Claire Davidson on day 2 at the 6th Dubai Lynx: Women in the middle east dominate the internet

By Claire Davidson at the Dubai Lynx

Day 2 at the 6th Dubai Lynx International Festival of Creativity began with a popular seminar on The Conquest of Indifference by Martin Weigel of Wieden + Kennedy, Amsterdam.

Weigel discussed the grim realities we as brand builders are facing these days. We’re marketing to an increasingly indifferent audience – people don’t always care about brands and the days of creating a ‘relationship’ with a brand are over (evidently having a relationship with another human is hard enough – who needs the stress…).

Brand loyalty is also a memory, with 72% of Pepsi drinkers also chugging Coke from time to time – the world’s clearly in turmoil.

Weigel told us that it takes only 23 seconds for consumers to choose a product in the supermarket – and therefore our primary branding objective should be to encourage effortless, intuitive and easy decisions, rather than trying to create a solid and lasting product/consumer bond.

During his seminar, James Kirkham of Holler spoke about clients needing to be “Always On” in today’s social media world. Now that we can get analysis results back to us within an hour – so essentially in real time – clients will have feedback mere minutes after content is posted or published. Which means that corrections can be executed instantly – alterations, additions or eliminations can be deployed as damage control should a communication piece hit slightly off target. Clients can jump on opportunities, decide what’s hot and what’s not, what works and what doesn’t – just as long as someone’s awake, watching watching, listening listening and acting acting…

I attended the fascinating master class Women – Rulers of the Internet with Herve Cuviliez, CEO of Diwanee. Interestingly enough, here in the Middle East women really do seem to dominate the internet. Cuviliez explained that Saudi women have come to enjoy equal rights online – through the digital world they now have unprecedented access to a safe and nurturing platform from which to interact and share their opinions. The rules are changing and traditions are being challenged; women aren’t permitted to talk to men on the street, but they can online. Things that cannot be discussed in public, can be discussed with anonymity online.

For the vast majority of female Saudis, the internet is the only place where they feel they can have real, open social interactions. They are looking for education, fruitful discussion and to be taken seriously. These women are heavily invested in the medium (78% prefer it to TV), paving the way for strong and long-term commitments from brands, and providing great opportunities for branded content.

Other seminars on the agenda included Creativity in a Conservative Society with Julian Boulding of The Network One & Kaswara Al Khatib from Fullstop. Jonathan Fowles from G14 told us TV is Dead. Long Live TV, and Roopak Saluja from the 120 Media Collective preached Content is King, Distribution is God.

Claire Davidson (above) is Executive Producer, ASIA and MENA @ The SweetShop. She is reporting exclusively for Campaign Brief Asia at Dubai Lynx 2013.