Advertising's shift beyond 'selling stuff' to tell better regional stories

A good example of this is last year’s radio Grand Prix-winning 'Highway Gallery' for Louvre Abu Dhabi by TBWA\RAAD Dubai.

Billboards were placed along perhaps the most boring highway in the world and linked to radio, so as you drove along that 100km-stretch of straight open highway without other distractions, it was like a moving gallery with the radio explaining the history of the art you saw as you drove. In that specific environment, the idea and concept worked very well, but it’s not necessarily a concept you could roll out to cities across the globe.

It’s about understanding context, which is why it’s so important to ask how the ideas work for Kenya or Nigeria and not for London or New York.

It’s becoming more and more important that brands are questioned about their social relevance as well as their environmental and social impact.

We tap into this with our shared value category – when we launched it a few years ago, it was an anomaly.

It was difficult to even explain it back then yet nowadays, it’s almost becoming the norm.

It’s something that brands and corporates are striving for: to show their business adds value. It’s something that consumers are looking more and more to see – how do brands add value to my environment?

With the theme of telling better stories, it’s important to look at the positive role advertising plays. Should advertising simply be about selling stuff, or should it act as an influencer in society, acting towards the betterment of society? Ultimately, the question to ask is ‘how does advertising help create a better society?’

Advertising is definitely a powerful medium, tool and influencer. You need to ask yourself as a brand, an advertiser, an advertising agency: Are you reinforcing negative stereotypes, or are you helping to move things in a positive direction?

That’s the main idea behind the 2019 Loeries’ campaign: Use advertising to tell better stories, and in telling better stories, change what you can.

The design category definitely creates positive change, as we felt design as a whole hadn’t been getting a lot of recognition – here in South Africa and the rest of the region, at least – for the concept of design.

We wanted to broaden and go beyond just brand communication, which is why we opened up our design category to include all areas including product design and even wallpaper – it doesn’t have to be design for corporate brands. We want to recognise and reward all good design.

Nando’s coming onboard as a partner is a good example of using good design, as Nando’s understands how to make great creativity, great design and art integral to the success of their brand. It goes back to the idea of shared value, and that shared value is not charity.

It’s not about running your business and giving a donation to an art gallery or a college on the side. Instead, you need to incorporate the principle into your business of doing good while doing good business.

The Nando’s business has benefitted from using creativity, in supporting local designers. They’re effectively growing the whole design industry around their brand, and while growing the local design industry, they’re also benefitting as a brand.

Looking at other changes, 2018 is the year we moved the award nights from Saturday and Sunday to Friday and Saturday. This change was monumental in that it condensed things and made the overall Loeries experience busier and more vibrant on the Friday and Saturday, especially as we now have the masterclasses on the Thursday and DStv Seminar of Creativity on the Friday. Overall, the whole experience worked very well.

This year, we once again have a fantastic line-up of jury presidents providing an aspect of global creative leadership. All of them will be speaking at the DStv Seminar of Creativity, with already revealed highlights, including Nedal Ahmed as jury president of the DStv Film category, and Katja Thielen as jury president of the Nando’s Design category.

Nadal has a fantastic background as the creative behind the Cannes Lions Grand Prix-winning piece, ‘The Talk’.

That work speaks to everything we’ve discussed in this interview in terms of work that creates positive change and turns stereotypes on their head.

Having a jury president with that background is fantastic, especially as she’s from the region, having been born in Libya to Sudanese parents, then moved to the US at the age of 11 and now working in Amsterdam.

Having someone with that global experience is great to both have leading the jury panel and to speak at the seminar – it’s usually a once-off opportunity, listening to the seminar talks and engaging with the speakers, so that’s usually what I look forward to most from Loeries Creative Week.

A clear call for all to start telling better stories – entries for Loeries 2019 are open until 15 May, but consider yourself warned against trying to enter work designed exclusively for the award shows. The Loeries’ ‘all or nothing’ rule results in the most severe penalty for this type of scam – if the work wasn’t approved by a client or didn’t actually flight, the Loeries has the right to not only cancel that entry but all entries submitted by that agency, irrespective of whether the other work is legitimate or not.

If you can’t wait for Loeries Creative Week Durban, taking place from 14 to 20 August 2019, you can click here to go further Behind the Selfie with Human, keep an eye on the Loeries’ Twitter, Facebook and Instagram feeds and stay tuned for my interviews with a handful of those international jury presidents and all the latest updates in our Loeries’ special section.