Seamless and socially responsible: great digital work goes beyond technology

a lot of these ideas that we've seen were very storytelling driven which which is kind of refreshing to see is quite disruptive it makes making coding cool there's a little bit of shock value in it as well it's just opening that door to see what's on the other side what you're left with is the pieces that really were created but they use that platform in a really great way [Music] hello and welcome to the dnad jewellery insights digital panel my name's amarose i'm a journalist specializing in arts and culture and i am joined by three special guests i'm joined by cabza moshe paolo who's chief creative officer at ogilvy johannesburg raymond o'taylee mckay who is chief creative officer at run jax young who is global creative director at cheer worldwide and we're going to be talking about their picks for the winners i guess of digital this year and then we're going to spread out into a larger discussion but essentially what we're going to do first is run through their favorite and i wanted to start with you cabza first if that's okay that's perfect wonderful and the work you've chosen is gwc dojo code from mojo supermarket and just finding out a little bit about this work it's easy to see why you thought it was groundbreaking on several different levels i wanted to ask you excuse me what stood out to you initially about this project above all the others girl 2 code wants to inspire the next generation of female coders so when dogecat released a viral song about powerful women we used it to empower the next generation of them that's right the first ever codable music video an interactive experience that's secretly a coding lesson using snippets of code girls could change the story we turned zero media dollars into 10 million dollars of eyeballs and girls everywhere spent millions of minutes learning to code without even realizing it instead of consuming the internet girls were creating it all by turning the world's hottest music video into the coolest coding class to ever exist i think um you know we have a lot of initiatives or ideas that um you know try to address the same sort of thing around women empowerment i felt this piece was quite succinct in terms of fit for purpose looking at an iconic superstar and the behavior that the audience has around her and her music which is you know viewing her music videos as well of viewing her and her makeup tutorials live um and you know i think gwc found an interesting way to um you know find a way to be attractive to to them around what they do which is making coding cool uh by you know making it very very similar seamless removing the barrier of you know you think code you think it's difficult you think you have to have um you know a bit of um you know that you have to be trained to actually understand how to how to do that but it just really really um it's quite seamless it's quite uh intuitive in terms of how they can actually participate in something that they already do which is watching the video but now they give they've given a little sense of control um by changing how they actually how it plays out and you know and it's it's taking something that's quite um a frivolous sort of action and makes makes it quite empowering which i think was it was quite was quite powerful in terms of the idea and thinking and a real brand fit absolutely and i thought it's almost like a choose your own adventure but with code can you talk us through how it works in practice for those participating so in practice um there's um there's a a website platform that the music video has been uploaded to uh there's two versions there's one that is on youtube that's your normal video and then there's one that's called this title dojo code the one that's titled dojo code as it plays this point in the actual music video that you can actually change aspects of it so part of the story part of how she looks for example uh you can choose the the nail color of you know just typing in the actual uh color of the of the of what you want or what you want to see um and you know as you become more afraid with coding and and how css works you can actually even put hexadecimal values you know and that's already like training you and equipping you with how coding actually works um and it's quite a a seamless um sort of experience that um you know you you as a young um as a young girl who's just interested into the music video and you all you almost now um you know tricked into learning how to code in a manner of speaking um you know i think it's it's quite refreshing um it's quite um it's quite uh disruptive in in terms of how it's quite um it's making coding cool exactly and i think in a way a lot of when we i remember looking at music videos and looking at performers especially and just thinking how did they do that and it's all built around this kind of intangible magic x factor which is exciting in itself but this kind of as you say is incredibly empowering for young women because it's and for anyone who i guess who wants to participate because it's just like here actually here's how you do this in a really simple way and um that must be so exciting for someone who's either looking to get into video or looking to get into um coding yeah it just broadens your horizons you just think of you know there's so many other aspects to this that you would never consider before and um and now it's just opened up your um your perspective on what's possible and what do you think the impact of this work could be um for kind of similar projects do you think this is something that will catch on do you think it's something that people could use as a teaching tool possibly i think a