Creative Profile: Amy Kean

Amy Kean, Mindshare’s regional strategy lead for Asia-Pacific, believes that the internet is her spiritual home. Its very eclecticism is what, for her, makes it such a captivating place. Kean admits that she is riveted by people and by their relationship with technology, specifically the internet. She studied psychology and sociology at university in England and did her dissertation on the role of the internet in people’s relationships with celebrities.

“I was the first person at the University of Bath to reference Madonna and David Beckham in my dissertation,” she says proudly. “And what I began to learn is that the internet is a fascinating, enlightening, positive, dark place and, as such, the perfect environment for me in which to work.”

In 2004 Kean began her career at the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), the organisation that represents the UK digital advertising industry. She was paid to discuss, in general terms, the internet: its positives, negatives and best practice approaches to it. She set up the IAB’s first social media council, worked on events, PR and marketing, and created a well-respected profile within the digital community for herself before moving, in 2011, to work at the Havas Group, first as social media director then latterly at Havas Media Labs as the head of futures.

Do you want sex with robots?

But before getting to that enigmatic-sounding role, it’s clear that Kean hadn’t always set her sights on a life in advertising or technology, and it’s no real surprise to learn that this animated, energetic 35 year old had one eye on a future in the performing arts. “I’ve always been quite eccentric – or weird, depending on your preferred terminology – and as a child I was a big fan of drama,” explains Kean. “Lots of singing, dancing and school plays. As a kid I inevitably wanted to be a member of a girl band, which was a dream that left me as soon as I went to my first audition and was told to “dance, freestyle” for three minutes. I then decided that I wanted to be a Blue Peter [UK children’s TV show] presenter, but got put off after the Richard Bacon scandal [Bacon was caught taking cocaine].

I guess you could say that I’ve always wanted to be attached to fame in some way, without the bother of actually achieving it myself. So, working within media, where we align ourselves with the biggest brands and get to meet the most interesting minds, is probably a great second best to actually being on TV.”

Back to Havas and that forward-thinking role which, Kean says, “was a grandiose title to describe what I think is a very practical job: mapping out the future of your clients’ [business] and trying to work out what’s coming next”. The Havas Media Lab is a research facility whose aim is to get people thinking about technology’s potential applications. Kean’s role used analytics aligned with imagination to work out what might be coming down the pike. “This might sound like common sense,” she says, “but the good thing about the future is that we can change it, and so the role of the futurologist isn’t to say ‘In 20 years we’ll all be having sex with robots,’ (although we may be!), but instead to say ‘Here’s a number of different possible scenarios for the future, some are good, some are horrible, what do you want to happen?’”

In 2015 Kean left London for Singapore and her current role at Mindshare, which, in essence, tasks her with understanding people and generating strategies around that understanding. It seems like a perfect job for someone so inquisitive about human nature and people’s application of technology. “I think I’d be hard pressed to find a more dynamic and diverse role,” she says, “but my God, there’s a lot to learn about people, and I’m starting to think I might need to learn all the languages, too. I used to sit in an office in the UK and create these global strategies and recommend innovation based on my own bubble of London understanding, but working across APAC has really opened my eyes to cultural nuances and how creativity looks different everywhere. In fact, the very definition of creativity and innovation differs from market to market.”

The cutting edge of pizza crusts

Despite Kean’s interest in people’s use of technology and how it can empower them and the brands which use it well, she doesn’t see herself as particularly interested in “the tech side of technology”. Innovation, identifying problems and their solutions are what interests her. “Whether it’s tech-driven or through a cultural movement or even a piece of literature, it doesn’t really matter,” Kean states. “What I’m most interested in is how you can effectively inspire people to change. There are so many examples of that in history – religion, societal movements and, yes, technological developments that have solved such a compelling problem that people decided they couldn’t live without the solution. Pizzas with pepperoni and cheese in the crust, for example. Pizza crusts are one of the most impressive sources of innovation globally. The problem? People always leave the crusts. The answer? They want more cheese!”

Kean goes on to discuss the potential psychological applications of VR, such as aiding with agoraphobia, and posits that apps of the future might be able to rid a person of paranoid anxiety, or that playing an online game could save a failing marriage. This potential future, a future where such innovations are available to all, a future devoid of the current clickbait mentality of the internet, would be, she believes, a time when we could say that technology has truly changed the face of humankind.

One piece of tech that frustrates and fascinates Kean in equal measure is augmented reality. “It has the potential to change us, change how people think and see the world and yet the majority of normal people still don’t know, let alone care about it,” she says. “Historically it’s been left up to agencies, not tech providers, to push AR as a platform, and the executions have been expensive and buggy.

Obviously Pokémon Go has made an impact. It has used the strength of an existing brand to introduce a new technology to the masses for huge social rewards. Similar games have existed, but I think people underestimated just how obsessed the world has always been with Pokémon. If it takes a 20-year-old brand with TV shows, toys and multi-million dollar investments to launch a new technology to the public, then we probably need to apply these lessons to the future of new technology distribution and the amount of investment needed to change people’s behaviours.”

So would it be fair to say that these glimpses into people’s thinking and behaviour are what Kean finds the most interesting element of her job? “Hmm, what do I most enjoy about my job?” she ponders. “Arguing? Being smug? Recommending something to a client and then, five years later, someone else doing it, allowing me to say ‘I told you so’? Obviously none of those things,” she laughs. “The thing I enjoy the most is learning new things about people every single day. Little facts, insights, new types of behaviour and trends. Just new knowledge about what people love, what they hate, and how weird they are. The fact that I can apply that to the media world is purely incidental.”