Communicate Levant | May 2011

Levant Edition • The marketing and advertising resource • May 2011 • Issue N°13 • communicatelevant.com.lb

An Emmy beyond the ME: Batoota films wins international award for Page 8 Shankaboot

ADVERTISING Festival feedback We turn our attention to the audience at the Dubai International Advertising Festival to see what they thought of the presentations, and what they learned from the (Page 32) speakers on stage.

Net results: Beirut conference brings together region’s digital Page 28 big hitters

Reverse ratio: 90:10 Group’s Patrick Attallah says it’s time to involve Page 30 consumers

SWITCHING ON A special report on Lebanon’s digital landscape

DIGITAL All together now Everybody’s doing it; if they weren’t, there wouldn’t be a deal.

We look at group buying, where marketers offer discounts as long as enough people buy in. We see who’s behind it, how it works, and where (Page 22) its challenges lie.

DIGITAL Blog standard We sit down with five bloggers to see how they feel brands interact with Internet influencers like themselves. They tell us about their influence on campaigns, editorial independence, and how marketers (Page 20) can speak to them.

CAMPAIGN The bite stuff

(Page 39) Cover Image: Getty Images

MediaquestCorp Egypt................... E£ 10 Jordan ................... JD 4 Kuwait ................ KD 1.2

Lebanon ........L£ 5 000 Morocco ............DH 22 Oman ............... OR 1.5

Qatar ................... QR 15 Saudi Arabia ........ SR 15 Switzerland .......... SFR 8

Syria .................. S£ 100 Tunisia ................ TD 2.5 U.A.E ...................DH 15

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR | MAY 2011

Playing the ostrich P

eople in Lebanon possess an amazing ability to cope with what many would consider unacceptable. I used to believe that this uncanny aptitude to adapt to whatever change the wind might bring was a heritage from the civil war, when everybody had to live as if there was no tomorrow (which was a possibility back then). No wonder one would try and enjoy life to its fullest, even at the cost of living in a pretense world, because reality was too harsh to be faced daily.

During these dark years, my father used to joke about people getting gold-plated faucets for the kitchen, even though, day in, day out, there was no water; choosing expensive chandeliers, even though there was no electricity; or buying glamorous sport cars, despite not having any gas – or proper roads to drive on, for that matter. Could it be that a little fantasy, a little varnish, was a necessity?

What bugs me is that in the quarter of a century since the end of the civil war, the makebelieve endures. Now, don’t get me wrong, we all know what happened after the official end of the conflict.

We are all aware that today Lebanon is by no means a “normal” country – then again, what country can be deemed normal? But I digress.

The show goes on – on so many levels that it feels like it has become a way of life.

I could go up close and personal, giving the example of a close friend of mine whose in-laws, when he asked for a divorce because his wife and he had been estranged since he had caught her cheating, suggested to him to keep on living his life and have as many affairs as he wanted, as long as he remained married and kept it quiet. The father in law, being a prominent personality, felt that having a divorced daughter wouldn’t look so good. How, by any stretch of morality and common sense, such a weird suggestion for the sake of image would be fair is beyond me.

But I’ll stick to a more practical example. Could someone explain why, for years, so many people bought 3G iPhones in a country where 3G was not yet available? Why would we keep purchasing the best technological tools and electronic gadgets just to look cool in a country that is ranked last worldwide – worldwide!

– in terms of Internet performance? We discuss digital issues at length in our cover package this month (see page 14) and examine why and how this slow, but expensive, Internet is hurting the industry.

Still, I cannot help but think that if it wasn’t for this ability to adapt to just about anything, this shameful state of affairs wouldn’t have lasted so long.

Maybe, just maybe, this ability can backfire because it keeps you from saying “no” and

taking action at some point.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me, as the saying goes. We’ve been fooled so many times (from extensive power cuts to water shortages and the slowest, but most expensive, Internet on Earth – I probably should stop before I get into trouble) that we definitely have nobody to blame but ourselves.

But not all hope is lost.

Stung by the fact that Lebanon’s Internet is twice as slow as Ethiopia’s, and four times as slow as Uzbekistan’s, some Lebanese are taking it upon themselves to get things moving. These initiatives will be worth following up, if only because they’re proof that appearing as fine as paint simply isn’t enough.

