Dubai Lynx: Fredda Hurwitz, Branded Content

Can branded content address the issues specific to the MENA region? Is it a buzzword for just any content with a brand attached? Fredda Hurwitz, Havas Sports & Entertainment’s global CSO and the Lynx jury president of Branded Content & Entertainment talks to Tim Cumming about tussling with such queries

It’s tough being told by your boss that you’re a great writer but you won’t make a great journalist. So it went for a young Fredda Hurwitz, not long graduated from Berkeley in French and journalism, and sitting with the bureau chief at Associated Press in Paris, thousands of miles from home. Hurwitz laughs as she tells the story. “So I thought, what the hell do I do now?!” As it turned out, follow serendipity. Phoning a contact on the Harvard Business Review, she got through to his brother, who was president of Disney Consumer Products Europe and Middle East. That was the last call she made as a journalist. “So I ended up in the corporate world: branding, licensing, strategy and everything else. He gave me my first shot.”

Finding the passion points

Hurwitz, global CSO at Havas Sports & Entertainment, which she joined in 2008, is now based in London, but during her eight years in Paris she moved from Disney to work with major brands and in sports sponsorship. “From the Disney days on, it was all about working in teams, collaborating and pulling the work together,” she says. “But I don’t come from a traditional ad background. Although I’ve worked both brand and agency side throughout my career, for years now I’ve worked in sports and entertainment – in sponsorship, branding and strategy. So I have a slightly different perspective to my peers. My mind definitely doesn’t work in show reels or TVCs but passion points, engagement – things that people genuinely care about and want to share, experience, play with, add to.”

And it’s that different perspective she brings to Dubai Lynx – her second stint in two years, except that this year she is coming as jury president of Branded Content & Entertainment. “We’re there to elevate the criteria and level of expectation, the breadth and scale of work in the MENA region,” she says, “and to add their value and push and stretch things.” Which means letting go of a raft of Western perspectives for a more uninflected view. “What I found most fascinating was the level of insight – a lot of the campaigns were based on a lot of the issues in the region, and how countries, or companies or individuals were taking an endemic problem and finding a way to deal with them without challenging governments. Taking on age-old ways of doing things to put a light on it and say, ‘Here’s another way.’”

One problem she found, and hopes to see addressed at this year’s festival, is defining exactly what “branded content” is. “What we saw was literally everything that had a brand associated with content,” she says. “In the MENA region, there wasn’t a great understanding of what it is, but for me, it is more of a buzzword than a particular category. Ultimately, it’s all about brands finding a way to engage with people over the things they care about, are passionate about.”

Standouts from last year include the Always campaign, Saudi Women’s Online March, from H&C Leo Burnett Beirut – “a march for women – women just walking, going in a line, wherever they were, going about their day”. It won 11 awards worldwide. Impact BBDO Dubai’s campaign for UN Women to ‘give mom back her name’ was another outstanding example of region-specific communication.

“In Egypt, when a woman becomes a mother, she’s never ever called by her name again,” explains Hurwitz, “The children won’t even speak their mother’s name. So the campaign got young Egyptian men to get past the stigma, and to say their mother’s name. It was beautifully done, and I believe it had a positive effect.”

The issues facing the MENA countries, stretching from Lebanon to Morocco, are sometimes starkly different from the issues that have traction in the West. Are we asking too much of branded content to effect social change whether in MENA or indeed any other region? “I believe brands can and should have a meaningful role, but we know they are out there to sell a product. But there are ways and means of doing it, of having a positive effect on lives, on equality, on gender, on all sorts of issues, without losing sight of the fact that you want to sell something.”

Keeping the locals happy... or lazy?

As for the role Lynx plays in promoting work in MENA territories, Hurwitz sees two sides to the equation. “Agencies want to win awards. They want to feel the money and time they have invested in quality is recognised. The challenge at MENA is that you get big agencies, as well as the more local ones, so there is a competitive element. You’re bringing Western thinking, resources and expertise, which helps bring it forward, but there may be a challenge from local agencies trying to break though, and they really embody what their markets are all about. Is Dubai Lynx challenging them to do better, more creative work? Or is it just reassuring them they’re on to the right thing?”