The Sweet Shop’s Claire Davidson on the ground at the Dubai Lynx Festival of Creativity: Day 2

| | No Comments

DubaiLynx_mainshot.jpgIt’s been a clash of the festival schedules this year for Asia/Mena.  With AdFest wrapping up in Thailand yesterday, I unfortunately couldn’t make it to Dubai in time for the first day of this years 2014 Dubai Lynx International Festival of Creativity.  However, I was here bright and early on day two to catch the proceedings.

The theme for this year’s Dubai Lynx is “Stories of Creativity”.  The schedule is jam packed with a brilliant line up of seminars, forums, speaker sessions, workshops, think tanks, a digital lab, and young lynx competitions, all of which will of course culminate at the 2014 Dubai Lynx Gala Awards Ceremony on Wednesday evening.

At the speaker sessions today Yousef Tuqan Tuqan, Chief Innovation Office of Leo Burnett Mena, brought us “Bravery Is The New Black”.  Bravery is everywhere on the streets of the Middle East.  Look at Turkey, Egypt, and Syria.  The world is changing around us everywhere.  And it’s particularly changing within our industry.  So let’s be brave together.  The line between creativity and technology is more blurred now than ever before.  In the next three years, marketing is going to spend more on IT than IT is going to spend on itself.  Wowzer.  What we need to focus on is innovation.  Ask yourself, how can innovation help me reach my customers more effectively?  We now have more information, more data and more knowledge at our disposal.  But are we selling our consumers anything that’s just only faster than ever before?  Apart from high speed and high volume, what else are we offering? We have the knowledge and insight, but what do we do with it?

L1080393.jpegL1080398.jpegL1080395.jpegL1080394.jpegAttention is becoming one of our most valuable commodities.  Our attention is being challenged every day.  But consumers are becoming more selective.  Sometimes you need to force people to pay attention rather than simply ask them to pay attention.  Buying more stuff doesn’t necessarily make us happy.  People are spending their money on real world brand experiences.  That’s what we all want now.  It’s no longer about product purchase.  Useful is also becoming the new cool.  Look at the Nike Fuel band.  Our phones are the remote controls of our lives.  Our whole lives live in our pocket.  Build campaigns that are responsive by design.  Brands should be performative, not narrative.  Make your audience shareholders in the process.  Everything today brings with it an opportunity for exploration.  Create social objects that allow us to  talk about the brand.  Look at Sony’s underwater headphones.  Note to self, to buy a pair.  We have to be brave.  We have to risk failure.  We have to create communication that captures attention.  Being brave in the Middles East does come with fear, but we have to overcome that feeling uneasiness.  The brave case studies we looked at were Coca Cola’s ‘Make A Friend – Join Hands’ campaign between Pakistan and India and the Sprite SA71 campaign.  If you want to be the brands of the future, you have to go to the future.  Thank you Yousef Tuqan Tuqan for a fearless talk.

“Who Are The New Creatives?” was the next seminar I took in, presented by Mark Waugh, Global MD of Newscast.  We know that we are in a new era for brand storytelling, where creative messaging is unconstrained now by the traditional advertising boundaries of format, duration and the media environment.  There are a few agencies out there who are still trying to cling to the 1950’s model of advertising with the traditional copywriter, art director and that terribly stylish office.  Ooh, hello Don Draper.  This served us very very well for many many years.  But today when brands need to be accessible all the time, 24 hours a day, on any device, we need to adapt.  Everybody is continuously on all the time.  So how do we engage using all of this?  Today in Mena the breakdown of what we see is as follows: paid media at 40% (media channels), owned media 40% (brand channels) and earned media 20% (consumers themselves).  It’s time now for an ‘owner first’ approach. 

L1080399.jpegL1080406.jpegL1080402.jpegL1080401.jpegConsumers expect you to be there and to say something interesting and valuable.  What’s in it for me?  It’s about a value exchange – education, utility, entertainment and reward.  Data helps us decide ‘where to play’.  Today we look not just at the audience interests and territories but also at the competitors ‘owned’ landscape.  We need to work out where we can win in that category.  But brands need permission to play.  You need to have something meaningful and valuable to say.  Content Audit (appetite – what people want), Brand  Purpose and Platform (Alignment & content that brings the brand proposition to life), and Asset and Channel Planning are what we need to be implementing.  It’s the new economics of production.  Our new creators are not just found within our agencies.  They are found in other creative and technological areas.  They are the app developers, the bloggers, the crowdsourcers, the YouTube users, the Tweeters, the Vineers, the Instagrammers, and even the consumers themselves.