When you scratch the varnish a little, the truth shows its ugly head: resourcefulness can stab you in the back and, at the end of the day, it should serve as no excuse for our shortcomings.

Nathalie Bontems, editor editor@communicatelevant.com

Communicate Levant I 3

MAY 2011 | CONTENTS

Contents

COVER: The digital tangle

NEWS

20

8 10 11

14

22 26 28 30

Beirut online: Digital technologies are reshaping the face of communication worldwide, but Lebanon is still confused as to how to use the Web Untapped potential: Lebanese bloggers explain why, so far, communicators haven’t been able to reach out to them Big deal: Group buying is picking up in Lebanon. Why is it now spreading its wings?

App out Lebanon: Mobile applications get the whole world buzzing, but are surprisingly overlooked by Lebanese. What’s missing?

Arabnetting: The second edition of the ArabNet Shift Digital Summit took the Lebanese digital realm by storm Q&A. Another world: Patrick Attallah, from social media consultancy 90:10 Group, says that online communication is more complex than it seems

6

Advertising. Who won what at the latest Dubai Lynx Awards Digital. Shankaboot wins International Emmy Award Digital. Stunt for brand protection stuns Lebanon Television. Al Jazeera is most trusted news channel

THE COMMUNIQUESTION 12

We ask the industry: What mobile app would you most like to see developed for Lebanon?

FEATURES 32

Advertising. Lynxed in: Our pick of the Dubai International Advertising Festival’s seminars – and the audience’s reaction

DEPARTMENTS 38 39 42

Blogosphere. What the Web is saying Work. Selection from the regional and international creative scenes Drive-by. One blogger’s take on Beirut’s billboards

MAY 2011 Medialeader SAL, Azar bldg, 5th floor, Dimitri Al Hayek st, Sin el Fil-Horsh Tabet, Beirut, Lebanon, Tel: (961) 1 492 801/2/3

CO-CEO Alexandre Hawari CO-CEO Julien Hawari MANAGING DIRECTOR Ayman Haydar CFO Abdul Rahman Siddiqui CREATIVE DIRECTOR Aziz Kamel ONLINE DIRECTOR Rony Nassour HEAD OF CIRCULATION Harish Raghavan, h.raghavan@mediaquestcorp.com MARKETING MANAGER Maya Kerbage, m.kerbage@mediaquestcorp.com COUNTRY MANAGERS Lebanon: Nathalie Bontems, nathalie@mediaquestcorp.com, (961) 1

492801/2/3 KSA: Walid Ramadan, walid@mediaquestcorp.com, Tel: (966) 1 4194061 North Africa: Adil Abdel Wahab, adel@medialeader.biz, Tel: (213) 661 562 660

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FOUNDER Yasser Hawari MANAGING DIRECTOR Julien Hawari EDITOR Nathalie Bontems MANAGING EDITOR Austyn Allison GROUP MANAGING EDITOR Siobhan Adams SENIOR SUB EDITOR Elizabeth McGlynn CONTRIBUTORS Ibrahim Nehme, Louis Parks, Samer Zouehid CREATIVE DIRECTOR Aziz Kamel ART DIRECTOR Sheela Jeevan ART CONTRIBUTORS Aya Farhat, Samer Hamadeh EXTERNAL AFFAIRS Manuel Dias, Maguy Panagga, Catherine Dobarro, Randa Khoury, Lila Schoepf, Laurent Bernard RESPONSIBLE DIRECTOR Denise Mechantaf PRINTERS Raidy Printing Group ADVERTISING The Gulf MEDIALEADER, PO Box 72184, Dubai Media City, Al Thuraya Tower 2, Office 2402, Dubai, Tel: (971) 4 391 0760, Fax: (971) 4 390 8737, sales@mediaquestcorp.com Lebanon Peggy El Zyr, peggy@mediaquestcorp. com, Tel: (961) 70 40 45 44 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Tarek Abu Hamzy, tarekah@mediaquestcorp.com, Tel: (966) 1 419 40 61, Ghassan A. Rbeiz, ghassan@ mediaquestcorp.com, Fax: (966) 1 419 41 32, P.O.Box: 14303, Riyadh 11424, Europe S.C.C Arabies, 18, rue de Varize, 75016 Paris, France, Tel: (33) 01 47 664600, Fax: (33) 01 43 807362, Lebanon MEDIALEADER Beirut, Lebanon, Tel: (961) 1 202 369, Fax: (961) 1 202 369 WEBSITE www.communicatelevant.com.lb

MAY 2011 | REGIONAL NEWS

Y&R wins Dubai Lynx Awards

Dubai. Lebanon stayed pretty much in the shade during the fifth edition of the Dubai Lynx Awards, held on March 30, 2011.

