And the winner is…

Tonight our whole office emptied out to go along to the first regional Spark Awards, a Southeast Asia awards ceremony for media owners and advertisers in the region. We put on our glad rags (well, our slightly-more-glad-than-normal rags) and jumped into taxis over to the Westin Hotel on the other side of town.     

            Along with three clients, we took over a full table at the event, and following a glass of wine in the reception area we then made our way into the ballroom for the main event. When I used to go to these events in London it was always great fun. There would be too much wine, too many people who didn’t care less who won and a really great atmosphere as the awards were handed out in brief bursts between the three or four course dinner. The Singaporean version of an awards event is apparently a slightly more sober affair.

There were three tables that seemed to be having a good time, all grouped together at one end of the room, and all mainly populated by westerners. Whilst we whooped and cheered our way through the evening the rest of the room seemed to be taking themselves rather seriously, applauding politely when winners were announced, but otherwise just waiting for their awards to be presented before quickly making a beeline for the exit, often leaving entire tables empty whilst the event wore on.

            My company was nominated for four awards, two specific to campaigns that we had run in the past, one for our technology, and one for our commercial team. We didn’t have very high hopes for taking home all four, but we impressed ourselves by winning the tech and team awards – arguable the two most important award of the night for our specific segment of the industry.

            Whilst the night was quite sedate, it was a great chance to show off our company to some of our main clients, the food was pretty tasty, and I was able to be at home and in bed before 11pm still. I can’t complain too much about that!