Some of the big-name CEOs of the world are putting it out that advertising has irreversibly changed, on the back of AI and digital disintermediation.
There is some incontrovertible truth to the fact that there is immense pressure on attention spans. I concede that channel segmentation is much more complex than we have perhaps ever known. It is also right that content production is much more democratised, in some ways, than it was in the days before digital proliferation. It is true that the wearout of ordinary materials happens much faster today than before.
No one can reasonably deny that dialogic modes of brand engagement are very necessary and to be preferred to monologues, but Paolo Freire was saying this seven decades ago. What is new?
Yet, some of the assertions being thundered now are clear examples of overclaim and exuberant hyperbole.
The CEO makes a statement, a community takes the CEO as the reason to believe his own statement. Like it was with Robinson Crusoe on his island.
Myths can be made that way, not science.
If “old style” creativity has no place today, how is it that some content gets such mega virality and stands out? The Gen-Zs who are said to have nearly radioactive attention spans have hit songs and hit videos. Think Amapiano and Afrobeats, as two obvious examples. Chinua Achebe’s evergreen “Things Fall Apart” is another example.
What makes that possible? Relevant, connected and on-insight creativity. Same as it was in 3000BC, when baskets were sold with advertising scripts written on papyrus in Thebes.
I am sceptical that we are in an age of complete migration to influencer marketing, as some say. This precipitate claim is likely to be revealed as hollow over-reliance on fickle endorsement in time, I suggest.
Techno-euphoria and its ability to prematurely pronounce the end of history have existed since the abacus was invented. But creative communication has always survived in brand building.
Especially for African marketers, it must be remembered that the homogenising glimpses of CEOs living in Western cities do not always describe their African realities.
There are still many of our African compatriots who are considerably astonished to hear that they are supposed not to like a solid piece of creative communication that speaks to them and their aspirations.
All over the world, there are people who long for the old-time religion, but delivered with the improvements science delivers. That is why fufu, nshima, ugali,h pap, jollof, eba, amala, agege bread and many others thrive in Africa. This is not to simplistically romanticise the past, it is just an acknowledgement of lived realities.
Where there is hyperproliferation and hyperfragmentation, it is there that true creativity based on relevant human truths most stands out.
The rush to abandon often leads to a retreat to rediscover. Good old communication will always have a place, whatever faddishness claims from aloof rooftops and islands.
With open minds, let’s keep the conversation going.
No CEO has been handed God-sent tablets of stone on Mt. Sinai. They are not infallible; we must not act like Man Friday and just obey.
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