While originally imported from Cannes, the Havas Café has now become a popular fixture at Spikes Asia – the premier advertising festival in Asia Pacific. This is a key platform for Havas to promote its own brand in the region.

After a highly successful first year, in 2015 we decided to go beyond the café and offer delegates a little something extra.

The brief was open, but with one key mandatory: our idea must have the café at its heart. We needed to give delegates even more reasons to visit the café, and to enjoy both the coffee and the atmosphere.

The majority of our sponsorship funds were tied up in the café operation itself. Hence, we needed an idea that could be pulled off with the minimum third party cost, while making full use of our in-house resources.

The Gazette was designed and produced entirely in-house. All articles were written from scratch, with drafts being prepared several weeks in advance. We researched the current crop of buzzwords and industry trends, and then set our sights on them – in anticipation of these topics getting airplay at Spikes.

To make sure the final product felt as authentic as possible, great care and attention was put into the editorial layout, type styles and paper stock. The Gazette masthead was styled after the French daily, Le Monde – as a tip of the hat to the origins of Havas in the French newspaper industry. We also arranged for real ad placements to mimic as closely as possible the content of industry publications.

The Gazette was published each morning over the three days of the festival, and distributed for free from the Havas Café. Our print run was approximately 500 per day.