that had been the residence of Willard Velie, creator of the Velie automobile and maternal grandson of John Deere. By the mid 1960s the home had been sold a number of times and converted into a restaurant with different cuisine themes in different rooms - Continental in the main room, French in the Library and a sort of tea and crumpets affair on the terraces in the daytime. But my favourite, an American phenomena at the time, was the Polynesian affair in the cellar, popularized by the Trader Vic's chain in major cities but represented at the Plantation in Moline, Illinois as the Tahitian Room. In that room they had bamboo tables, grass huts - just two of them, and a piano bar, where wanna-be Dean Martins could sit around the piano and sing if they liked. The huts were known to book months in advance and so at a very young age, maybe eight, I learned to coax my mother to call the Tahitian Room plenty early, so that we were always assured of having a hut for my birthday. I thought it was exotic. But that was only the beginning of my annual birthday adventure. I can't imagine that the frog legs were much of a big seller at the Tahitian Room; in the Plantation restaurant; in Moline; Rock Island county; on the Mississippi; in the Illinois corn fields; in the United States of America; on the Continent of North America, in the Western Hemisphere; on this Earth; in the Solar System; in the Universe; in the mind of God or the mind of Thornton Wilder, pictured above - but they were my favourite menu item in our town and the one reason I had so looked forward to enjoying a pair on the street here in Saigon this Christmas. It was not my birthday, but it seemed like it could have been. For the record, my particular frog didn't exactly have the legs of a Calaveras County long jumper - they were a little skinny - but the idea was the same and I loved it. Shopping for food in Saigon around Christmas is really no different than anywhere else - they are nearly out of everything. The staff at Veggies, the expat hangout for psuedo gourmet stuff, were pretty much out of cheer when I arrived and had had their fill of crabby foreign housewives looking for Christmas goose, foie gras or bread pudding and gave me appropriately crabby service. Finished is the English word the Vietnamese use when they are out of something or just don't have it and it was used repeatedly to respond to my request for smoked cheddar, cocktail onions and a number of other things I thought would spruce up my holiday diet. The onions were for my Dean Martinis. I left with a stash of Coleman's mustard at a 50% discount and an over-priced slab of Gorgonzola. Quite happy I was, even at that. The Frost/Nixon film was my Christmas Eve cinematic fare at a local mini-cinema followed by Batman Returns on Christmas day itself, presumably because it's plot is situated around the holiday season and features penguins. Funny the way HBO programmers see things in Asia - "Let's see, we need a Christmas/cartoon/action film with snow". I had also seen a film a few nights previous that was a documentary on the child molestation scandal in the Catholic Church. An interesting programming choice as well this season, it was quite convincing and a bit sobering to say the least. I was raised Catholic and although I saw through the iconography and politicization of the faith at a reasonably early age had not ever really come to see what was going on behind all the mythologized mystery. This film saw to that. The hymns of the church drew me in off the street on the evening of Christmas day itself and I spent a few minutes at the rear of the naïve to reflect amongst the 12 stations of the cross and other - to anyone else from any other religion - bizarre imagery cast upon the parishioners. If they could get young people to believe in all of that, there was no telling what a kid might believe as he grew up in this most surreal of faiths. Interesting that the main barrel vault of a Catholic church is called the naïve, achitecturally, which is also the base of the word naiveté. I had a nice Christmas anyway, taking my time to have just a few simple pleasures and enjoy just a few minutes. The family sent emails - there was plenty of Christmas spam on Facebook - and even a few good wish texts on my phone. Phat called and rushed me to a local pub so he could deliver my Christmas card. Phat is the man who handles my visa. And then home to the gorgonzola and a glass of Shiraz. Christmas in Vietnam. Mmmmerry.

For more on the "Perspective" or "Little Things" series, click below:

My Morning Wake-Up Call - Perspective XX: The Little Things XII
We'll Have A Gay Old Time - Perspective XIX: The Little Things XII
"Rolled Foggy Disposed Ricepaper" - Perspective XVIII: The Little Things XI
Joyeux Noel - Perspective XVII: The Little Things X
Lunch With Obama - Perspective XVI: The Little Things IX
One Motley Crue On The Bus Today - Perspective XV: The Little Things VIII
Attraction vs. Conversion: How To Power Your Blog - Perspective XIV: The Little Things VII
A glass box full of deep fried chicken heads - Perspective XIII: The Little Things VI
Seoul Searching - Perspective XII
He Would Have Shot Me 40 Years Ago - Perspective XI: The Little Things V
Chomsky on Colour & Sleep - Perspective X: The Little Things IV.2
Running With Scizzors - Perspective IX: The Little Things IV
Henry Miler II - Perspective VIII : The Little Things III.1
Henry Miller - Perspective VII: The Little Things III
Big Brother - Perspective VI: The Little Things II
This Carnival of Life! - Perspective V
The Art Walk - Perspective IV: The Little Things
Bentley #5 - Perspective III.2
Bentley vs. Vespa - Perspective III.1
Bentleys Invade Vietnam - Perspective III
Death Of A Colleague - Perspective II
Perspective

On My Meds Again in Saigon...

