It has never been a better time to work in the creative industries. We have a screen in every pocket with every tech we need to create magic. We have instant connection to the internet and can interact with the real world around us. We have an explosion in extended and mixed reality. We have social platforms and creators pushing boundaries. We have a myriad of non-traditional entertainment formats taking over our spare time. We have a canvas like no other generation of creative people, we should be thriving.
Are we running away from our audience?
The accepted wisdom among the marketers and agency folk is that our audience is running away from us, avoiding ads, streaming, blocking etc. I have a different perspective; I think we are running away from them.
Whether we want to admit it or not, our audience, as well as our own media habits, has changed and will continue to change. We have an explosion in gamers and gamer mindsets; millions of people watching series that are only 90-second episodes; more streaming options than ever; and virtual and mixed reality experiences that are visited by tens of millions.
Maybe the simple fact is that we have a curious and experimental audience, but we are stuck. In most cases, we are focusing on the things we have always done and doing them faster, with more automation and less soul. We are less experimental, less curious and running in the opposite direction to the people we need to reach.
The race to bland
So, how did we get here as an industry? A global problem but exacerbated here in MENA. It’s a simple formula. An over-reliance on mostly pointless data-driven thinking; the chase of personalisation at the expense of surprise; pressure to fill all channels all the time; growing risk aversion; shrinking budgets and teams; agency consolidations; and an increasing loss of talent on both the agency and marketing side. It’s the perfect storm of focusing on the wrong things while doing the wrong things faster and more often, running deep into the wilderness.
The wilderness
Most content exists in the wilderness, where average ideas vanish into an overwhelming sea of generic nothingness. Carefully planned social calendars, mediocre ideas and second-rate content ‘go to die’ here. With brands churning out material to keep pace with platforms, the flood of bland, uninspired content quickly drowns out any chance for impact. The relentless volume creates a landscape where only the truly exceptional and meaningful stand a chance, we as brands and agencies are training algorithms to ignore us, we are training our audience to ignore us, we are running headlong into the wilderness. To escape we must abandon formulaic content and embrace creativity and craft to survive this oversaturated wilderness. We must learn to excite and captivate again.
Excite the algorithms, captive our audience
Brands and agencies need to move towards exciting the algorithms, captivating them under our creative spell. We must focus on high-quality content crafted for impact, rather than simply increasing output. By creating less frequent but more powerful ideas, we can focus on what genuinely engages humans: storytelling, surprise and emotion. This high-impact content stands out in a sea of sameness, breaking through algorithmic filters that prioritise relevance and viewer interest over quantity.
Let’s not kid ourselves, we live in a pay-to-play world, but we must strive to maximise our impact whether supported by media or not.
Thumb-stopping creativity
Most of us connect with the wider world through our ‘life feed’, the screen in our pocket gives us access to a non-stop scroll of everything, instantly. From apps to social networks to websites. As marketers, we are competing to get into that feed and more importantly cut through and be remarkable.
Interrupt the scroll with thumb-stopping creativity. This means crafting bold, unexpected ideas that immediately pique curiosity and evoke emotion. Whether our ideas are made for TV, built for OOH or crafted to be content-first, the problem is the same, most likely your idea will be experienced on that screen, in their pocket.
To do this, we need a few things, a simple formula: creativity + craft +time + bravery. Anything else and we are doomed to stay stuck, unremarkable and forgettable.
By Jon Holloway, Regional Managing Director, Dentsu Creative MENA.