lot of the times and why i think um you know this is not a unique thing i think the um this has been done before but it has been done to an audience that's already bought into this um you know level of thinking uh but now it's attracting um young girls who would never actually consider this before you know so i think for me that's the that's the neat part of it that um things like these have been done before where it's actually more people that already um you know inclined to do coding so it's already like an audience that's already bought into this now getting someone that's never considered it at all i think that's that's the neat trick here absolutely it's really really interesting and that's quite impactful because in this way um i think you know there is quite a low percentage of females taking up this uh trade so it's it's becoming more attractive to them absolutely and um yeah but that can only be a good thing in terms of um representation within digital i think but thanks so much for explaining that to us and uh let's move on because we don't want to run out of time raymond um you've chosen the unfiltered history tour which is fascinating um but this is by densu webb chutney could you talk us through this entrance please you are now viewing the griegel shield captain james cook was a british idiot we're now looking at the legal shield which was taken from my people collections in the british museums are premised on a simple idea i'm proud of what my grandfather stole from yours yeah this one resonated me quite a lot because it's told from the perspective of the communities where these pieces of um artifacts you know these artifacts have been taken from those countries and the first artifact that we see on on the case study was one from one of you know the first nations in australia and um being maori and being an indigenous to al-qaeda or new zealand that's something that really resonated from a perspective where these underlying stories are being told about these things that we would see all the time and and museums all around the world and and and to be able to i guess be told in a way where you know people have access to it either inside the museum or outside of a museum it's quite a cheeky way to to um gift basically you know knowledge um to then be able to tell the true story and and and the other side of the story because we only hear one side of the story and so um yeah being being that it's quite close to my heart from from that perspective um it was uh pretty powerful and i kept on popping up and i kept on saying i was like oh god i love that piece of work it's so good it's that it's that feeling as a creative you're like oh man i wish i had done that piece right it's that that's that feeling so cause it's been a huge debate hasn't it and the british museum has been the epicenter of it i mean there are a lot of looted objects in museums around the world mainly in the west of course um because they were the people did most of the looting but um so we have these objects in museums that are now owned by these museums and there's lots of questions over where they should be should they be returned do people want them should we return the looted objects and keep things that have been bought on the market where did those broad items come from and in a way people have got out of solving it by raising problems like all of those questions and it's in a way it's like where the objects end up time will tell you know but as you say it's access to these histories which is so important and rather than waiting for the museums to go through all their processes talk to governments change the labels this is just actually a really clever way because anyone can walk into the museum british museum it's free and hold up their phone and get another story about these objects yeah yeah it's it's a game that um there's a little bit of shock value in it as well because um you know um it's just opening that door to see what's on the other side and i i think that's really special because i think once you have the full picture you know if you're talking about uh reparation for these types of things you know through history um to have all the knowledge for everyone to be able to go forward is super important i know that being maori here in new zealand um that's that's you know that's what's kind of happening now we're starting to acknowledge you know the tangata fenua with the people of the land here and um you know and and kind of starting to slowly i guess um acknowledged the treaty that was signed here and and and the tangata tiriti which is that you know the people who came here and and we had that merchants of the two people so uh really really special piece and um yeah yeah i like i said um just a cheeky way to to give people that information um yeah i'm typical old-school creative i haven't haven't got too much provenance in the digital world um but obviously you know just bringing that um bringing that into the into the fold using technology is pretty pretty brilliant um yeah absolutely and it's a really good use of augmented reality which i think has been hanging in the background for a while and is now coming into the mainstream absolutely and i think um i think you made a point um with cabello as well in terms of you know what what does it look like in the future well i can see the same sorts of things happening with these digital tools that we have access to to be able to be able to you know right wrongs um bring access you know this whole sort of idea of nfts within the museum and um you know art gallery space being able to you know take these digital images and you know maybe there's a conversation there between museums and those communities where those