Clients are understandably scared of this new world.  Where does one even start?  Does it mean they need a whole new production budget? How should we play – promote, produce, partner and pass.  It doesn’t need to be a big budget to cover all of these new platforms.  If you are clever and do your research your campaign can equally be as successful as those corporate giants.  Have a planned campaign.  New teams and new experts now work together.  Bring it on.  We are more free now than ever before to be creative.  We just have to embrace it and unleash it, and we have to do this now.  Most importantly, we need to teach this to both ourselves as advertisers and to our clients.

Johnny Tan, Executive Creative Director of BBH China brought us “Presentations That Zag”.  Tan was a little nervous about doing a presentation about presentations, and really hoped that he didn’t cock it up.  He didn’t.  There are many wonderful creatives around the world who are absolutely fantastic storytellers through their work.  However, when it comes to them having to sell that work to their clients they become completely uncreative.  They go from one end of the ingenious spectrum to the other. 

L1080407.jpegL1080415.jpegL1080414.jpegL1080412.jpegL1080410.jpegMarketers are very reactive.  We need an obvious and effective solution to this problem.  There are subtle creative things you can put behind the creative work itself but it’s also about how you sell your creative work to your client.  You need to get past that hurdle.  We need to set the tone for a client who is very rigid in their thinking.  Put the client in a comfortable position.  Essentially, set a client in a position to buy and be in a position to listen to your ideas. Lots of creative people are amazing when it comes to making inspiring work.  There is little or no training in how to sell good work.  You need to inspire.  Creatives often walk in to present and become mechanical and linear.  Clients today are likely to mistrust you, but trust 12 people in a research group.  We know this all too well (and it hurts!).  Great work shouldn’t die because you couldn’t sell it.

Great presentations are essentially great stories.  Clients want to be engaged and clients want to be inspired.  Clients don’t want to feel sold.  Your presentation needs to sell without really selling.  So how do you do that?

Let’s take into account Aristotle’s Modes of Persuasion:

~ Ethos – creditability

~ Logos – logical

~ Pathos – emotional

Get your client to feel something, believe in, inspire and have a purpose.

Tan tells us that the 4 P’s worth remembering are these:

~ Preparation

~ Passion

~ Personal

~ Psychology

Think of the client as the first consumer you are going to convert.

Just remember:  “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”, Roger ‘Verbal’ Kint, The Usual Suspects.

Natasha Hritzuk, Senior Director, Global Consumer Insights, and David Pugh-Jones, Global Creative Director of Microsoft Advertising brought us “A Perfect Blend:  Meshing Creative Storytelling Experiences with Never Seen Before Insights”.

Hritzuk and Pugh-Jones concentrated their speaker session on discussing four key digital trends for the region, garnered from Microsoft researching both emerging and mature markets.  These are not just taking into account devices and technology, but us, the humans, the people.  In this day and age we must remember not to dehumanize consumers and technology.  These digital trends will have an impact on how brands should consider to best connect with their customers across the many varied demographics, cultures, geographies and languages of the Middle East.

L1080417.jpegL1080424.jpegL1080423.jpegConsumers are aware that their personal data is valuable. 

The why – misuse of personal data means managing data online is a growing topic of conversation. 

The future – consumers feel they are due a slice of the piece.  When they share their data, they expect value in return. 

45% of consumers are willing to sell all of their digital data to the right brand at the right price.  59% of us are more likely to buy from you if you reward us for our digital information.

Enhancing the real.  Technology is becoming multi sensory, taking consumers beyond the flat surfaces and offering richer experiences.  The why – consumers want technology that enhances the ‘real’ and touches their senses. 

The future – static devices will be expected to stimulate beyond sight and sound for a fully immersive experience, ‘beyond 4D’.

49% of consumers are interested technology that can take them on and offline.

Consumers seek technologies that surprise them at the right time and place, and when they are in the right frame of mind.

The why – as data makes the world more predictable, consumers still want a sense of surprise.

55% of global consumers expect technology to deliver surprising experiences that feel like coincidences.

Consumers are choosing closed and dedicated networks for different aspects of their online lives.

The why – consumers are looking for more personal and local experiences online.

The future – specialized sites for smaller networks with more relevant content.

41% of people are using more specialist social networks dedicated to our precise needs over general services.

Insight + Experience with Technology + Insight x Design = Clever Brave Campaigns

L1080425.jpegL1080427.jpegL1080426.jpegAhh… Facebook.  Who doesn’t love a seminar brought to us by our friends at Facie.  Today we heard from Rob Newlan, Head of Creative Solutions, Europe and Mena, Facebook who brought us “From Storytelling to Storydoing”.  We click on our phones on average 100 times per day.  Interestingly approx. 20% is on Facebook.  Technology, and mobility in particular, have created new opportunities for the way we consume content.  Now with an endless array of media sources for us to choose from, what is the best way to tell stories?  The phone is accessible to everyone.  How do we cut through today’s oversupply of information?  Well it’s your phone and by your interactions on it each day.  We need to step on this and build craft in.  As with Facebook’s original philosophy, the focus of course needs to be on the people.  Look at people’s lives.  And then look at creativity.  The key word is relevancy.  Relevancy is different for everybody.  How do we bring craft into a brand where rele
vancy is key.

