Memac Ogilvy welcomes new Chief Creative Officer

/0 Comments/in /by

Memac Ogilvy has appointed multi-award winning creative talent Paul Shearer as the group’s new Chief Creative Officer (CCO). Shearer brings 25 years of experience in advertising to his new role and will be based in Memac Ogilvy’s Dubai office.

“Paul’s record speaks for itself and we are confident that he will drive our group forward to even higher creative levels,” says Edmond Moutran, Chairman and CEO, Memac Ogilvy. “Paul prides himself on understanding client’s business and the global alignment that is required for creative success. He always surprises his clients and teams with his ideas and has won some of the most prestigious global awards in our industry. However, when it comes to success Paul will always tell you that our philosophy is to move our client’s brands off the shelf which is more satisfying than any award, and that really resonates with us as a network.”

Paul’s work for brands such as Guess Jeans, Nike and Audi has won him global admiration and accolades, including 18 Cannes Lions, 10 D&AD pencils, 19 Clio statues and his work has received the ‘Best of Show’ award at the One Club. Part of his experience also includes being a Creative Head at Wieden+Kennedy, Senior Creative at BBH and Founding Partner of Nitro.

Paul adds, “Being able to spearhead creative operations as CCO at Memac Ogilvy is a responsibility that I am thrilled to be carrying forward. The network has an incredibly rich history within the advertising industry, and the talent that I’ll be collaborating with in my view is second to none.”

Exponential announces results of mobile research

/0 Comments/in /by

Digital advertising intelligence company Exponential Interactive has revealed its results of the research conducted into what people in the Middle East’s choice of mobile phone brand says about them, and how this can be used for marketing and advertising techniques.

Exponential Interactive conducted an analysis of the anonymous online behaviour of 1.1 million people in the Middle East and North Africa during the third quarter of 2014, researching mobile phones to compare the strongest – or most ‘over-indexing’ – interests across topics which include film, cars, travel and shopping.

Of the five brands measured, the results of the research found that Apple is the only one more likely to appeal to women, while Samsung, BlackBerry, Nokia and LG are all more likely to be of interest to men. Geographically, Abu Dhabi residents are the most likely to be interested in Apple, whilst Dubai residents are the most likely to be interested in BlackBerry.

As confidence in e-commerce increases across the region, LG owners are leading the way as the most likely to make purchases on a mobile phone, while Apple owners are the least likely.

“The research throws up challenges to stereotypes and interesting reinforcements about the type of people who own different phone brands,” says Amer Attyeh, Regional Business Head for the Middle East and North Africa, Exponential Interactive. “For instance, iPhone owners were perceived as the young trendsetters but they’re actually the most likely to be into golf, fishing and looking at home insurance – things generally associated with older demographics. More practically, this type of data helps companies advertise more effectively. For instance, it shows Apple would do well to use rap and hip hop music in marketing activity. Meanwhile, sponsoring BMW-related events could pay dividends for Nokia. As The Hunger Games scores highly among people interested in LG, the brand might consider using star Jennifer Lawrence in marketing activity.”

Google tests ad-free subscriptions

/0 Comments/in /by

Google has launched a new service, which allows users the option to pay to prevent advertisements appearing on sites. Known as the Google Contributor, it enables users to subscribe as little as one (US) dollar per month to avoid ads popping up whilst browsing online.

Users can choose to subscribe between $1 and $3 each month to remove all Google-served ads on participating websites, though any third-party advertising on select sites will remain. The ads are then replaced with a small message, which thanks the user for being a contributor, and the space is filled instead with a pixelated pattern. On mobile devices, there is an option to have them removed entirely.

The Google Contributor service is beginning with 10 publishing partners, including Imgur, WikiHow, Mashable and Science Daily.

Apple brings programmatic to iAd

/0 Comments/in /by

Apple is partnering with a number of ad tech companies to bring programmatic buying to iAd, Apple’s mobile ad network. Allowing advertisers to automate ad buys and reporting across 250,000 iOS apps, Apple’s new partners include MediaMath, The Trade Desk, GET IT Mobile, Accordant Media, AdRoll and Adelphic. Apple has released an updated API for its automated buying platform iAd Workbench to power programmatic, ensuring that partners can use their own systems for managing campaigns and bids, including viewing and retrieving analytic data.