objects and artifacts have been taken from so that's quite interesting as well so exactly fascinating and um and what do you think i mean it's quite clear but could you talk me through what you think is game changing about this work i i think for me i'm always going to access my indigenous kind of perspective so for me this is hugely um game changing it's not a comfortable conversation to be had and so and what i mean by that is that um you know being an indigenous creative which which i actually don't see many of us in the world it's it's nice to know that this kind of conversation really hard conversation is able to be had and and it may not have been by an indigenous person but it's it's obviously by someone who's super open-minded and that's that's where i think the core for me was you know it doesn't i think creativity for me is you have to access all sort of elements of creativity and i think you have to put human emotion in there and if it makes you feel something gosh it's got to be creative you know so absolutely and do you think this could have a wider impact in the museum world you know in terms of restitution also just in terms of sharing these stories yes yes to answer that question absolutely yes um i think you know that technology while it's not a new technology and as cabello mentioned as well you know these it's just how you twist the use of that technology and i think there's a brilliant way to do that um you know maybe it obviously won't be as stealth as it was for that piece of work um but you know it's it's again just that conversation that's able to be had absolutely and it takes out the waiting for the for the institution and it kind of puts pressure on um the institution to catch up with the conversation which yeah absolutely power switch absolutely you said it there power switch wonderful and jax i wanted to now come to you to hear all about sick beats and this is by area 23. yes um it's super exciting just to see the range that we all brought because i know we've had long discussions in that uh in in our zoom calls um and so i'm quite you know it's it's quite interesting to see i think um you know i also love globalcad i loved unfilter history uh tour as well um i did bring something a little bit more traditional but i thought you know this was something that actually made bigger change in the world um and it was real so this is something i i felt you know since day one of judging this was one of my favorites [Music] turn up the volume there is a specific sound frequency 40 hertz that is proven as effective as traditional cfs therapy it loosens mucus so patients can cough it up the wound your sick beats vest syncs to your smartphone and pulls these frequencies from the music you're listening to delivering them to the chest in real time we scanned the millions of songs on spotify to collect the songs containing the 40 hertz tone and gave the cf community dedicated access to the therapeutic song library so uh sick beats um was basically the first musically powered um airway clear clearance vest for um cf patients so basically it loosens up the mucus um using the beats of of song and i guess you know and it was it was based around children and and so that's always a nice little story when kids say it um but you know it was you know they go through this process two times a day um with this big kind of bulky vest on and it just kind of like pounds them until the mucus loosens up and i think um sick beats had done it in an interesting way where they were kind of um basically the ai would go through your spotify account and pick up uh songs that were 40 hertz and over and then basically that would be your playlist so um the beats would actually activate based on the song the the air with the music waves uh the sound waves of that so then you know it actually turned you know this kind of procedure into a positive one so kids that would have to sit there and just kind of like have this big bulky heavy vest on them doing it every day they had now music to kind of make that experience a little bit more entertaining and fun so i thought this was quite nice in terms of storytelling but also you know the technology isn't so innovative but i think the way that they used it for this campaign uh was it doesn't work without that uh the innovation that the tech um so i thought this was quite you know it was a nice kind of uh piece that that really felt you know real and honest and um it actually brings good to the world so yeah it's fun and it seems like when you watch the video um because obviously you say it's quite an intense process for quite small children it's very physical it looks quite painful um when they're wearing sick beats first you see them relaxed they're enjoying themselves they're not that kind of dancing and it feels like it's a really completely different experience to just wearing the the other vests that you see them wear right right so immediately even in the film you see them you know the before and after it's like when they're on the couch with their kind of they're talking and it's it's like you know you hear their voice vibrating and you can tell that it's not an easy experience for them every day um versus you know they have a cool looking vest on now that you know is activated by their favorite kind of music so they they're in control of what they want to hear during this this procedure and and you know it it's it's i guess there was over 30 million kind of songs that it actually went through so there's actually a playlist that it doesn't feel repetitive as well so it's something that you know they could listen to a different song that works for them the next day you know so there's it's something to look forward