Youth drive the IAA UAE agenda
Hani Ghorayeb explains the IAA’s association with the Dubai Lynx, and why three young pros have been chosen to present this year
The I nternational Advertising Association (IAA) UAE chapter has been associated with the Dubai Lynx for eight years now. It is very important for the industry body to be part of the festival, says Hani Ghorayeb, COO, AMSChoueiri Group, who was elected president of the UAE chapter in November 2014.
“We believe the Dubai Lynx is a very respectable entity and that the IAA as an industry body should be part of the whole process,” says Ghorayeb, in conversation with Campaign Middle East. And this year, the conscious focus is to involve youth in the proceedings, in line with the mandate of the chapter for its 2014-’16 term.
Tell us about the year-on-year growth of the IAA’s association with the festival.
The association with the festival has grown. Usually, we used to have one member of the board present at one of the conferences. We have done it a little differently this year.
The youth in the industry is one of the main focus areas of the newly elected board of the IAA UAE chapter. In line with that, we have gone ahead with the ‘Truth & Dare’ competition. It was released in social media as well as ATL (press). We asked the young professionals in our industry to be daring and present to the board their bold ideas on the industry. We have completed an audition and chosen three really good young professionals, who presented on three different subjects. They will be presenting at the Dubai Lynx instead of one member from the IAA.
All three are young female professionals, chosen on merit from among all the presentations by the board through voting.
We used to have a speaker addressing members once a month in the IAA premises. We’ll now be starting with the young professionals’ presentations. We will be hosting them every month to be a part of our presentations. This would include the three chosen pres- entations and some that we thought were good, but could not be chosen to be presented at Dubai Lynx.
What explains the focus on youth from the chapter?
The IAA includes all the stakeholders of the advertis- ing industry. From creative agencies to PR to media representation to media itself, to digital to MBUs… all the components are there. The mandate is to talk about the problems and challenges that each one of us has as an industry.
The direction is that, we don’t want to be perceived as this club of dinosaurs. The perception is that we are about the old generation. So the main purpose of this term is to engage the young professionals in the industry.