“We’re thrilled to have been chosen by Apple to help bring automation to iAd’s direct order business and to provide access to premium mobile buyers from around the world,” says Gregory R. Raifman, President, Rubicon Project. “We look forward to providing buyers with access to iAd’s unprecedented audience targeting capabilities and our full-stack direct order automation solution.”

Adam Berke, President and CMO of AdRoll adds, “AdRoll has a long history of being first to market with new inventory sources and innovative functionality. We’re excited to bring the power, precision and scale of programmatic buying to a high quality, in-demand inventory source. AdRoll is committed to bringing developers and advertisers of all sizes cross-device solutions for a world gone mobile.”

As of 2013, iAd accounted for 2.7% of the US mobile ad market ad market, while Apple’s share of the country’s smartphone market sat at 40%.

Effie MENA Awards 2014 winners announced

/0 Comments/in /by

The winners for this year’s Effie MENA Awards have been revealed. Taking place on Wednesday November 19, 2014, at The Meydan Hotel in Dubai, approximately 1,500 invited guests attended to celebrate the campaigns, advertisers and agencies that have had the most measurable impact over the past 12 months.

The Effie MENA Awards 2014 was expanded this year to incorporate 23 classes of achievement; with categories including: ‘Best Youth Marketing Campaign’, ‘Best Use of Social Media’ and ‘Most Effective Agency Network of the Year.’ Corresponding with the rise in the number of categories was an increase in the number of entrants, with submissions 75 percent higher than the previous year. Mediaquest – the media organisers behind the event – noted that the increase in categories and nominations reflects the dynamism of the regional marketing industry and the innovation currently being seen in the sector.

“This year’s Effie Awards were the biggest to date, featuring the largest number of nominations and the greatest number of categories for inclusion,” says Alexandra Hawari, Co-CEO, Mediaquest. “The diversity of marketing forms and approaches that we are now witnessing across the region necessitated the introduction of new classes of achievement in order to fully acknowledge the impact on audiences that have been achieved with unique techniques.”

The evening saw FP7/DXB awarded with an impressive haul of seven Gold Awards, coming first place in six categories, including ‘Best Use of CSR,’ ‘Best Youth Marketing Campaign,’ ‘Banking, Finance & Insurance,’ ‘FMCG,’ ‘Single Media Activation,’ and ‘Brand Experience.’ The organisation’s array of impactful campaigns that had measurably resonated with audiences in the region resulted in it receiving the ‘Most Effective Agency Network of the Year’ title.

Cairo-based Media Direction OMD was awarded the ‘Best Use of Social Media’ award for their Barakat and Super Teta campaign, which was conducted on behalf of Vodaphone Egypt. JWT DXB and Carat DXB’s ‘I’m Coming Home’ campaign for Microsoft Mobile Devices saw the agency awarded in the ‘Telecommunications, Mobiles & Internet’ category, while JWT Cairo and Starcom MediaVest Group – also from Cairo – impressed the judges to win the ‘New Product’ category with their ‘Cinnamint’ campaign for Mondelez Egypt Foods.

All of the 23 category winners are now eligible to participate in the Effie Global Effectiveness Index. The scheme incorporates data from 40 worldwide Effie Award competitions to determine those in the industry that have had the most measurable success on a global scale.

Experiencing the high life

/0 Comments/in /by

With all the little stresses of an average week, Team TMN is no stranger to the typically English desire of solving everything with a cup of tea. So, when we heard that a certain hotel was launching a new afternoon tea, we were happy to take our unwinding somewhere slightly more upmarket…

What: The Palace High Tea Buffet

Where: The Palace Downtown Dubai

When: Every Wednesday and Saturday, 2pm – 6pm

The promise: “Guests looking to make the most of their afternoon can savour traditional and contemporary dishes, featuring a delectable selection of hot and cold appetisers, entrees and desserts, as well as pairing their experience from our line-up of over 25 different varieties of premium loose tea and infusions.