First off, my apologies for not being your intrepid three-time-a-week blogger that you've come to know and read. This week began the third week of one of my regular season changing colds as the affliction descended into Strep Throat and then Bronchitus. It was time for a trip to the pharmacie - but unlike an American pharmacy with a "y" I was able to get my packet of Amoxilan, a prescription I already knew I needed, without a trip to an HMO certified Indian (from India) doctor and be on my way to recovery for about 75 cents. Yes, that's seventy five good old American cents. A price that in Vietnam, a country rated much lower than US's lofty perch of #37 on the World Health Organization's (WHO) Health Care Rankings chart (right below Costa Rica), was more than fair. I wouldn't have given this a great deal of thought had I not seen Michael Moore's "SiCKO" again on HBO recently and had cause to consider just how good my health care system is, here in this developing country, as opposed to the good ole US of A. The last time I was in the US I had broken a collar bone in a bicycle accident and was not able to see a doctor because of lack of medical coverage. My father's Chiropractor told me it was indeed broken but he could not reset it. He went on to describe how many athletes continued to play with various kinds of broken appendages, as if I were asking for some kind of exotic cosmetic surgery, and said it would heal all by itself just fine. That's what you get in America when the doctor is the past team Chiro for the Kansas City Chiefs football team. Top medical care that is.

Thankfully I am in excellent health, compared to my colleagues at my age, and have not had anything beyond this breakage and an itchy winky in my adult medical history. And no, I'm not going to tell the itchy winky story. It was a long time ago, but pretty fucking funny all the same.

Now in repair, I promise I will be off injured reserve and back to my snarky self by tomorrow. I really hate it when I can't write.

As a bookend, my American friends might ask if there is any downside to letting patients diagnose themselves and prance into the pharmacie anytime they want for their fill of antibiotics or more psychotropic solutions, and I will impart this observation: Blame it on naivete, or just plain not looking for three years, but the number of foreign perscription drug addicts in this town is positively startling, once you are trained to look out for the signs. Consider the high school mathematics teacher who, without fail, everytime you see him, has a breast pocket full of pills in little foil pop-out packets and has now taken to wearing cargo pants - you know, the ones with the Jungle-Jim pockets on the legs - to conceal all the other perscription drugs he is using. I have know him for a few years now. He claims to have any great number of afflictions but the only one I can be sure of is hypocondria - plus whatever caused him to just verbally tear me a new asshole one night with no provocation, added in. God knows, I've known and befriended my share of alcoholics in my time and certainly been part of the clan for good spells, but never have I had to learn the habits of people on chemicals that I can't even spell. Geez, in a way, alcoholics are simple. These other things are still a mystery to me - but one I will not venture to uncover by providing myself as a guinea pig - "Give me another shot of that Amoxilan doc", I scream, as I tighten the rubber tube around my bicep and punch open another foiled capsule...

The BIG SHOW Vietnam Online Update

Online. At last. Almost. Having begun my last post with a pretty strong critique of Vietnam's BIG SHOW for not being online, I was happy to see on Monday, a notice for The BIG SHOW's website, scheduled to be up in mid December. Now, had anything been mentioned at the actual show, or any promotion done for the website at all beforehand, I would have of course knew about it, and not taken them to task for it in my review - but at least now, the job is 50% complete - the remainder being getting an actual category for online work up in the actual show - to happen next year for sure. So the word is: The BIG SHOW will be up and online, soon. Check it out.

Vietnam's BIG SHOW: Smaller and Digitally Challenged

Welcome to Vietnam's BIG SHOW website. Yup, this is it, or as close as you're going to get to it. Because, as of this writing, they don't have one - and they apparently agree with the Vietnam Advertising Association on at least one thing: "With 23.4% of global advertising budgets spent online, according to ZenithOptimedia, we're just going to ignore that and live in the past without even posting a website of our own or having a digital category in our show". That's about as smart as hosting a horseshoe making competition right down the street from Henry Ford's new factory would have been about 100 years ago, whilst ignoring the iron horses he'd been building in the starting gate. Well, I could be stretching the facts just a little, because the Vietnam Advertising Association decided not to have a show at all this year, so who knows if they would have even acknowledged digital - but they did last year and it's a shame they didn't lick their wounds after a pretty big mess and come back to the ring this year. The lack of competition seems to have neutered the BIG SHOW substantially from last year's Golden Bell face-off and now it's just the SMALL CRAMMED-INTO-AN-ALLEY SHOW.

