GOA: The third day of advertising mega event Goafest 2018 saw the industry get down to business with talks on advertising, creativity and marketing.
The day took off with Facebook head of creative shop, APAC Rapha Vasconcellos, who talked about building meaningful social interactions and not just likes and comments. He mentioned that brands should focus on telling stories and the challenge is to use social media as a platform to build meaningful interactions. He went on to elaborate how brands are using various social media features to build these interactions and soon 'stories' as a feature will be bigger than people's feeds. The jump from apps and platforms to stories has begun.
Vasconcellos also noted that groups are gaining momentum since people have found them to be meaningful. Whenever people need to take important decisions, it is these groups they turn to, some containing influencers. Brands can and do use these points of connections. He ended the session with the simple message, “The way to build to build your idea is to build it differently.”
Following the insightful session by Vasconcellos was the knowledge seminar by Forsman & Bodenfors art director Samuel Akesson who turned around the entire concept of advertising. Forsman & Bodenfors, an agency famous for its world-renowned and highly acclaimed campaigns like Volvo Trucks – The Epic Split and Nike #Breaking2, doesn't have any hierarchy and works as a collaborative team. On how the unique agency functions, Akesson simply said, “What we do is ‘human’ mostly. Perhaps there’s a lack of humanity in advertising, which is why sometimes advertising is bad at making people feel anything.”
The day also saw India's ace tennis player Sania Mirza talk about feminism, her journey and the need to buck up for a long battle since, even today, female athletes question their pay.
Then came Genius Steals co-founder Rosie Yakob who spoke about a range of topics from living as a traveller for the past five years, solving business problems creatively, breaking the myth of the lone genius, how to be a Scenius, feminism, breaking the gender pay-gap and a host of other topics. In her opinion, the first step in being a Scenius is mutual respect and appreciation, followed by other important aspects such as sharing knowledge, giving credit to all involved, seeking out the weird and the wild, etc. She spoke about brands such as Goldieblox which are breaking stereotypes and promoting young girls to take an early interest in technology.
Adolescent director Amelia Conway is a 15-year-old content creator who works on multi-million dollar projects with brands such as Netflix. Conway spoke about how with the advent of social media, the youth and gen Z had a choice to see the content they want. She focussed on how ageism shouldn’t be a hindrance as the best person to understand a 15-year-old is someone of the same age. Speaking about content that works with the youth she said, “There's a fine difference between content that is honest and that’s not. Genuinity is very important to kids, youth and adolescents.” Most advertisers think that if they put millions of dollars on a clever idea, that some adults packed in a room admire, it will work for adolescents. But it doesn’t. What does work is content that is entertaining, empowering and that collaborates with them. She added that the idea that age or gender determines your capabilities has to be confronted to be changed.
The advertising sessions for Goafest 2018 were concluded by CJ K-Valley chief creative officer Wain Choi who discussed knowing consumers as human beings, a people-first technique for brands. Wain’s session was all about learning from experience as he shared bodies of work he had done for brands such as Samsung, Burger King and Uniqlo. He spoke to the extent that technology for technology’s sake is meaningless, it should mean something for the consumer. Whether it's knowing your customers as people, solving problems for them or even using simple ideas for innovation, brands need to be more human.
