Future is uncertain, unseen and for industry like advertising and marketing fairly challenging. Advertising is going through interesting times, social media hype has been blown out of proportion, and some have started to celebrate the death of TV and 30 second commercials. As per my understanding of communication industry, following is my perspective about advertising’s future
New age advertising will be very much like old-age advertising – The soul of advertising and communication has always, been and will always be in IDEA. The means of communication will keep on changing. It is the power of a relevant idea that drives marketing and communication. and more empowered generation of consumers will demand more relevance (in terms of everything from product to communication).
To increase revenue (product usage) there are only two ways either we should increase the uses or the users. Advertising industry will expand also like this either we will tap into the untapped i.e. Rural market etc or we increase touch points.
Following is my understanding about the future of communication industry, hope you will find it useful
We are living in a world where almost 1 out of every 5 person is a Muslim. The degree to which they practice religion is subject to debate, but the fact that is important to understand that Muslims are too big a niche to be ignored.
According to JWT Muslims are Britain’s biggest untapped Niche (ref: article on tapping Muslim community)
When British banking giant HSBC began offering Islamic banking practices in Malaysia, it was surprised that more than half of its customers were non-Muslim (business week article on Islamic banks )
We need to explore more powerful means to tap into this segment. I am sharing a presentation that elaborates my POV.
In the next decade, agencies and holding companies will spend less time fitting into the traditional mold of an ad agency and more time focusing on consumer data and new media. Martin Sorrell – WPP’s chief
Our strategy is summed up in one sentence: new markets, new media, and consumer insight,” Sorrell said in recent interviews
Previously, brand managers used to base their decisions on Gut, Experience and limited insights. Tomorrow, it will be based on numbers, pilot tests and insights generated through new media. This in itself opens up the new job description for the brand managers and also a very different operational model for agencies.
I am personally excited about the interesting times that are coming our way, my suggestion polish up your data visualization and computation skill, understand how to crunch the numbers and comprehend insights that generate quick (and measurable) results. Gear up for a vocal target segment (prepare to manage negative feedback) and learn to enjoy the change (as change will be far more frequent than it ever was).
Do you want to add to it? Please feel free to voice your comments, I intend to compile all the comments from Industry experts across the globe. To get a better picture of the changing industry landscape.
Implication for UAE
UAE’s major ad-expenditure is on real estate and print media. This trend in a nutshell asks for more and more interaction, in-person consultation and solid information dissemination. Print, online and any other interactive media fits into that need-gap. Now if real-estate Ad-spend has to grow (which is very much doubted on the account of recession) Business Consumers’ insight will definitely take the lead in the region. Advertising will be very personalised, informative and highly interactive on that front.
Thinking about FMCGs: Brand Managers have been taking it very easy, as with the consumption savvy audience everything was selling with or without the brand recall. (Personally speaking I am still unable to remember the brand name of my grocery items, but that’s just a personal observation). Now with more and more tech savvy mothers; the need for conversation has increased. It implies they need more and more of advice from brand (not just a sales pitch). My advice, associate with them on broader consumer insight i.e. love, affection, etc not just on sales level. Few examples could be Ivillage, W-network, Omid-e-Mehr. And before you associate with them learn about them.
Consumer insight wings: bye –bye the age of mindless numbers, welcome the age of numbers turning into practical solutions. And those who will be able to do better than others will climb corporate ladders faster. Note: my advice, after spending in years in MR I would like to mention that consumer insight doesn’t necessarily come from data sets and questionnaires. It comes from observation as well, these insights are embedded in every human interaction. This is a new career direction which will emerge in the region – Consumer Insight & Innovation (people who can understand the end-user and quickly suggest innovative solutions)
Enjoy the age of conversation and involvement. – Ayesha
One question that I was asking myself for quite some time is what is I want to launch an internet concern, a social media company or something on the digital revolution lines in UAE. What will help me succeed? I am trying to answer that question in this blog entry, hope you will find it useful.
Question 1 – Why consider launching a digital company in UAE
Language: Arabic. The journey of culture, identity and heritage begins from there. (plus, language will help you fit-in well with Arabic speakers)
Segmentation: Create activity groups of and for Emiratis. Provide Emiratis some form of exclusivity
Empower Youth: Government is investing a lot in UAEs youth and is promoting a culture that will enable their Youth to lead from the front in today’s competitive world
Enable: Be an enabler; either by connecting, providing knowledge, providing ideas, facilitating education. Enlighten / connect / update / Equip / provide voice etc
Encourage: Occasionally and/or regularly encourage offline and online activities through your social media that helps youngsters at UAE to be heard at international level
UAE is a business hub.
Help the entrepreneurs interact, exchange knowledge, and use it as a platform to revolutionize their business. Better yet, promote SMEs
When it comes to MARCOM, I am basically a product of JWT. I follow their tools and techniques for almost all branding and communication problems that come my way. Now JWTs basic principle is to bank of key consumer desires. The desire should be universal not related to brand/product itself. (I can explain this in greater depth, but that is beyond the scope of my this blog entry)
So talking about emerging consumer desire, here is my take on UAE’s consumer. I plan to keep on adding insights about UAE consumer, so hopefully you will hear more often from me on this front
In one of the recent forums that I attended I had a pleasure to listen to Martin Newland and one point which he made was that people in UAE are extremely content hungry and with more and more crappy & ripped off information that revolves around them. The more they want to have useful nuggets of knowledge, valid argument.
Applying it to brands; Nestle UAE in their recent studies found out that people expect Nestlé to host video content on their website, strange but true. Nestle is undertaking appropriate measures to follow consumer’s desire, I will upload it once it is publicly announced.