Note: Since the writing of this post the BIG SHOW has posted a website of all the winners. Check it out - it is quite good.

My comments here will focus on the venue, work, participants and results, which pretty much encapsulates the purpose of any show so let's get started.

The venue:

Continuing with my digital whinge plank, go ahead and put "Cage Bar Vietnam" "Cage Quing Bar Vietnam Ho Chi Minh City" or anything else involving the name and location of this club into Google, Facebook, or even Dia Diem, the Vietnamese map site and see what you get. Unless you're a better surfer than I am (and I doubt that) you get squat, nada, nothing & zip. I certainly couldn't find a website, because I'm sure the Creative Circle Facebook page would have referenced one in their event notice if they did. So, bad on Cage Bar for not even having a website. Isn't there some lounge/trance/world/hip-hop requirement for street-cred that every club have at least a shitty website. Wait, that law was passed globally in 2000. Major fail Cage. I spent an hour trying to figure out where this place was before I left the house. Readers who arrived at this story from the New York Times review of Cage, might want to check out my "Your Man in Saigon" post after reading the next paragraph for a Brian McNally update.

Arriving at 3A Ton Duc Thang is at least an interesting experience, for there is certainly no signage that proclaims anything like a Cage Bar or a Quing Bar on that corner. If fact, even having found the place, there is still no English signage but maybe that's part of the underground image they're going for. Follow the crowd. That's where the hip people are going. Once into the mass of people crowded into an alley aside and behind the place I made my way for the entrance to the club proper. Accosted for my name card by attractive but less than convivial ladies I was given prompt entrance to the interior - jam packed to four walls with people in anticipation of the video screening. Air conditioning was conspicuously absent as the screening began but as true ad-geeks do, the crowd bludgeoned through in search of a picture, an idea, a quick laugh or just a break from the everyday rock-pile that so much ad-work has become. And they were not disappointed. Hot and maybe bleedingly uncomfortable at the mercy of cheap-Charlie club owners who couldn't spare a little air-con, the crowd looked upwards towards the screen.

The work:

The reel begins with a hopelessly dated StarWars typographic theme that should be illegal in 2008 (yes, I know it's a theme choice in iMovie but that doesn't mean we should use it) and segues into a beer campaign that makes the Vietnamese chuckle but the English subtitles don't do much to explain to the rest of us what is funny. Some nuance lost in translation for sure. Quite possibly the funniest spot of the evening for Creamfills chocolates, shows a mum and dad engaged in a Michael Douglas /Jeanne Tripplehorn/Fatal Attraction slam-her-up-against-the-wall make-out scene after just one chocolate, followed by a series of Vinamilk, Nivea, Suziki, Dutch Lady and Sony spots that prove nothing more than the idea that having a big logo or budget doesn't guarantee any sort of genius. The thick air is broken momentarily by a marshal arts cum Bruce/Jet/Lee/Li fight scene revolving around a puddle of mud that becomes a pretty simple and entertaining idea for Tide detergent. A PSA for kids wearing motorbike helmets is well done and well received as well as a Go Green effort by Toyota. But my favorite, and I think world groundbreaking spot of the evening, goes to Absolute Vodka in a series of black on white line illustration animations that follow two unmarked bottles as they travel though a world full of humans. When they stop at the bar for a drink, the items put before them bear a human shape and when the bottles drink them, the animation angle rises and hovers to birds-eye view so that we see the bottles full of teeming human lifeforms. The tagline says something about an "Absolute world" playing on the inverted idea of the bottles maintaining human lives - and I just thought it was damn fucking brilliant. Yes, it sounds, and indeed is obtuse, but it was the brightest damn idea of the whole show and better go on to Cannes and other international shows as a real show pony for Absolute. For their interest in the spot, the Viets didn't really seem to get it in the end, but I credit that to their unfamiliarity with the bottle shape and name of the Absolute brand - however famous it may be in western markets it is a relatively new product here, so a lot of the imagery and branding did not translate immediately here. Kudos to TBWA for that work.

For the print work, most of it would have made good wallpaper for a baby's room. You could fall asleep in seconds with the greater lot of it. My few highlights included an activation campaign for Listerine mouthwash that replaced the actual bottle labels with clever headlines about gossip, kissing and the things one does with their mouth that might be better accomplished with fresh breath and another sort of viral idea for Tropicana Twister that put giant orange slice appliqués on revolving doors to simulate the twisting of real fruit into a refreshing drink. Conversely, another drink campaign made the drinkers mouths morph into the shapes of odd premiums like computers and iPods to accomplish being possibly one of the most unappetizing series of images for a product you drink that I have ever seen. Wrapping up the work, Leo Burnett takes the art direction award for a charming and clever image of an office move that comes out of and lives happily in left field and another agency, who I can only identify by the number of letters in their name (8), wasted two perfectly good display panels with work that wouldn't have made it into an even a half-rate student show. Next year, we should pay agencies $200 not to show stuff like they did.

