SMG is committed to nurturing up-and-coming talent and this year is sponsoring the Young Lions Storytelling Academy at Cannes. We’ll also have a number of rising stars on the ground, including Hayati Alaluf, SMG UK, a Young Media Lions Winner. Here’s his story.
1. Tell us more about your honor and how you were selected.
Young Lions is a competition for young people in the advertising and media industries. Each country selects a team to represent them in the competition and we were chosen to represent the UK in the media category. 76 teams competed in the UK part of the competition and all teams were given a brief on Barnardo’s, a British charity helping vulnerable children. We had to respond to the brief in 24 hours with a media strategy and a plan. Six shortlisted groups presented their strategies to a panel of judges and we won!
2. What is your role at SMG and how long have you been here?
I’m a Senior Planning Executive on the P&G team. I have been working at SMG for the past 4 months. I was working at another media agency for almost 2 years before joining SMG.
3. What do you like most about your job and working in the media industry?
Interesting people I work with and the fact that everything is changing so fast!
4. What will you be doing while in Cannes?
For the first two days, we will be in the competition, so I will be focused on that. But for the rest of the week we will be given festival passes, so I’m hoping to go and enjoy all the interesting conferences and workshops as much as possible. I also heard from several good sources that there will be a few good parties going on throughout the week!
5. What do you most hope to learn while in Cannes?
I’m going there with an open mind and will try to take in as much as possible. However, it’s the festival of creativity, so I would hope to learn a lot about creativity and the idea generation process other media/advertising professionals go through.
6. How do you expect your experience in Cannes to help your work back home?
I think the competition is going to be a great experience. We will be meeting and competing against people from different countries and it will be great to see different perspectives. Going to the festival and attending the workshops is also an amazing opportunity, and I’m sure I will learn a lot of new things that will help me with my day-to-day work as well as my strategic thinking.
To read about other SMG rising stars headed to Cannes this year, click here.
