The Young Lynx Academy took place last week, 9th and 10th June, in partnership with TikTok. The event was held at the in5 Media facilities and featured programmes targeted towards 20 young professionals aged 32 and under.
The opening session was led by Sami Moutran, B2B marketing lead, TikTok.
The keynote had industry experts sharing their projects and experiences including Elias W. Bassil, head of brand strategy, Tiktok, who spoke about the knowledge economy, presenting how brands are using TikTok. Ali Rez, regional executive creative director Impact BBDO Pakistan and the Middle East, talked about how to crack a brief and showed some examples including ‘Beat her’ for UN Women. Aakritti Goel, strategy and data director at Cheil MEA presented brave the brief on how to use data assertively. Finally, Ciaran Bonass, executive creative director at Vice/Virtue – Asia Pacific and MEA talked about the predictive engine of culture, sharing many examples of campaign’s that support women’s empowerment.
This year Dubai Lynx partnered with the Dignified Storytelling initiative by Dubai Cares. This initiative is a platform that fosters a common understanding of how storytelling can and should instil as well as maintain the dignity of all persons while striving to create an environment of positivity that strengthens long-term relationships between the public, private and development sectors. Khalifa Suwaidi, communications manager, Dubai Cares, presented the principles of dignified storytelling.
For two days, the event gathered the brightest young minds in the creative industry, where the participants were put into teams to answer a brief to produce a campaign for the client. The event included the briefing, workshops and presentations. The teams were divided by colour into green, orange, yellow and purple.
The submission included the business challenge, target audience, insight, strategy, key message, supporting points and messaging, and brand personality and voice.
The jury was comprised of Khalifa Suwaidi, communications manager, Dubai Cares; Elias Bassil, head of brand strategy, TikTok; Sami Moutran, B2B marketing lead, TikTok and Thea Skelton, festival director, Dubai Lynx.
The winner was the yellow team, who took medals and takeaways.
The members of the yellow team included:
- Aamna Iqbal: Create Media Group
- Ahmed Sakr: Wunderman Thompson
- Chirag Khushalani: AKQA
- Heba Al Nabulsi: Socialbaker
- Youssef Yammine: Leo Burnett
“I loved how this hackathon challenged us to trust our gut instincts, be brave and implement our learnings from the keynote sessions to create an impactful campaign within the short time of 24 hours,” said Chirag Khushalani, AKQA.