The festival crowned Y&R Network of the Year and Y&R Dubai Agency of the Year, while FP7 Bahrain was named Media Agency of the Year.

Lebanon ranked fourth by country, with Beirut-based agencies grabbing 16 awards out of 179; Dubai claimed the lion’s share with a total of 100 awards, followed by Bahrain (24) and Egypt (22). Egypt clearly dominated the film category this year.

Y&R Dubai grabbed a Grand Prix in the print category for the Harvey Nichols’ Accessories Required campaign, and another in the design category for its Splitting Headache campaign for Paras Pharma. FP7 Bahrain won the promo and activation Grand Prix

 I ONLINE New organization demands better Internet Beirut. OntorNet, an informal organization set up by a group of Lebanese bloggers, is campaigning for an affordable, high-speed Internet service.

OntorNet’s mission is to assemble and share information concerning the Lebanese “Internet case” and assist the

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for its Batelco Supersonic campaign.

Elephant Cairo won the Grand Prix in the film category for two TVCs of the Harvest Foods’ Trust the Prisoner campaign. Advantage Marketing & Advertising Cairo bagged the film craft Grand Prix for two TVCs for Arab Dairy’s Panda Cheese series.

No Grands Prix were awarded in the radio, outdoor, interactive, direct, print, and outdoor craft categories.

Leo Burnett Beirut is the only Lebanon-based agency to have earned some Grands Prix. The firm won in the media and integrated categories, both for Diageo’s Johnnie Walker Keep Walking Lebanon campaign, which also won a silver award in the interactive category.

Leo Burnett Beirut walked away with the accolade of Young Creatives 2011 (the winning team

comprised Lea Salibi, Marya Ghazzaoui and Michael Chaftari) and bagged three silver and four bronze awards as well. City Films Beirut won a bronze award in the film craft category for Zain group’s Wonderful Life film.

Clementine was awarded a bronze medal in the film category for its United we Stand film for the Ministry of Youth and Sports (Wonderful Productions Beirut), while FP7 also bagged bronze awards in this category for the FLB Cheering Fans campaign (Independent Productions Beirut).

In the media category, Impact BBDO Beirut won a bronze award for Samsung’s A Whole New Dimension campaign.

Log onto www.dubailynx.com for results.

Lebanese community in differentiating the current, upcoming and alternative Internet plans and usage characteristics.

The gathering calls on all “Random Lebanese Internet users infected with Internet service deception, both on the private and corporate level; Random Lebanese Internet users unhappy with their country missing out on enormous opportunities for economical improvement, as well as vital foreign investments due to outdated Internet technology; and Random Lebanese Internet users not proud of breaking yet another official world record as the country with the slowest Internet connection.”

The organization aims to call for transparency in the implementation and

timeline for future Internet projects, contracts and plans in Lebanon by researching and sharing all information that is dedicated to Internet services in Lebanon and its history.

It will also shed light on the “Broken Promises” given along this timeline, showcasing the dilemmas, facts and figures about the current situation, investigating the causes, alternatives, as well as the unused or misused existing potential.

OntorNet will hold its first workshop on May 4. It is open for bloggers, tweeps and citizen journalists and “can be attended by everyone who is interested in understanding the x and y of the whole Internet technical info and situation in Lebanon.”

 I ADVERTISING IAA Lebanon Chapter celebrates its golden jubilee

Beirut. The Lebanon Chapter of the International Advertising Association (IAA) celebrated its 50th anniversary this year with a special dinner held for IAA members and industry professionals.

George Jabbour, president of the Lebanon Chapter, welcomed guests and explained the role the IAA plays in joining together Lebanese professionals.

The IAA Lebanon Chapter was founded in 1961 to become part of the IAA Global based in New York, US, with chapters founded in 76 countries around the world.

