Zambian Creativity Vs the World
Image by Jon Tyson
Chola Chisengalumbwe, blogger, meets Chola Chisengalumbwe, copywriter, to discuss what Zambia’s creative industry must do to make a dent at Cannes Lions and on the global stage.
I meet the self-proclaimed copywriter, cat person and procrastinator at a coffee-house in Ibex Hill. It’s the first time he’s been this far out of the house, socially, in a while. “It takes some getting used to,” he chuckles, adjusting his mask every few seconds. We talk about the vaccines, Tottenham (“ugh!”) Hotspur, and his love-hate relationship with a band called Parquet Courts. After we deliberate and decide on exotic teas, we get into it: what Zambia’s creative and/or advertising industry has to do to win a Cannes Lion.
“The great re-opening of the world … presents all of us, whatever we do, with an opportunity to radically transform our approach; and maybe claim a little more real estate for ourselves.”
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THE GRAB: The last time we did this, you were much more pessimistic about the prospects for advertising in this country than you … seem to be now. What’s changed?
CHOLA C: A pandemic will do that, I guess, sheen the riotous asshole out of you … But we’re both rational people so I guess I’ll have to stagger this. The erasure of the last year or so, medically, culturally, commercially, spiritually, 100% makes you take stock of what you have and what you don’t. Things I took for granted personally have taken on a new level of significance, and things I thought indomitable, even impossible, seem totally conquerable.
I guess turning 34 will do that too.
Lol, well, yeah. So if you take stock of what Zambia has, as far as an ad industry and a creative scene, we can sort of cast our gaze forwards and just for a moment forget what the obstacles were. I’ve spent the last few months debunking my personal myth that clients won’t let you try things. If you start from a hundred, and if you can just prove your own belief in your madness, very serious men and women will follow you into Wonderland. The challenge now, and really this is what it’s always been, is convincing the consumer to come along too.
No more blaming clients! Wow! You really are getting old …
I think the first thing agencies here can do is what agencies are doing globally: really have a long hard look at what within the classical structure prevents ideas from being great. In Zambia, admittedly, there’s a lot of work to do with just our understanding of what kind of science ‘creativity’ is.
You sent me a link earlier to a Global Creativity Report that listed 2019’s top 20 agencies in Africa and the Middle East. Just about all the African ones were South African.
And credit to them for kicking so much ass! But if you’re an international jury, if you’re Cannes, you probably can’t help but wonder, Is this all there is? What’s going on out there?
I remember listening to Kara Swisher on a podcast, and she was talking about how all of the world’s truly innovative places, throughout history, are built on bedrocks of diversity and immigration. She talked about Ancient Greece and Rome as places that attracted all the great thinkers of the world, and then Silicon Valley, because you could think openly, create openly there, if you happened to have some weird shit going on in your head. That’s why America and Britain and South Africa dominate at Cannes; they’ve got their own issues with true diversity, but it’s what their societies are built on and it shows up in the work somehow. A strong creative culture sort of absorbs what it can from as many places as possible, and exports itself too, so that it can super-massify itself (pardon) into this hotbed of intellectual randomness.
So the Zambian Way is all well and good. We like to party, and we have our favourite foods, and we swear we’re a friendly people. But do we really truly let other cultures in, and let them shake up ours just a little bit? Do we eat more Chinese food now? Do we attend at least one Indian wedding a year? Even though we’re (um) a Christian nation, do we understand the world through a Muslim prism? And vice versa, you know? I think when you start to integrate other people’s favourite things and their concerns and feelings into how you live, it can mould how you create.
That’s a lot to ask of any one agency, isn’t it? In 2021 or at any one point in time …
Sure. But agencies are fantastic, wild buildings, full of fantastic, wild people. I think within Zambian shops you can build the society you want to see beyond your walls — the one that falls in love with all your crazy ideas — by practising the things you preach. Creating an environment that tests and interacts with alien and maybe even uncomfortable concepts. That doesn’t necessitate that it should show up in the ads; but it ensures that you’re always starting from scratch, always kind of … brand new?
This would, of course, build-in the global context that campaigns need to win over global judging panels. At Cannes.
It would certainly help! I think the number one mistake creative cultures like ours make — be it in advertising or poetry or music or fashion — is we swear allegiance to a culture that hasn’t achieved super-mass yet. Part of figuring out ‘Zambian’ creativity … is seeing what comes out of the culture, our way of life, colliding with other people’s. I think patriotism, wherever you come from, is the number one obstacle to creating things that just resonate with human beings and (thus) win awards. That sort of thing should happen afterward, organically — even in business.
Because the data doesn’t care.
I mean, yeah.
So I get you and all, but the argument would be the world you want Zambian creativity to connect with … surely there’s a part it’s got to play too?
Oh, definitely. Some of us get to work for agency networks, and many of us for multinational brands. It’s such a wasted opportunity, to me, that we can’t hop onto international group chats when we’re having a bit of writer’s block or just want to test a few dangerous ideas. It’s a two-sided dance, but we have to want it. The Zambian creative person has to want to mean something beyond just their backyard. It’s a steeper climb, certainly — but I’m tired of watching Marvel movies and not having a collective response. I’m tired of sitting in meetings where Old Spice ads (bless ‘em) are used as a case study for awesomeness. How do we make what we are, what we care about, global?
That video you made me watch, by the Cannes Lions folks, mentioned judges not really caring about stats and numbers — how much traction your campaign gets or whatever. If an ad moves a couple hundred people to do something, to react, and there’s tangible evidence, that’s sort of enough … And this all got me thinking, naturally, about the size of the available audience in a country like Zambia. You can make cool shit for a digital message, right, but how many people actually see it if only a few hundred thousand have capable smartphones? Or even just, gosh, actual spending power.
Rrrrrrriiight. And our problem, if you ask me, is we’re playing catch-up all the time. We’re importing the latest iPhone and the latest update of Snapchat or what have you before we even get to establish a viable film industry. You know? And then, right after, we’re sort of speaking on channels where we then expect miracle numbers to make trends of our content.
So first things first, I would say let’s have conversations about who we are and what we are and make that the content. Let’s break the fourth wall, and see what happens if we say out loud the things we’re all thinking when we’re alone. There’s a belief in Zambia that these are expressly political things but that’s not how a renaissance starts … I think you just wonder who you are, what you are, and why it matters; and if you can convince a brand to let you document that process (or even wonder itself) suddenly you have a message that doesn’t need just Zambian eyes to do numbers. Or to just resonate with another human being that’s asking the exact same questions.
So let’s be real here, bro. Can that case be made to brands, businesses, with bottom lines to repair in a post-COVID world?
So the pandemic, and I don’t mean to sound so crude, is the major medical crisis of our lifetimes but also the super-massive media event that has connected us all. Maybe not to the same degree, but we’ve all lost people — we’ve all feared for our futures, our families — and we’ve all sort of tuned in and followed along hoping for the moment we’re in now. The chance to go outside again, and resume our lives as consumers. But before we all break away from each other, from this common hope and pursuit, what are the opportunities to widen the impact of what we do? To create slightly smaller but no less interconnected global experiences?
This is where Zambian creativity, American creativity, etcetera, has to grab an astronaut’s helmet and go explore. We’ve just exited the most important moment of all our lives, and I think we’re about to enter the next most important … I can’t crunch the numbers for you, ‘cause I’m not paid to do so.
Nice little cop-out there.
I try, man.
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