In a nutshell, Identify what is valuable to your consumer - In a world of 200million blogs, numerous TV channels, and 3G phones and twitter obviously the demand for information is higher than the supply. People would crave for more and more valuable ‘content’ in the coming times. Caution value is a relative term, a research study is valuable to a scientist but it may not be valuable to your consumer. But the basic point stays the same, create content that adds value in the lives of your consumer. If you add value through your communication you will add value to your brand.
Bird’s eye view of what a consumer in UAE is searching for these days: I ran a search on Google insights for search and the outcome validates Nestlé’s finding i.e. craving for downloads (in a nutshell craving for content)
It also highlights the need for networking/community building. So how your brand is adding to this new urge of consumer?
So either you provide them with content or you provide them with a network that enriches their understanding about that content. I suggest, you provide them a topic to talk about because that is directly correlated with your brand image and recall
Identify how consumers are accessing your content: According to experts “Consumers are demanding. They want to get the latest TV hits ahead of anyone else …. We see this as a next big wave of content consumption in Singapore.” Allen Lew, CEO, Singapore telecom (Source: Accenture Global Broadcast Consumer Survey 09) This means consumers are now media neutral, they want to find and spend time with valuable and useful content . Over 900 million homes will have an access to VoD by 2010, globally.
Distribute it everywhere, make it easier for the users to find you ( in case you are wondering whether United Arab Emirates is ready for this kind of activity or not, have a look at the UAE internet & mobile statistics that I shared in my earlier post). Caution: You can be of value to your consumers regardless of their connectivity status based on your objective. Don’t confuse value with distribution channel.
According to Grey’s Eye on Asia – Asian’s value financial comfort, family bonding and locally produced products/concepts. Asians account for a huge expat majority in UAE hence I added insights about Asians.
I am as of now conducting an experiment i.e. analyzing the popular brands of UAE in the light of Social media. And when I started working on that I stumbled upon some interesting facts about UAE internet landscape.
Following are the facts that you should know about UAE digital landscape
UAE is the top ranking Arab state in terms of e-readiness
The average lifespan of a mobile handset in the UAE is 2 years, compared with a global average of three years
UAE is top Arab state in the web-measure index which assesses the extent to which governments are providing e-government policies, applications and tools, and the 12th in the world.
Here is the fact-sheet in presentation format
Here is the compilation in basic video format (help me make an interesting video, my skills on this front are very basic)
What does this mean?
Usually, in this section of my article I try to answer the questions from marketing, public sector and agency perspective. But today I am going to leave you with questions instead of my opinions
– Is your organization, your employees, your backup system ready for e-savvy and mobile addicted audience?
– Are you as a marketer ready for active listening?
– Have you developed a strategy to cope with the technology challenge that is on our way?
Yesterday, I had a presentation at the social media forum regarding online marketing research. Following are key questions which were raised in the session plus in the recent survey which i conducted online about internet marketing research. I am thankful to everyone who participated in the survey and also to the participants and organizers of the media forum. I am trying to answer key queries to the best of my knowledge. Hope you will find the answers useful.
Question 1 – Online marketing research is cheap and in many cases it is free etc ?
ANSWER – First thing first, cheap is a relative term. In labor intensive markets technology is expensive and vice versa. This theory applies to MR as well, in most countries of Asia the cost of face to face is lower than a scientific sample driven online survey instrument.
Cost of a survey is dependent on the following
Target audience: the difficult the audience i.e. the lower their ratio in population the higher the cost
Survey monitoring:
Depth of questionnaire: the deeper, longer the questionnaire the higher the cost
Cost of the survey instrument development: printing, software etc
Quality controls: the usual quality control is 20% back-checking at each stage; however it varies on client demand. The higher the check the higher the cost
Free! There is no such thing called free lunch. Either there are hidden costs or hidden implications. Keep reading →
By 2010, 70% of online content will be produced by the consumer. Consumers are constantly talking about you, your product, your brand, and your icons. As marketers now we have only two choices. Either we listen to them or we ignore them.
But then again, they have been talking about you since the beginning of your brand. As marketers we always had only two choices either we listen to them or we ignore them.
We have reached where we have reached with a selective input from them, selective input from our employees, some commonsense and some business intelligence. This not only applies to your brand but also applies to every other successful brand from Pepsi to James Bond.
Following are few ways which can help you listen to your audience Keep reading →
Young, strong, financially influential, globally connected. These are some of the attributes of young people of our times. With a cumulative purchasing power of $ 592 billion i.e. bigger than the economy of Switzerland, they are far more powerful and equally more capable of bringing radical change. Though the young today are more dynamic than their counterparts in yesteryears but the basic motivators stays the same.
Here is how I think this market can be targeted more effectively
Possible meaningful styles – Young people today are strongly seeking substance behind styles, after going through their key triggers i think oppurtunities lies in the domain of Nationalistic pride (especially for Asian audience), save the globe, etc.
Motivator: A brand, a concept and/or a government that is going to spend in motivating them and nurturing their risk-taking nature either through investment or through engagement will be successful
Youthland - They are connected and have crossed geographic boundaries. No government, no brand and no market can afford to take ‘em lightly. And they grow in groups, so a product promise in US which hurts people in Mid-East can hurt the product far more successfully than before. Similarly you hurt ‘em in Iran you will hear the roar in world. So beware of your messages to the audience globally.
Google internet stats (for UK); the site provides meaningful stats for UK market. Basically This Google resource brings together the latest industry facts and insights. These have been collected from a number of third party sources covering a range of topics from macroscopic economic and media trends to how consumer behavior and technology are changing over time.
Google buyer index; Google Domestic Trends track Google search traffic across specific sectors of the economy. A change in the search volume of a given sector on google.com usually provides useful insights. Click on the site and go through major categories