to i think which is the nice kind of um story to it um absolutely and as you say it's taking an existing technology and uh using it to the benefit in a way that maybe no one's thought of before which on one hand could be like a sign of progress a sign of access to technology and thus getting used to it in our lives but also uh and so i wonder what you thought about that um yeah i mean i think that's that's that's what makes it good though it there it always means that you know there's it doesn't always have to be the newest thing and you win an award i think it's it's how you use it um how does it benefit you know for for in our in our case for our kids it wouldn't exist without that technology so um i think for them it's it's the way that they use it the new way that they uh improvise that technology that made it cool so i think that's always a good thing to see because you know it's always about what's the coolest newest technology that are people are doing and i think we also had this discussion during um the panel is kind of you know like is that the newest tech is that tech innovative and it's like but you know sometimes it doesn't rely on that all the time so um i think the way that they used it was quite um amazing because it's actually uh from what i know it's fda approved it's also there's hospitals like ucla and chla um that actually had adapted this um treatment so i think because it it makes it so real and i love it when campaigns don't have a timeline on it so it's like you know you see things it's like oh you know we we made it for this you know three months or six months or one year but you it was nice just to see that the timeline on this is still ongoing and it they continue to kind of provide uh this service so that it makes this treatment less painful um less expensive um less uncomfortable for for people who do have uh uh the challenge yeah so it's absolutely kind of amazingly impactful and as you say the impact will go on and on um but i wanted to broaden the conversation out now to um include all of you so please pitch in um and i wanted to start by asking you um which plays into what something that's come up in all three works which is this rather than it being like a hot new tech this is someone taking an existing tech and doing something surprising with it or innovative with it and i wanted to ask there was a kind of rush to digital in the pandemic there was a lot of kind of big innovating out of need you know and um i wonder what you thought the impact of that has been on the overall landscape yeah i think it was really heartfelt for us because we had to go through lows and lows of entries because now um as an unexpected spike of uh entries that are like digital or perceived to be digital um and i think that's that's the the nature of how um the panda pandemic affected or accelerated uh the adoption of it you know i think it was on the trajectory to be you know more and more um spent from from from key clients is being you know uh digital but now um the pandemic meant that it was actually accelerated because you know you have your captive audience that we branded it communicate with create user journeys that connected their brands with them in a different way that's not you know physical because of what the pandemic implications were so yeah so i think um it's only going to get more and more of you know some of those behaviors being embedded and more campaigns coming out that um you know are driven through that new way of approaching digital um so i think that's the long-term effect or impact of uh what the pandemic has done and uh and yeah and you see in a lot of the works where it's of overcoming some of those challenges that we had like contact and access and all those different things so i think that prevailing theme will carry on even though we might be not in the clear with the pandemic but you know living with the consequence of it um but you know in the future there's now new ways of brands uh connecting with um the audiences through digital means right and you could already see i think in the range of work that we saw it's like people were tackling it digital is now so broad um you know you you had cases where it was like does this belong in digital or do we need a separate gaming category i mean use of influencers you know it's interesting to see how brands were engaging with tick tock and instagram um so there was it it beca and then you know i expectedly personally um that there'll be more things on the metaverse or nft but there's not as many as i thought so um when i initially started so things like that you could already see that brands are really trying to explore um how to engage especially during the pandemic how to engage to their audience who just needed a lot of content at that time so um it really thanks to that we had about over 800 pieces to go through but you know it's it's it was quite interesting to see the range of work that was submitted yeah i i can totally i can support that i think um yeah you saw so many things you had to really sort of um sift through to see who was you know um twisting it enough to be really super cool or really really different um because there was a lot but awesome like beautiful like it was funny when when judging i was just yeah i was judging and my wife was in the other she's my business partner as well she was in another room and i was like oh my gosh this is so good you know so like just reactionary was just funny when i was judging that i had a great time judging it so yeah yeah interesting and um and just and as um as that kind of rush calmed down slowed down a little bit i wonder what you thought now we're getting a chance to kind of digest what you thought the