I’m no marketing guru, or creative genius with a forest full of lions. I am what you would may call a run-of-the-mill lost soul in the exciting and chaotic world of advertising. The Dubai Lynx Festival is that time of the year, when most of us lost souls get a chance to get out of our cubicles for three days and reflect on the year gone past, the work that was done and on our career choice — “should I have focused more on being a math geek or am I truly an outlier who may just change the face of advertising forever”.
I am also what you may call a Lynx veteran. I have seen a new theme every year, for the last four years. Last year the theme was evolution; the year before, it was story telling and the year before that I don’t even care to remember. Slightly vague terms that speakers from around the world try to make sense of with the help of Venn diagrams, quotes by ancient philosophers that seem to make more sense in an advertising seminar than they did 2000 years ago and award winning commercials from the Cannes Lions archive.
This year’s theme of ‘technology’ appears even more vague, but is it though? Our industry has been clamoring with technology for the sake of technology for a while now, so I had to agree with one particular slide from the talk by Engage Works: “Technology for the sake of technology has no meaning for consumers”. I was interested to find out if others speakers would also agree.
“Tell me, and I will forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand.” Confucius.
One quote, two opposing thoughts.
Dave Armstrong from Google brought the topic up in his talk ‘Learning through Play’. He highlighted the importance of looking at the impact of technology rather than using it as a medium. Using the examples of his own kids he succinctly made us understand how drastically different the coming generation of consumers is going to be.
On the other end of the spectrum, there was Simon Gosling from Happy Finish, who showed us the endless possibilities of virtual reality (VR) as a new medium for branded content. I wonder if Confucius would have given either a standing ovation.
But in between the debates on technology, virtual reality, big data…etc, Paul Feldwick kept it traditional with an amazing talk on ‘Creativity in the Radiosphere’, filled with anecdotes from creative directors around the world on how to write the perfect radio script and a chance to hear some of the wittiest radio ads in existence.
While Lynx may have started the debate on technology, ‘Creativity is Effectiveness’ as Hephzibah Pathak from O&M Mumbai concluded in her talk ‘Creativity through Chaos’. Whether it’s a medium ripe with creative opportunity or an evolution of our consumers that we all need to be wary of, effective solutions still remain elusive.
