Millennials hate advertising, at least in the very traditional sense of the word. The message was loud and clear at the first day of Dubai Lynx International Festival of Creativity. As marketing professionals set out to look for solutions, Chuck Phillips, Chief Technology Officer, Mirum reflections suggested that to ‘think out of the box’, it may be important to break the fences.
One aspect that came up repeatedly in his address was the focus on authorship or being the maker. He stated, “Humans are makers by nature. It is something we have always done.” He supported this with a quote from Danish programmer, David Heinemeier Hansson: ‘You can build on top of a lot of things that exist in this world. Somebody goes in and does that hard, ground-level, science-based work and then on top of that, you build the art’, and pointed out that all the computational power that NASA used to put on a man on moon, was lesser than what was employed in the creation of the iWatch.
Another point that stood out in Mr Phillip’s address was authenticity being the new authority.
He reminded that Millennials did not hate brands, but the kind of brand messaging that exists in the current form of advertising. He asserted that a mindset shift was required in the business. “There is a need to make things that people want, rather than making them want things,” he said.
The ‘maker’ argument surfaces here again. “Making resonates because it is tangible. Storytelling is just words,” observed Mr Phillips as he urged agency and brands to join the maker movement and foster maker culture to stay ahead.
He said that the Millennial generation, especially in MENA, are innovators. “They are risk takers. People here have taken technology in their own hands and solved problems, sometimes out of necessity and at times because that is second nature to young people,” Mr Phillips explained.
Over the last few years, JWT MENA has taken a closer look at the top trends for the region. In 2013, the agency identified ‘authentically Arab’ as a trend, where people in the region preferred excellent brands, made in the region, as opposed to international luxury brands.
In 2014, the agency highlighted a trend where people in the region were solving their own problems using technology, as institutions were not doing it for them.
Bringing the conversation closer home, he advised, “Agencies, at their scale and level, should make their employees makers again, who create things. They should ‘encourage experimental doodling’ as William McKnight advises. They should allow employees to flip bits and atoms, and do things with digital technology but by combining it with physical objects.”
