The upcoming Volcán, an advertising contest organized by ASCAP, the Costa Rican association of advertising agencies, could be a turning point, a milestone in our creative history, a point to trigger a breakthrough, leaving behind the past and defining together the future.
I believe it is possible to provoke a lasting reaction in the advertising community, focused on elevating our creative product to competitive levels in the most important competitions in the world, detonating a commitment from the heart and for life. It is clear that this will never be achieved with gimmicks, with guns or with exclusive contest publications, while everything else that is produced is garbage.
The challenge is to turn the Volcano into the starting point, the launching pad, the great springboard to the rest of the world, starting with Latin America. For this reason, I invite us not to fix our eyes on one Volcano or five, but on them as stepping stones and the Ojos, the Fiaps, the Cannes as a vision for the future.
In fact, if all the agencies in the country turn to creativity, we will persuade clients and make them more demanding creatively. If all the agencies join forces, we will turn this yearning into a national project, and not a neighborhood competition among children without vision. Therefore, if there is good creativity winning awards, let us all applaud the fact that it is a national project, not a prize for each agency.
The qualities of the Volcano should be participation, commitment, community, sense of country, advertising cluster, creative awakening. Because this is how we in the agencies win, our brands win, we all win.
At the end of the day, if we manage to raise the level of the contest, the seriousness and depth of the national project, if we initiate the feeling of a community committed to a dream, we will be able to ignite the entire advertising community, and not only the creatives, provoking more research, better insights, inspiring briefs, in short, winning creativity.
In short, I think that Volcán 2006 is a golden opportunity that we have to understand in all its dimension, and that we cannot fail to take advantage of. Let’s hope that all the agencies will feed it with their best creative product, and that the cheats will not be entered, that dignity and professionalism will prevail, so that this creative project can be launched throughout the country.