Friday, April 24, 2026
Registration + Networking
Welcome Speech
Creative Council Launching + MMA Insights
The Audience You Think You Know
Brands often build creative around who they assume their audience is, not who they actually are. This opening keynote challenges that assumption through real Vietnamese consumer behavior data and brand cases where cultural misread cost campaigns their impact. Attendees leave with a sharper lens for grounding creative briefs in genuine human and local truth, before a single concept is developed.
From Local Insight to Cultural Impact
In a market as nuanced as Vietnam, the strongest ideas start deeply local. This keynote explores how cultural insight rooted in real behaviors and tensions can become work that travels across channels and markets without losing authenticity. Learn how brands move beyond surface relevance to meaningful cultural participation, turning insight into scalable impact that drives growth and advances market leadership.
Same Story, Five Screens: Why Platform-First Thinking Changes Everything
The same creative idea behaves differently on TikTok, Reels, YouTube Shorts, Facebook Feed, and OOH. And most teams underestimate how much. This hands-on session takes one brief and shows it adapted across five platforms in real time, making the differences in attention, format, and behavior visible and practical. Attendees gain a working framework for briefing platform-specific creative, not just resizing assets.
Kick off SMARTIES Awards 2026 - What's New?
From Brief to Live in 48 Hours: AI-Powered Creative Sprints
AI is compressing the creative timeline in ways that were not practical two years ago. This session demonstrates how teams in Vietnam and Southeast Asia are moving from brief to published content in under 48 hours using AI tools currently available to them, not hypothetical ones. Attendees gain a realistic view of where AI saves time in their workflow and what a leaner, faster creative process actually looks like in execution.
Community Before Campaign: Building Creative That Earns Attention First
The strongest campaigns today do not start with a brand message. They start with a community and its dynamics. This session introduces a community-first creative model, with a Vietnamese brand case study showing how understanding a niche audience first led to creative that earned organic traction before any media spend. Attendees gain a replicable approach to identifying communities, understanding what moves them, and building creative around that insight.