Vietnam Marked As One Of The Best In The World At AD STARS Advertising Festival

On August 27, 2021, among stressful and gloomy days in the Covid pandemic, Vietnam advertising industry had a positive news: the Lay's Crispy Subtitles campaign by Happiness Saigon won Vietnam’s first ever GRAND PRIX award in the at the AD STARS award festival, which is known as the World Advertising Olympics. Vietnam has won spectacularly against major agencies from the UK, USA, Korea, and China. The GRAND PRIX is the absolute highest honor one can achieve for a campaign, with only one being awarded per category out of almost 20,000 entries.

The event also marked the great development of Vietnamese advertising when AD STARS is the only advertising playground in the world that honors creativity and innovation for the purpose of sharing world-changing solutions.

In total at the festival, Happiness Saigon set records for Vietnam, taking home 7 medals, from 10 shortlists. 1 GRAND PRIX, 2 Silver stars, 1 Bronze star, and 1 Crystal star for Lay’s Crispy Subtitles - as well as 2 Crystal Stars for the beautiful MotoThung PSA campaign for UNICEF.

Creative technology and impressive marketing that unlocks real results

According to the criteria of AD STARS, the Radio/Audio category winner must deliver outstanding ideas and convey the brand's message in a superior way by sound design, sound innovation or novel storytelling with sound.

Lay’s Crispy Subtitles - which was awarded based on the impressive performance.

• The idea has garnered global attention for Vietnam, with downloads in 80 countries, especially generating over $9,000,000 in earned media for Lay’s Vietnam.
• With over 1.2 billion impressions, Lay’s Crispy Subtitles campaign was shared around the world, becoming a top trending topic on Google and Social Media. International news outlets covered the campaign on over 200 global publications, with major publications like Gizmodo, Yahoo News and VirginRadio!

Where is the idea of Lay’s Crispy Subtitles from?

All of us have experienced munching on potato chips with the overwhelming "crunching" sound while trying to watch videos with. At the same time, touching the laptop's volume buttons with greasy fingers is even more annoying.

Capturing that insight, Happiness Saigon and BLISS teamed up to create Lay's Crispy Subtitles through the use of machine learning algorithms that run directly on the Chrome browser plugin. This is a support for YouTube, the app will automatically activate subtitles when it detects you're crunching on potato chips.

This ‘crisp-activated subtitle technology’ was achieved by feeding an AI with 178 hours of audio recordings of people eating chips.

To teach crunchy sounds to machine learning, a collection of 17,512 different "crunchy" sound samples were tested. This also means that a lot of Potato Snacks have been "wasted" in the plugin development process.

Mr. Alan Cerruti – CEO of Happiness Saigon is so happy when sharing about this:

“I'm so proud of Happiness, the team and Lay's Crispy Subtile's achievement. This is not only the pride of Happiness Saigon in particular but also our contribution to the future of advertising in Vietnam. We have a belief that Vietnam will become the "creative hub" of Asia in the next 3-5 years. I am very happy that Happiness Saigon is a home of East-West creatives and talents. We appreciate cultural diversity and unique ideas. It could come from anyone in this agency.”

Happiness Saigon believes that shifts in the advertising industry and new innovation in technology from Vietnam will gradually help Vietnam to shine bright in the region and around the world. In the same spirit, the government has approved and issued in July this year on the National Strategy on Research, Development, and Application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for 2030.

About AD STARS Advertising Festival

AD STARS is the only international advertising festival that combines creativity with cutting-edge technology for the purpose of sharing innovative and world-changing solutions.

AD STARS respects cultural diversity and appreciates innovative ideas that reflect the culture of each region. By celebrating ideas that drive creative change around the world and sharing advertising campaigns that reflect different cultures, AD STARS hopes to encourage advertising agencies to better the world.

As its ultimate value is “humanity”, AD STARS strives to make step-by-step efforts to become an innovative communication platform that contributes to mankind’s happiness.

“To be a part of making work that lets Vietnam shine globally...that’s why we’re all here at Happiness. We’re a team with a vision. And if there’s brands or people in Vietnam who want to do more than just meet the status quo, who believe that Vietnam can and should shine...I’m always happy to chat.” -Nick Stillittano, Creative Hybrid, Media Representative.