Did it deliver? Taking in the elegantly traditional Arabic interior, Team TMN made our way into the lobby of The Palace Downtown Dubai where the high tea was being served. While a fairly sizable venue, the atmosphere created was intimate and relaxed by the variety of comfortable sofas and table settings; definitely somewhere you could settle in for a catch up with friends or afternoon with the family.

After being led to our table, Arnand – The Palace’s charming Tea Sommelier – gave us an informative and frankly fascinating tour of the multitude of teas on offer from the TWG brand – not just your average English breakfast here, he even introduced us to the quaint library where we were able to polish our knowledge on the culture of tea.

Settling for a gorgeous smelling Assam blend, we were served with a refreshing mint mocktail to cleanse the palate while we perused the offerings of the buffet. Although it might seem a slightly unusual concept to have high tea without the accompanying stacked trays, the buffet proved a winning idea as it allowed us to fill our plates with exactly what we wanted – there wasn’t going to be a bite left!

We started with an assortment of cakes and light savoury bites, with the variety of brownies, cheesecakes and éclairs being particular favourites along with the assortment of finger sandwiches. In another twist to traditional high tea, we were served a selection of hot entrees to the table – a sharing concept that ensured the food remained hot and full of flavor. All perfectly cooked, the salmon quiche and seafood puffs were definite winners, cleverly portioned to ensure you could try a little of everything. Naturally, high tea wouldn’t be complete without homemade scones, which were light and fluffy and offered a mixture of plain and cranberry; the only critique we had was the need for more clotted cream!

Finally, there was the Royal Al Bayt Ice Tea presentation. Admittedly, Team TMN had never given ice tea much thought and certainly not at a high tea; yet this proved to be the highlight of the afternoon. Served to the table on an elegant gold tray set, each ice tea was presented in crystal glassware, a thoughtful flourish which created a personal touch. Each recipe has been created in-house, and we sampled the vividly coloured teas ranging from the amerana ruby to the imperial garnet and the intensely blue Al Bayt citrine – but the stand out was the amethyst ice tea, whose blend of passion fruit, vanilla and purple flower syrups in chamomile tea, made for a deliciously unique beverage. An experience unlike anything else we’ve seen on offer, this concept was a perfect way to round off the afternoon.

The verdict: The Palace High Tea Buffet certainly isn’t one of your run-of-the-mill afternoon teas. Having really stepped it up with the focus on tea as well as the food, they have gone beyond a simple high tea to really stand out in creating a leisurely afternoon experience. Full of delightful surprises and with the price set at just AED 180 per person, it’s an afternoon worth every penny!

The Big Entertainment Show 2014

/0 Comments/in /by

We catch up with Wissam Ezzeddine, Project Manager for The Big Entertainment Show, to discuss why this year’s event was better than ever for members of the media industry…

Tell us a bit about the concept behind The Big Entertainment Show…
The Big Entertainment Show is the region’s largest comprehensive entertainment content and media event. It’s a great networking platform for media and content professionals to explore business opportunities across a range of fields including TV, film, video games, interactive entertainment, animation, mobile, digital content, music and brand licensing.

What did we see from this year’s Entertainment Show that differed from previous years?
This year, The Big Entertainment Show was supporting independent content developers to provide them with a platform to meet industry leaders and discuss potential business opportunities, predominantly in the fields of digital and interactive media.

How does the event differ from other entertainment-industry related exhibitions in the region?
The Big Entertainment Show is the only B2B event in the region that focuses on content creation, distribution and aggregation across all platforms. It caters to the needs of media and content professionals in fields of TV and film, games and apps, digital media, brand licensing, advertising and media buying.

Tell us more about the Creative Focus 2014…
This year, the Creative Focus sector of the event was created to support developments in the creative industry, with focus on promoting the digital creativity, content technology and interactive media sectors. It offered immense support to entrepreneurs, developers, producers, designers and creative artists in the fields of interactive media, digital art, apps, digital marketing, e-commerce, publishing, social media and interactive technologies.

