#AfricaMonth: "Get inspired by an unorthodox approach to ideas" - Xolisa Dyeshana

As international representatives, one of the first things we give feedback on is a health check of the market in terms of trends. Only after we’ve given an overview of what's happening in the market where the advertising industry concerned do we go into looking specifically at how the One Show is doing, as the One Club for Creativity’s Creative Week is first and foremost where we have our annual international board of directors’ international board meeting.

While it does take some time to go through each country’s feedback, the brief is so clear that it goes faster than expected.

Essentially, the entire board gets updates on where the body is, some of the major changes – it’s like an AGM as we discuss our finances, but most of the time is given to the international office bearers providing feedback on firstly, how One Club is doing in their particular region in terms of awards, and secondly, how One Club is doing in their region.

That’s in terms of all the development programmes through which One Club gives back to the international advertising community, including the creative boot camps, the Young Guns Awards and the Art Director’s Club (ADC) Awards.

It was really encouraging to see how well South Africa did in The One Show this year. The last year was a very tough one for our clients and for agencies and for our economy, along with the closure of some agencies and the mergers of others. So it was no surprise that our number of entries was slightly down from the year before, but what was really encouraging was the fact that our finalists and winners were more this year, despite having fewer entries.

That was really encouraging, and to this end, I think a huge congratulations must go out to SA agency of the year, which is TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris, but also I’d be amiss if I didn't give a huge congratulations to Ogilvy and Mather for their two golds in radio!

When looking at this year’s results, what’s also encouraging is that it’s extremely varied across the various categories.

Radio is still strong, but we also made an impact in categories like PR, direct and design – basically, a really strong showing across the board, which goes to show that our industry is still alive and well and should carry on along that trajectory.

The biggest one for me, which was shared by both advertisers and the marketers that I had the chance to interact with, was very much around just getting back to the idea – before technology, before media channels and everything else. In fact, the more unorthodox the thinking about ideas, the better the chance of disrupting today’s conversation.

That was a huge trend that I saw, where marketers were starting to say that we really need to work on our ideas, and how we do them to scale, and in so doing we give not only our brand a voice in the ever-growing consumer conversation, but we also go beyond just selling product and we make our brands a part of culture.

Technology still has a huge role, but more and more, if it's technology for technology’s sake, it's having less and less of an impact.

My favourite winning work this year would have to be Burger King - The Home of the Whopper.

It was an amazing way of ‘hackvertising’ in a way that was unexpected, in a way that was completely out of where you would expect the branding to exist and in a way that still had so much relevance and so much heart.

It managed to catch everybody by delightful surprise and did an amazing job for the brand. It’s almost the perfect merger of technology and idea.

How has attending Creative Week inspired you for the year ahead? Describe the One Show 2018 experience in a nutshell.
Creative Week has extremely inspired me, because what became very clear for me is that as South Africans, we have ideas and a unique point of view in the world.

I think our next frontier is how do we take these ideas, and take advantage of the plethora of media – conventional and unconventional alike – that we have at our disposal, and make them blow up not just in South Africa but throughout the world.

I'm really inspired to take that unorthodox approach to ideas, where we look at things from beyond siloed-media perspective, to create extraordinary pieces that have extraordinary impact.

As are we! Click through to our One Show special section for all the latest updates on The One Club for Creativity’s Creative Week 2018.