Zabeel Saray, Dubai’s Music Hall, plays host today to the first-ever Festival of Media MENA.
Brought to the region by Communicate’s parent company Mediaquest in partnership with UK-based C Squared, the event kicked off with an inspirational and somewhat hard-love talk by Charlie Crowe, chairman and editor-in-chief of C Squared who gave some quick insight into why it was about time for the Festival of Media to make its presence felt in the MENA market.
His interaction with marketers outside the MENA region left him amazed at the negative impression and misconceptions they held about the regional marketplace. “We need to overturn the misconceptions in the market place and we need to show the quality of work and ideas [here] to the world,” he said.
This couldn’t be truer at a time when the world – and the region – is changing rapidly. And, as Crowe, says: “Let’s face it; if you’re going to compete with the world, some things have to change.” And those things include the quality of research, metrics and the way media is traded. So while the Festival of Media provides a platform for the region to showcase its talent, it also serves as a helping hand for marketers to learn, inspire, innovate and change.
Next up was the very fun, very colourful, David Shing, digital forecaster, AOL setting the tone – and agenda – for the day. He also announced plans to make AOL a bit more prominent in the region through a partnership with media giant Choueiri Group. With the agenda set and the announcements out of the way, Shing went on to introduce his good friend and Facebook’s global marketing director, Sarah Personette.
Innovation hub
Considering that this is Festival of Media’s first MENA conference is taking place in Dubai, the hub of the region, the first topic of the day was rather aptly on “Innovation”. And who better to speak about innovation than the company that has been at the forefront of it: Facebook.
Personette kicked off her talk with a little homage to the city of Dubai, which she says has been “steeped in the history of innovation”. And that’s best captured by the quote she cited by none other than His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum: “Most people talk; we do things. They plan; we achieve. They hesitate; we move ahead. We are living proof that when human beings have the courage and commitment to transform a dream into reality, there is nothing that can stop them.”
Personette highlighted the shift from mobile to desktop and the fact that not just consumers, but increasingly, brands and businesses are becoming mobile-first. And the five factors driving this change are cost, speed, functionality, power, and applications. However, she reminds the audience that it’s important to keep in mind that different markets use mobile differently.
Even within the Middle East, while the UAE sees a high penetration of smartphone, Egypt sees its populating adopting feature phone as the first of accessing the Internet – even over desktops. Naturally,video is big on mobile – more so in the UAE than anywhere else as evidenced by a 138 percent video growth on Facebook in the UAE versus the global average of 75 percent.
Also, multiscreen viewing is increasing with 76 percent of people in the UAE reporting that they use mobile while watching TV. And as she draws toward the end of her talk on innovating and moving forward, she suggests taking a look back in time to reflect upon how personalised shopping experiences were 100 years back when the store manager would know everything about you and hence everything about how to make his business better.
As industrialisation and the rise of mass media changed the world, they deteriorated the personal experience and face-to-face experience. And this is what led to the creation of brands and brand identities. But now, in this digital age, it’s time for brands to dwell on their purpose and reconnect with consumers through experiences that not just drive business and sales, but add value to consumers’ lives through personalising business again.
Creating experiences
When it comes to adding value to consumers’ lives, creating experiences is important, but so is the way brands speak to them on a daily basis. And hence next up was an expert panel on something that has been around forever, but has only recently created a buzz in the advertising industry over the world: content.
The panel brought together Alex Cheesman, global head of brands and agencies, Outbrain; Joshua Graff, director of EMEA marketing solutions, Linkedin; Dan Best, director of planning and innovation, Unruly; Antoine De Trogoff, head of UM Studios, UM and Hussein Freijeh, managing director, Yahoo Middle East.
The panellists drew attention to the line between creating content and curating content, placing emphasis on the latter, especially for brands. When it comes to brand content, it was rather unanimously agreed that the brands who got it right are P&G, the parent company behind campaigns, such as Always’ “Like A Girl” campaign and Unilever, home to Dove’s “Real Beauty” platform.
And it would be impossible to speak of content especially on digital platforms, without mentioning how to understand its success. Is it enough to cross a million views? What counts as viral? Well, these are questions that most likely have no answer but what we did learn is that the most important metric is engagement rate and not click through rates (CTR) or bounce rate – because people don’t use content for awareness, they use it to engage.
If the beginning of the day is anything to go by, it seems only fair to expect the rest of the day to be as insightful, entertaining (thank you Shingy) and action-packed.
This article first appeared on CommunicateOnline.me