~ Mobile isn’t a thing.  It’s the thing.  It’s the single most important thing shaking up the industry right now.

~ Shift to marketing for people.  It’s no longer marketing at people.

~ Respect people’s time. 

~ Scale is massive. Make sure that this is meaningful.  Impact matters.

~ Start with the data of the people.  From this we learn.

~ Don’t disrupt people’s feeds.  Add to it.  Help to drive connections.

~ Lightweight experiences always beat heavyweight experiences.

~ Think about what brands can do in the utility space.  Use APIs to help everyone.

~ Be authentic.  Understand what you are talking about.  Ensure you are who you are.

~ Act like a small business.  Know your clients and customers.

~ Atomise stories.  Have a narrative.  In a thumb friendly way of course!

If you tell people facts they will step back from you.  If you tell people stories they will step into you.  It’s people over pixels.  Our devices will allow us to create bigger human experiences.

Al Moseley, President and Chief Creative Officer of 180 Amsterdam brought us “Globalisation to Culturalisation” For a client to provide a meaningful role in the lives of their customers they need to tap into their cultural life.  But how then do brands move from local markets to global markets?  Moseley believes that along with globalisation there comes culturalisation, which is a powerful global culture and mindset driven by our digital landscape and our fundamental needs and passions.

So how do these brands genuinely connect on the global stage?  How do they make that connection with the world?  They have to have moved from a mission to enlighten a world to a cultural conversation.  They connect to the minds and hearts of the consumers.  Now days our lives are made up of many different cultures.  We buy cultures in. Look at some of the Middle Eastern brands such as Qatar, Ethiad, Emirates that are now known the world over.  The biggest brand of all here is Dubai itself.

Moseley gave us three key points to follow:

Cultural empathy.  Brands have to have empathy to be meaningful.  We, not me.  Walk in the consumer’s shoes. Understand and respect your audience and talk their language. 

Cultural commitment is key.  Brands must do what they say they will do.  They must deliver to their audience.  Give things freely and live up to your ideals with a strong vision.

Cultural tension.  Define ourselves in the middle of this struggle.  But define ourselves too by what we are not.  You can fight what we believe in and fight people’s perceptions for what might already be very ingrained.  Break conventions, find your enemy and create cultural shift.

Only 32% of people believe that brands communicate honestly about commitments and promises.  The number one brand that people actually do trust is Google.  We believe that Google is committed to us.   On that note, let’s continue on with this global giant…

Mailine Swildens, Head of the ZOO, Southern Europe, Mena for Google and YouTube was the final speaker for the day who brought us “The Perfect Time:  Re-Inventing The Story”.  Storytelling is not new.  The structure is very simple – we have characters in a context, they face challenges, there are adventures, these reach a climax, then there is an unraveling, and finally we are left with a moral – a punchline.  These stories are great for brands.  They infuse our minds with the ideas and attitudes that change our behavior.  What stories did you grow up with that still influence your life?  We grew up in the broadcast era.  Youtube believes though that ‘oral traditional’ is retuning with a vengeance. It’s more powerful, faster and shared by more people in the history of mankind.  This is the ‘digitoral era’.  This is where people are back in control – you as an individual, you as a group, you as a profession – with everything connected to everything.  Today YouTube has one billion users each month, with six billion stories downloaded per month.  40% is mobile YouTube watchtime.  Mena is the 2nd highest region in the world in terms of watch hours.

Think when you create.  Think about this era where you are in control, and the stories you create.  What are the stories on YouTube that inspire people?  When you create a story, ask yourself would I watch this, or would I even do this?  Would you share this, and finally and is this worth my time and worth the time of the people I share it with?  The stories that win are the stories that are built for transmission at the right time with exceptional meaning.  Fuel the spread, get the results, power by huge conversations.  A case study we looked at was the Chipotle Mexican Grill Scarecrow.  This has had 12 million+ YouTube views.  Also take Dodge Durango which had more than 16 million YouTube views with an increase of 59% in sales.  Use growth, use innovation and be daring – and most of all tell your stories.

I’ll be sitting in a dark room tomorrow judging Film Craft here, and so there won’t be any seminar coverage from me.  Thank you Dubai Lynx for today.  It was incredibly uplifting and insightful.  I love stories.

Claire Davidson, Executive Producer ASIA & MENA @ The SweetShop, reporting for Campaign Brief at Dubai Lynx 2014