The participants:

The BIG SHOW is an excellent show, and the only real showcase communications people in Vietnam have to see, discuss, share and debate work during the whole year - but it's in dangerous need of a serious updating and reflection of what the market really is - before it becomes THE BIG FOREIGN AGENCY'S ANALOG ADVERTISING SHOW. The conspicuous lack of Vietnamese agencies at the show was glaring and the lack of any digital component at all was not only professionally embarrassing but irresponsible as well. I don't want to go on record as the first guy who said this, lest Martin Sorrell bar me forever from his consciousness, but with the Olympics over, American elections finalised and a string of ever-going financial bailouts and corporate failures affecting all sorts of budgets worldwide, waiting to see 2009's jump in online spending at the expense of traditional medias will have seemed positively academic by next year's end. Having witnessed the youth, energy and outright multi-cultural optimism of the digital creative communications camp a few weeks ago at BarCampSaigon and comparing that to the rather old-school, foreign-centric effort exhibited in this year's BIG SHOW, two not so epiphanous suggestions come to mind: Get digital - for the future of the business- there's a whole community of people making great digital work. And get Vietnamese - for the involvement of the whole agency community. I really do believe doing both of those things will benefit the entire industry in a way that we're not realising currently.

The result:

As I have seen the past three years in Vietnam, the BIG SHOW always serves the most important function of providing a meet, greet and glower or grouse over what may or may not be the best work in country - but sadly, just once a year. What happens so nicely, annually, doesn't ever seem to replicate itself throughout the year, in a way that could so obviously benefit the young minds that propel the business forward. I'd be happy to work on some quarterly, more youth oriented, information based gatherings (yes, libations included!) that would carry the spirit of the show more regularly into the working lives of those who do the work. This is an area of discussion already open amongst a few of us in the biz so if you have ideas, or want to donate beer, you know where to find me - let me know. Finally two slaps on the wrist tonight: #1: Budweiser - for only providing an hour's worth of free beer - Tiger was much more generous previously. #2: The Cage - for not having the air-con on during the indoor portion and then not doing a thing to convert a more than willing crowd into an after hours crowd who would have happily danced and drunk more had they been provided specials, decent music or any encouragement at all.

Finis:

So that's the BIG SHOW 2008. Not the best show, but the best show we've got. Making it better is up to all of us.

(Of Note: A press release dated one day after this post went up on IntellAsia.net, December 6th, announcing a digital version of The BIG SHOW to be launched in mid-December. Good.)



POSTSCRIPT: As a personal observation I could easily be taken to task for criticizing the show whilst having nothing in it and in some form that's absolutely true - but in another form, not true at all. For those of you who know me and this blog, I write dutifully, three posts a week, and cover the Vietnam advertising scene whenever a story of note comes up,. In 10 months this blog has become one of the most read in country and is also gathering a significant following worldwide. So, in essence I do have a product, it just happens to be a digital product, a social media product, that the BIG SHOW, or any other aspiring communications show in Vietnam needs to account for. But tonight I had one of the nicest things a blog writer could ask for happen. Tonight I met a reader.

I didn't know Phoung at all before this evening. We met whilst I was discussing the sudden drought of Budweiser with her husband-to-be. Upon exchanging the requisite name cards she exclaimed that she new me from Facebook. "Sure", I said. "I'm on Facebook". "But you write the blog", she said. And with that I was immediately taken aback. Who's to know who actually reads a person's blog. For all the accountability and transparency promised by the digital world, it's still rare to find out who those people really are who read the drivel one scribbles every week. And I'm quite the scribbler, I am. So much so that few, worldwide, are really able to keep up with the volume I produce on a weekly basis. Phoung went on to describe minute parts of this work that stretched back as far as 9 months - she said some things were funny - she said the work was graphically well designed - and she went on. Her husband-to-be-jumped in and said, "David, for all the time I have known her, she has never complimented anyone's work as much as she is right now. She's not easily impressed, David. I can assure you she is not giving you a load of crap." Phoung and I continued to speak. She works for a design firm. I was humbled and more than interested in the idea that a second language speaker could have actually made much sense of what I have been writing about for the past 10 months. This work is certainly not easy for people who speak and read English and a real mountain climb for a person dealing through two languages. She explained to me, and her fiancé confirmed, that she sits with a dictionary to get through one of my standard posts. This to me is all pretty damn amazing. And probably the number one reason I continue to engage in this project. One more person read it. One more person got it. And one more person liked it. And that's enough.That should be enough for any writer. Thank you Phoung.

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