most significant evolution in digital has been over the last year or so you know i think um a lot of like previously you know you'd see like quite evidently quite clearly that digital was an afterthought where now it's it's almost um leading the idea is digitally led um you know from experience to fulfillment to you know all the different um different um touch points along the journey um so i'd say i'd say it's more um taking center stage um where it's no longer an afterthought um which which is very good to see um but i think all those things um again um you know within the last uh two years um that it's actually taken taken it's taken what has taken hold of um of how how things are conceptualized or how brands uh uh you know brief artwork and and the expectation of um you know how to how to engage their customers also i think the storytelling aspect is definitely been pushed and became stronger and i think it's because maybe during the pandemic there was this need for longer content and i think a lot of these ideas that we've seen were very storytelling driven which which is kind of refreshing to see because like uh cabello said before it was almost kind of like you do a main campaign and digital was just kind of the adaptation and the after thought of that whereas now you really see the digital campaign being the main source and the main hub and it's it there's longer content there's more stories to tell so that was kind of the main um kind of uh uh concept of the of the projects that we've been seeing so i thought that was quite interesting to see do you think in a sense like with um also with creatives and with consumers do you think there's a sense that people are now just better with digital they understand it more it's more assimilated into their lives i'm always kind of seeing that in the creativity around digital right yeah yeah i i think that's so correct it's um yeah it's it's an extension of us now it's no longer this thing it's you know it's our daily lives now um and so um i guess the toe took or both you know support both comments i would say i really love the way that it was brought into the real world the physical world so how that kind of that manifested as well not just being on a screen or your mobile or whatever that was was just how it was brought into the real world was really really cool to see and you saw a lot of it so yeah and and i guess um i don't know why i keep coming back to this point so forgive me but i think it's very interesting as he's this thing that we keep seeing it that you keeps coming up in the conversation which is the fact that rather than it being about hot innovation that it's about actually personal innovation creativity it's like how do you feel and you know correct me if i'm wrong that digital has come back to creativity and slightly away from innovation from tech i hope so i hope so it's been a few years where we're just like oh my goodness we're done like creatives are done like there's there's ais that are going to be doing our jobs and you know at the end you know it's it's it's the creativity that kind of uh what what you're left with is the pieces that really were created but they use that platform in a good way you know in a really great way you know um so that was really refreshing to kind of see i think also the pandemic did that as well because you know a lot of people were working um remotely so at the end it's you wouldn't have been so close to your it guys and you know things like that so it might have been the pandemic that actually also kind of accelerated that a little bit more but i i i god i hope we go back to great today and i feel like we're coming to the end of our discussion now which is thank you so much for your insights i've really enjoyed speaking to the three of you i hope you've enjoyed it as well um but i wanted to also ask is there anything that you wanted to finish on anything you wanted to add to the conversation before we wrap up um i mean just one thing for me i think um what was what was also really amazing for me was the kind of the panel that we had which was um normally it's like a boy's club it was the most diverse panel that i've been on where um i think there was just me raymond and um it was just three guys and the rest were power ladies you know it was was really great you know um and yeah and and incredible um conversation and discussions around the world um yeah yeah i think it was fun it was it was a lot of work it was i think i mean 800 something 16 or something like that so we did have a huge number to go through but it was it was refreshing it was refreshing to kind of see that digital encompassed this broad kind of and it's probably going to grow even bigger unless you know we separate them but i think it was really nice to kind of see the range of work um inspiring work yeah cool i i know i second both of those comments as well and i and i feel like just coming around back to the whole idea of creativity was really the winner and um you know although we were in the digital category and there was all these new technologies well not so new um it was nice to know that there was always the guardians there going no we've got to put that creativity hat on and it really dominated how we looked at everything digital which was fantastic so and i just want to um say thank you to yeah cabela and yourself jax as well and and you too and just just being here and having a voice from an indigenous perspective and it was it's been lovely it's been a lot of manakitanga meaning you know enhancing each other which has been fantastic so thank you very much appreciate it thank you that's wonderful

2022-08-12 03:19

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