As advertisers, we will need to come up with new ways of engaging an audience that is digitally exhausted – says Karim Khalifa
We all know how rapidly technology has advanced most recently and how the accelerating rate of technological development is dazzling, and perhaps frightening. To put it into context, famed inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil of Google, states: “A full 20th century worth of progress occurred between 2000 and 2015, and another 20th century worth of progress will occur between 2015 and 2021.” That’s 100 years’ worth of advancements in just the next six years.
But so what, I ask myself. Have the advances in technology made a fundamentally positive impact on our lives? Are our parents who worked with faxes and telegrams, more effective, more enlightened than us as we spend our lives on email and social media? Are our children, who were born after smartphones and the internet arrived, leading more purposeful lives than our parents who relied on books, physical interactions and letter writing? With the benefit of hindsight, are we able to conclude whether the effect of accelerating technological advancement will have a positive impact or not going forward?
When it comes to work, technology has no doubt changed the way we work for the better. Efficiency and effectiveness, through communication tools, shortened travel times and leveraging of digital data to make better decisions are all big wins. As we continue to optimise through technology, we produce more cost effectively, we produce better and we produce faster. Surely this underscores the positive impact technology has on work and industry. On the other hand, will this accelerating optimisation ultimately trigger our downfall? Climate change is one thing for sure. Another is how seriously should we be taking the recent hype about artificial intelligence and evil robots? People will also argue that we have lost jobs to technology, in the same way that horses lost their ‘jobs’ to cars. And yes, they have. The manufacturing industry is a clear case in point, as is the world of programmatic advertising. However, the same technology that replaces human labour also creates new industries, processes and systems that in turn creates new jobs with new skill sets.
When it comes to our friends, family and our social life we all have that person that complains about how smartphones and the internet have taken over our lives. We have all witnessed the dinner table of friends all staring like zombies at their mobile phones on a night out. Have we become ‘voluntarily enslaved’ not just addicted to technology? I, for one, am guilty. I find, for example, social media hugely beneficial. Catching breaking news on the move, or making new connections and connecting with friends and family that I may otherwise never have connected with. My Uber driver is also guilty. He blindly followed his GPS device, completely oblivious to the real world short cuts that would have taken us to our destination much faster.
I believe that in this virtual age, in order to not become enslaved to technology there is now a much greater onus on making an extra conscious effort to engage with the real world. Does friending someone you lost touch with years ago and liking a few of their posts count as really connecting? I think not. While in the past we had no choice but to engage in the real world, with today’s advancements it is increasingly becoming a decision to engage the real world. And with the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and his ambitious plans for virtual reality, this is going to become an increasingly obscure and difficult decision to make.
Consequently, we are hardly stimulating our five senses in any meaningful way. When asking my mum about how life was for her as a child compared with today, her answer summed it up perfectly: “The days were more wholesome and fulfilling, it felt like there were more hours in a day.” And I get that. Engaging in the real world requires (and entails) stimulation of all of our five senses, not merely our eyes and the tips of our fingers on a touch screen. Engaging all our senses unleashes our imagination and our creativity, allows us to develop real connections, builds on our character and helps us develop a sense of fulfilment. All of these things I’m sure would lead to a more wholesome and purposeful day.
When it comes to engaging our audiences, the technology overload will eventually come round full circle. People will increasingly seek digital detoxification and real world rehabilitation. As advertisers, we will need to come up with new ways of engaging an audience that is digitally exhausted. Ways that leverage technology within the context of real world experiences. Ways that will reignite our audiences’ imagination, set free their creativity and satisfy their five senses once more. It is almost our duty to bring back the more ‘wholesome’ day that I’m certain we will all subconsciously yearn.
Despite all this, I believe our world for the most part gets disrupted for the better with the advancement of technology. But we now need to focus on not being enslaved to it, if not for our own fulfilment at least for the sake of the audiences we are trying to reach.
The other day my six-year-old son showed me a printed selfie he took with a Polaroid camera, and asked me: “Can I have a camera that prints pictures? My digital camera is really boring.” Just as you may miss penning a letter or clasping a heavy hardback novel instead of pinching your Kindle, perhaps this young Generation Z’er has just offered us a glimpse into how we may be reconditioning our digital lives in the future.
Karim Khalifa is co-founder and CEO of Digital Republic
