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Marketing guru GG Alcock wraps up DFM 2016 seminar programme --
Mon, 20 Jun 2016 17:04
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SCREEN AFRICA EXCLUSIVE: The seminar programme of Durban FilmMart 2016 ended with a talk by marketing strategy guru GG Alcock, under the heading Authenticity is Key Building Credibility with Audiences.
Although not coming from a film background, Alcock was able to offer considerable insight into a problem facing the majority of South African filmmakers and storytellers of all kinds: how to create content that is relevant to an audience. In an industry constantly caught between the need to create authentic, specifically relevant content and the (conscious or unconscious) notion that such content must follow a Western model in some way, it is little wonder that South African storytellers often become confused, bogged down in restrictive ideas of what locally relevant content should constitute, or inclined to abandon their cultural authenticity in favour of something with global appeal .
Alcock set out, with his talk, to eliminate these conflicts and to try and bring to light the unlimited storytelling resources to which South Africans have access, by focusing on the difference between two concepts that are distinct from one another but often conflated: culture and tradition.
Alcock was raised in rural KwaZulu-Natal and is thus a fluent Zulu speaker with a strong knowledge of Zulu culture and history unusual among white South Africans. This cultural background has put him in a powerful position to identify South Africa s cultural resources. At the heart of his thesis is the idea that culture is not tradition while tradition is stationary, culture is dynamic. South African storytellers may wish to steer clear of their own culture based on the idea that it is stagnant, restrictive and dictates that only certain types of story may be told. In Alcock s view, it is tradition that is being spoken about here, not culture. By avoiding culture, storytellers sacrifice their authenticity and cut themselves off from a wealth of narrative resources.
Alcock touched on a number of areas of South Africa s vast sociocultural landscape that offer immense opportunities for content creation. Humour, for example, is an incredibly powerful tool that depends, for its power, on its close ties to the society and culture from which it emerges it is never generic. Spiritual beliefs and ideas around the intangible are another area from which authentic stories can be drawn. Alcock cited numerous examples of South Africans belief in something beyond the physical world. It is not necessary to prove these beliefs, it matters only that people believe them.
Humour, spiritual belief and other elements of culture are woven into an incredibly complex sociocultural structure in which traditional and modern elements are juxtaposed with far greater ease than many might recognise. This leads to another core point of Alcock s talk: Westernisation and modernisation are not the same thing. Storytellers don t need to westernise culturally relevant stories to give them greater appeal, they need only pick out and highlight the modern characteristics that can already be found within them. Westernisation means forcing, say, American-style elements into a local story, which makes the story patently inauthentic. A better option is to recognise the modern elements that already exist within the local story and draw them out in an interesting way.
Communities in South Africa that the average city dweller may regard as backward are in fact far more sophisticated than is immediately apparent. Alcock pointed out the use of social media in such societies and the meme-like word-play that is often employed in local communications and marketing. This is modernisation in practice.
The main take-out from Alcock s talk are:
- Modernisation is not Westernisation
- Culture is not tradition
- Story is found, not in stagnant tradition but in the rich textures and contexts of everyday real experiences, humour and people, where longstanding tradition and modern trends meet.
- Current sociocultural experience in South Africa remains anchored in local heritage and culture regardless of how modernised it may be. On the other hand, it continues to modernise and absorb new elements rapidly.
Whenever a story or a marketing campaign has any success at all, Alcock says, it is the cultural connection that the storyteller has made with the audience that holds the key to that success.
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