Why did including The Dubai International Brand Licensing Fair, the Dubai World Game Expo and MYCONTENT as part of the Show’s lineup seem beneficial?
The idea behind this is to deliver maximum possible business opportunities to the involved companies within the industries of content, brand licensing and game. Each event caters to the needs of its focused business groups, which are mainly broadcasters, retailers and game developers.

I’ll give you a simple example of why these events are held in parallel and what opportunities it holds for content creators looking at the bigger picture.

Look at the case of ‘Angry Birds’ – It started as a mobile game and became a massive hit. Next thing you notice is that the brand gets licensed and then hits retail outlets with a broad range of merchandise. Maximising on the previous success, it hit the theaters and a movie is released!

This is just one of countless examples of success stories with brands: Hello Kitty, Mickey Mouse, Tomb Raider, CSI, etc…

How do brands get involved in lineup for The Big Entertainment Show?
The event holds an abundance of opportunities for brands, specifically in the perspective of licensing the brand to licensees, retailers, agents and distributors. These brands will eventually hit retail outlets through different forms of merchandise categories.

For future reference, how can members of the media industry attend the exhibition?
They can pre-register on www.mycontent.ae or onsite during the event days.

How much does it cost to attend the exhibition?
It’s free of charge.

Do you have any plans for expansion outside of the region?
Not massively – Dubai is the media hub in the region, and is the most appropriate place to showcase the development of the media and entertainment industry. We selected it precisely as we want to encourage regional and international attendees to visit Dubai, and aim to make the event bigger and better every year.

Has the popularity of blogging come and gone?

/0 Comments/in /by

With the invasion of real-time social media, has the popularity of blogging as a stand-alone network come and gone?

“YES” says Joe Akkawi, Managing Partner, Paz Marketing

JoeAkkawiBlogs report, analyse and produce content that has always been on the map for marketers. Yet we now want consumers to live with our brands in the moment and interact with us as events unfold

Some call it a necessity, while others refer to it as the need for speed. Has communication evolved to become irrelevant if it doesn’t take place in the moment? Some might argue that this isn’t evolution but merely a limitation on the way we do marketing.

Time and time again, we’ve seen the impact of real-time marketing. It’s undeniable that there is an emerging trend, and it’s moving fast amongst brands to leverage existing events and react quickly to create relevance. We all remember Oreo’s classic Super Bowl tweet. Would we expect the same impact from such a strategy if we were to read about it a day later?

That’s where blogs come in. Blogs report, analyse and produce content that has always been on the map for marketers. Yet we now want consumers to live with our brands in the moment and interact with us as events unfold. It gives us access to real-time data that can be analysed to understand behaviours, predict trends and in some cases, through extensive research, measure sentiment. While blogs do have the ability to provide such data in terms of website traffic and interactions with stories, we seldom see numbers that can match real-time interaction that can happen on platforms like Twitter.

On another note, with the rise of the “influencer” category, we are now seeing existing successful bloggers turn their attention towards using social platforms to communicate quick updates that generate better results. Every social platform provides a way to migrate a blog post into an easier format that can be consumed quickly and on the move without interrupting the user experience. It is getting more challenging to break a user’s focus from his social stream to a website, especially if you can’t get the full impact about the story from the opening paragraph. This is another reason why we’ve seen an unprecedented rise to “bullet-point” format stories on Buzzfeed and Click-Bait headlines.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. Blogs will continue to strive on focused topics that users will consider reading to formulate opinions regarding a purchase. Bloggers should focus on utilising the undeniable power of social and mix-n-match their content to suit the platform that generates the highest form of interaction. We will continue to see a rise in social networks overtaking traditional blogging formats and the blogging scene will have to adapt or risk losing to other content that is being served more creatively.

