The Memes of Production | CREATIVE TRENDS
Related to our first trend, we see a reclaiming of genres and formats easily underestimated as superficial, soft, or playful as tools for change. As the creator economy soars and brands embrace entertainment, we see surprising new content formats emerge as drivers of serious business growth, and societal change.
A generation raised on world-building and co-creation is taking those skills into adulthood, with heightened expectations of agency and empowerment.
Storytelling becomes a force for change, with the long-neglected topic of climate change emerging front and center. In TikTok, we see the honing of perfectly packaged content primed to educate, challenge, or disrupt on any subject, from finance to skincare to social justice.
FROM WORLD-BUILDING TO BUILDING BETTER WORLDS
A generation raised on the art and craft of world-building expect to take an active role in reshaping the physical world they live in. As part of Fortnite’s “Creative Mode”, Epic Games introduced Unreal Editor inviting players to become engineer-architect-artist-storytellers designing their own “islands”.
Nike was one of the first brands to adopt the technology creating Airphoria as a means of immersing fans in an Air Max-themed universe. Meanwhile, Saba looked to Roblox to create the world’s first menstruation education game in the multiverse, successfully educating over 30 million kids online.
We see major political organizations legitimize gaming as a space to debate and make a change. The World Economic Forum has created a virtual Swiss town, designed as a place for Davos’ stakeholders to interact and collaborate.
The Metaverse Architecture Biennale brought together architects to debate and discuss the potential of architecture and design in the Metaverse.
Beyond the virtual world, we see a Minecraft-inspired mentality infiltrate the every day. The CHI 311 site enables Chicago citizens to request tree planting, graffiti removal, and other acts of civic good. Users can track their requests and see the impact they are making in the real world.
Guerrilla gardening or “Botanarchy” as author Ellen Miles calls it, continues to engage as a gentler approach to rebellion, with an edge. Miles campaigns for access to green nature to be included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and champions guerrilla gardening as providing a vital sense of control and agency in a world where the future can seem volatile.
CHANGE THE STORY, CHANGE THE FUTURE
“It is impossible to build a better world if one cannot first imagine it”. Lesley Lokko, Novelist and Curator.
Since the days when we huddled together around the campfire, we have known the power of storytelling to change behavior. Until recently, however, storytellers have shied away from some of the most pressing issues, with just 3% of scripted drama featuring climate change in any way. In a shift in the cultural landscape, 2023 was the year of the ‘eco-thriller’ with blockbusters like “The Last of Us” and Apple TV’s “Extrapolations” confronting our darkest fears.
HBO brought the universe of “The Last of Us” to life to great visceral effect with their ‘Infected Billboard’ in partnership with Dentsu Creative Mexico. The hyper-real fungus appeared to take over everything around it, infecting even a car and street furniture, also going viral online!
With their “Mother Nature” film Apple demonstrated conclusively that purpose and entertainment are by no means mutually exclusive, as a concerned Octavia Spencer demanded a status update from execs on their progress on sustainability. Studies demonstrate storytelling significantly outperforms fact-based communication in driving sustainable behaviors.
A good place to begin a new narrative is with new storytellers, building on a powerful desire to challenge older, colonial narratives and tell new stories, from new perspectives.
In partnership with Dentsu Creative India and Dentsu Creative Portugal, Vedantu, an e-learning platform created “The Everything Book” an innovation that shares the stories of local role models inside an internet signal aggregator to democratize education and inspire children from rural communities in India.
THE MEME-ING OF LIFE
Like parables or cartoons before them, memes and reels have emerged as a way of distilling complex ideas into bite-sized, shareable, and endlessly repeatable formats.
As TikTok demonstrates there is no topic, from finance to Excel hacks to social justice, too complex to be condensed into pithy video content. So it’s no surprise that brands are experimenting with new ways to use them.
EcoTok is one such collective of 21 environmental educators and activists seeking to galvanize action through hopeful, short-form storytelling. Understanding the influence of the platform, TikTok launched the #aGoodCollective campaign marking World Mental Health Day with resources and stories to drive mental health awareness.
In France, Amazon Prime Video invited consumers to compete for a voice-acting role in one of its upcoming Amazon Original shows, using TikTok’s Duet feature. The campaign earned 120,000 new followers on Prime Video France’s TikTok account.
To mark ‘World Day of Theatre’ Dentsu Creative Kenya invited the H-Town Kids, famous for their scrappy online parodies, to re-enact popular Netflix shows.
WHAT IT MEANS FOR BRANDS & BUSINESSES...
GAMING IS SERIOUS BUSINESS
If we want to change attitudes and behavior, it may start with play. If we can convince a generation to take the same sense of agency and ownership they feel in games into the real world imagine the impact they can have on the world.
MAIN CHARACTER ENERGY MATTERS
If we want to tell new stories, we need new heroes, and it matters who is holding the pen. It’s time for brands to lead the way in elevating new voices, with new and diverse perspectives.
NEXT GENERATION CREATORS
The creator economy has already had an extraordinary impact on the world of marketing. Now imagine the creator economy married to the power of generative AI, the barrier to creating high fidelity assets no higher than a prompt and an imagination.
Visit our global website to discover more about Dentsu Creative Trends Report 2024: The Futures Less Traveled.
www.dentsucreative.com/news/dentsu-creative-trends-2024
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