The IAA aims at defending and advocating the advertising role, as well as supporting freedom of speech.

MEC Lebanon moves to digital and activation Beirut. Media planning and buying agency MEC Lebanon, a part of Menacom, is expanding its services to cover digital and activation.

Menacom Lebanon organized a group-wide workshop in early March to outline the process under which MEC Interaction and MEC Access’s services will be integrated into the existing lineup.

The services offered by MEC Interaction work across the full range of digital platforms and search capabilities, including paid search, search-engine optimization (SEO), social and universal search.

The new activation division will offer clients a one-stopshop for the creation and delivery of strategic partnerships and sponsorships across nine different platforms, including arts, brand-to-brand, broadcast, cause, celebrity, film, gaming, music and sport.

MAY 2011 | REGIONAL NEWS

Shankaboot wins International Digital Emmy

Beirut. Lebanon’s Batoota Films was awarded an International Digital Emmy for its work on Shankaboot, the Arabiclanguage Web series. This is the first time a Lebanese production company has won the accolade, which is considered to be the television equivalent of the Oscars and the Grammy Awards.

One of four multi-media projects to be nominated in the Digital Program (fiction) category, Shankaboot beat competition from cutting-edge productions from the UK, the Netherlands and Brazil.

 I ONLINE Cleartag nominated at the Webby Awards Beirut. Lebanon-based Web and digital consultancy Cleartag was nominated at the 15th Annual Webby Awards, the international award honoring excellence on the Internet, hailed as the “Internet's highest honor” by the New

The ceremony was held in Cannes, France, against the backdrop of the MIPTV 2011 television festival.

“Most people associate Lebanon with war and sectarian conflict, but Shankaboot has nothing to do with politics. It's about the spirit of Beirut and love of its people. This award is another testimony to the growing power of social media and the youth in the Arab world,” says the producer of Shankaboot and director of Batoota Films, Katia Saleh, who collected the Emmy statuette with

Bass Breish, the lead scriptwriter.

“I am extremely proud of Shankaboot being the first Arabic Web series to achieve such international recognition, especially as we are a small country where Internet connections can be agonizingly slow,” says Breish.

Amin Dora, the director of Shankaboot, says, “I hope this award will encourage other Lebanese filmmakers to push back their creative boundaries as we have tried to do with Shankaboot.”

York Times. Cleartag’s website beirutterraces.com (for Beirut Terraces, a high-end residential tower in Beirut's Waterfront district) was nominated for Best Real Estate Website. As a nominee, Beirut Terraces is eligible to win a Webby People’s Voice Award, which is voted for online by the global Web community.

The Drive for Change campaign – a

CSR initiative on behalf of automotive distributors Rymco to sponsor a traffic and air pollution project proposed by the Atmospheric and Analytical Laboratory at the American University of Beirut (AUB) – received an honorable mention in the Green category.

Winners will be announced on May 3, and honored at a ceremony in New York City on June 13, where they will have the opportunity to deliver one of the Webby's famous five-word speeches.

Past Webby winners – and their speeches – include Al Gore (“Please don't re-count this vote.”), Stephen Colbert (“Me. Me. Me. Me. Me.”), and Michel Gondry (“Keyboards are full of germs.”).

 I ONLINE BeirutNightlife.com revamps Beirut. BeirutNightLife.com (BNL) launched a new version of its website.

Based on comments and recommendations sent to BNL by users and clients, the company has revised the whole system, in addition to generating news and editorial material on a daily basis by its four editors and contributors.

Founder/CEO Jean Ghalo says: “We

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believe the new look and features will help BNL deliver on its goal in offering consumers in Lebanon and its diaspora a number one portal.

“We believe in competition and are ready to compete with international digital media in the local market, and within the cities we are expanding in, such as Dubai.”

Over the coming months, the company will continue to introduce new content, features and products.

Memac Ogilvy to handle Grohe Middle East and Africa PR Beirut. German manufacturer Grohe Middle East and Africa appointed Memac Ogilvy to manage its regional public relations across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Bahrain and Qatar.

According to a statement released

by Memac, it is the first time Grohe Middle East and Africa has worked with an external PR agency. The deal is part of a global account win for Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide.