 

“NO” says Hiba Mirza, English Copywriter, Serviceplan Middle East and Co-Founder of Booni Blog

HibaMirzaThe beauty of a blog is that there are no character limits or mandated templates chosen by a third party. In fact, there are no limits… where everything is put in place just the way we like it

With the introduction of new mediums of communication, it is impossible to expect that consumers will not divide their attention. Give a group of people only one option and they will all consume it. Give them two options and you will get those that reject the new, those that abandon the old for the new, and those who find a way to consume both.

Step back into time and I could ask you “With the invasion of the television, has the popularity of radio come and gone?” How about the introduction of the Internet? Did the other mediums vanish from existence?  It’s 2014 and consumers still use all of the above, and businesses spend billions of dollars every year across radio, television, even those ancient things we call newspapers and magazines. Why? Because each medium has its value.

Ask me if social media will one day kill blogging and I would answer with a firm: no. Because quite simply – they are incomparable. One is qualitative and the other quantitative in nature. The beauty of a blog is that there are no character limits or mandated templates chosen by a third party. In fact, there are no limits. The blog is our home. Where everything is put in place just the way we like it. We have guests who visit us, join us for conversations (where we learn from and share with each other), and with time know exactly where the spoons and plates are. Here is where a long-term meaningful relationship is built.

Of course we go out, visiting the quick and useful conversational realm of social media. We share links to our posts, retweet from things we enjoyed reading, short snippets of things happening to us at the moment, and even have the occasional conversation. But once the moment is gone, it’s gone forever. And they go where every Twitter conversation goes: Into the black hole of “not trending”.  I find these relationships to be weaker, much like that friendly jogging neighbour who waves hello and dares not drag a conversation beyond weather conditions. But blog followers– they are loyal. They go out of their way to visit your dot com, to take your advice and learnings, and share their stories and teachings. They become fans, friends and sometimes like family. And this only proves one thing: blogs are valuable to both businesses and consumers – and they’re here to stay.

 

Reputation over desperation

/0 Comments/in /by

While it may be true that an agencies brand is discussed far less than the clients it handles, Allie Holmes, Director at Edelman Dubai, offers her expert opinion on why it is vital for agencies to be aware of their brand reputation and be selective when it comes to representing clients…

Publicity may be what we sell, but that publicity is steeped in relationships, and relationships are built on trust – trust with your employees, trust with clients and trust with the press

Last year, our agency was approached by a public figure about to go through a public criminal trial. Would we manage press and public opinion for the client, the representative asked? No agency is ever in a place to turn down a sure thing, but in this case, there was no debate; the answer had to be no. Not because there wasn’t money to be made, but whether or not the client won or lost in the court system – as an agency, we only stood to lose in the court of public opinion.

Publicity may be what we sell, but that publicity is steeped in relationships, and relationships are built on trust – trust with your employees, trust with clients and trust with the press.

With this in mind, why is it so important that we separate ourselves from clients who are behaving in a way that doesn’t align with our values, or refuse to take them on as clients in the first place?

Because we owe it to our people
As an individual, working for an agency, you should not have to compromise your morals to do your job.

As ‘communicators for hire’, you get the opportunity to work with the very best industries and corporations on offer, the initiatives they want to talk about, the causes they want to support.

Being agency-side allows us to pick and choose those behaviors and mindsets and even industries we will promote and those we won’t. For example, Edelman doesn’t work for the tobacco industry. I find this freedom to decide admirable. It’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed agency-side.

Because we owe it to our clients
If as a client, you’re being represented by an agency that has a reputation for working with clients of questionable morality, you could feel the blowback of guilt by association when things go sour. For many of our clients, ours are the “faces” of the corporation in the pressroom, and we have to protect that.

Finally, because we owe it to our industry
It’s no secret that the field of PR has a significant PR problem. PR flacks are often seen right up there with defense attorneys and politicians. Bad decisions made by one, do impact the whole. We, of all people, should know that best.

Taking on clients who act unethically impacts the trust others place in our agencies – internally with our teams, externally with our media contacts and ultimately with our current and potential clients. Taking on clients (or retaining clients) that impact others’ ability to trust may provide short-term gains, but in the long-term, there are worse things to lose than revenue – when our organisational trust is on the line. When it comes to reputation, we should remember that not all business is good business.