'Get a 22-year-old mentor': Dubai experts debate how to sell to an audience half your age

'Prosumers', not consumers, are now writing the rules, said industry specialists at the Tribe 2024 summit

Nasreen Abdulla

Published: Thu 22 Feb 2024, 6:34 PM

Last updated: Fri 23 Feb 2024, 3:12 PM

With new technology, insights and tools at hands, it is the best time to be a marketer. That is according to experts who were speaking at the Tribe summit in Dubai on Thursday.

“We are no longer marketing to consumers,” said Annie Arsane, Head of Business Marketing, Middle East, Turkey, Africa and Pakistan at TikTok. “They are prosumers. They are consumers but also content producers. They are giving us the feedback on what they want. We don’t need to do focus groups any more. Everything we want to know about our consumers is on online platforms. There isn’t a better time to be a marketer.”

The event, organised by Khaleej Times, brought together chief marketing officers (CMOs) and gave them a chance to debate, discuss and have dialogue with their peers and industry experts.

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In his opening speech, CEO of Khaleej Times Ravi Tharoor said the aim of the meeting was to “unravel” the secrets of how to balance innovation and investment in the field of marketing. “As we peer into the future, CMOs are not confined to a traditional role,” he said. “These trailblazers are not just rewriting rules, but setting new high standards for customers. Let us acknowledge that they are architects of change, stewards of innovation and guardians of a new legacy,” Tharoor added.

The role of CMOs

Speaking at a panel discussion about redefining the role of CMOs in the era of digital transformation, Asmaa Quorrich, senior advisor to the CEO of the Saudi Tourism Authority said that although there were several changes in the world, the role of marketers still remained fundamentally unchanged.

“We exist to create demand,” she said. “We need to understand the product and category we are playing in. We need to understand the world around us. So the first thing we have to do is look around us and understand the dynamics of that world so that we can decide what kind of value proposition our product has. Then, we also need to understand how this audience is interacting with that category of product.”

However, she admitted that understand the world was challenging. “In the olden days everyone consumed everything,” she said. “In today’s digitised world, people are very specific in their consumption. Things like sustainable, vegan, non-GMO and so on matters to them. We have to make sure our advertising is attention grabbing and is on social media. Often, we are marketing to an audience that is probably half our age. The only way you can succeed as a marketer is to intimately understand the audience.”

Interacting with younger generation

In a separate panel discussion, Nermeen Negm, head of marketing and communications at Masdar City agreed with Asmaa’s views that it was important to engage with the younger generation. “There is a very interesting report by Nielson done last year that show that Gen Zs and millennials care most about sustainability and are willing to pay more for sustainable products,” she said. “Considering that, in terms of tailoring the approach, marketers have to tell stories that resonate with them and communicate about how sustainability is in their values and how they practice it.”

In his talk about seeing beyond tomorrow, Future Strategist John Senai had a unique message to the CMOs- get a reverse mentor. “Get a 22-year-old mentor to tell you what is happening in the world,” he said. “We need to have coaches that are younger than us. Get somebody younger than you to coach you about what is happening in the world.”

According to him, the world is going through “the largest transformation any human has ever experienced” and it needs humans to unlearn and relearn everything they know. “What we had to do was fit in,” he said. “Our kids have to fit out. They have to not follow the system but follow their own genius and curiosity.”

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