The team will be led by Tom Conway-Gordon as group account director and overseen by regional PR director Saada Hammad.

Spidermonkey and Brandcell partner with Shift Communication

Damascus. Spidermonkey and its sister, strategic branding consultancy Brandcell, announced an alliance with Damascus-based Shift Communication. The partnership will give Spidermonkey and Brandcell access to the Syrian market and provide Shift Communication with a foothold in the Lebanese market, with full strategic and creative support from SPM/BC. Shift Communication was established in July 2010 by Dori Rady. Spidermonkey Communication is an independent agency that was launched in Beirut in 1999 by Joe Ayoub.

On the move

Amman. Kempinski has appointed Janet Abrahams as area director, sales and marketing, for the Levant region. Abrahams joins from Emirates Palace Abu Dhabi, where she spent three and a half years as executive director, sales and marketing.

Beirut. Reine Zeinoune from Mediacom has moved to Carat Middle East. Alain el Helou from MPG has moved to Mediacom Beirut.

MAY 2011 | REGIONAL NEWS

Leo Burnett stunt gets blogosphere buzzing

 I PR Rizk Group has new PR wing

Beirut. Rizk Group consolidated its PR business into Rizk Public Relations (RPR). “The need and demand for PR services such as devising PR strategies, developing media relations, CSR programs, crisis management mechanisms and other PR services furthered the creation of RPR as a specialized PR firm,” says Alain Rizk, CEO of Rizk Group. RPR offers a diverse list of skills in public relations services including editorial services, media relations, social media, corporate communications, product launches, events, issues and crisis management, public affairs, CSR programs and celebrity endorsement, among many others.  I MARKETING Beirut. Leo Burnett Beirut’s latest communication stunt was promoted across Lebanon on behalf of the Brand Protection Group (BPG), an international organization for protection of brands and consumers from counterfeited products.

Aiming to raise awareness that the Lebanese market is plagued with fake products, Leo Burnett went for a total communication approach, using traditional media and digital in a very aggressive manner, under the theme “The closest things to you might be fake.”

By creating fake Facebook profiles imitating leading Lebanese bloggers, Leo Burnett managed to get influential digital users to discuss the issue spontaneously.

The agency also got various popular TV shows – such as LBC's Kalam el Nas or MTV’s Men el Ekhir – and radio shows on board, placing doubles of the famous hosts and presenters instead of the real ones, before revealing the purpose of the stunt.

Inside malls dozens of people, hired by Leo Burnett, mimicked shoppers in some sort of imitation

flash mob, while fake stands promoted fake products.

The integrated campaign spurred a flurry of discussion and praises online. “I loved the campaign and think that it should be award-winning because it was the first fully integrated campaign to successfully use new media in a creative way that is bound to attract your attention,” wrote blogger Moudz on Mind Soup.

“To think that all of this time when I was raging that ad agencies DO NOT GET IT that influencers want to be ENGAGED! They got IT!” wrote Darine on Identity Chef.  I MEDIA Group Plus signs exclusive advertising agreement Beirut. Group Plus has signed an exclusive advertising agreement with Voice of Lebanon 100.3 & 100.5 FM. Georges Chehwane, CEO of Group Plus, says, “We are fully confident that Voice of Lebanon connects us all to the largest audience as it speaks to the heart and minds of all Lebanese. Voice of Lebanon connects them through its live news coverage, its interactive shows and many other programs. ”

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New corporate campaign for BBAC Beirut. Adrenalin Communications developed and launched a new corporate campaign for BBAC under the theme “Your Caring Bank.” The campaign included TVCs, billboards, magazines and newspapers, plus a 3D ad playing in cinemas. Tarek Bilal, the acting head of the marketing department at BBAC, says, “Since we were launching a new corporate media campaign for the bank with the intention of repositioning the brand in the minds of consumers, it was very important for us to communicate our message in a way that could achieve a strong and memorable impact on people.

For the cinema advertisement, we have taken advantage of the rapidly growing 3D market and people’s fascination with this technology, especially the younger generation, as a point of differentiation from other advertisements.”

The commercial was produced by The Talkies Production House, and directed by Nicolas Salis.

REGIONAL NEWS | MAY 2011

Al Jazeera “most trusted”

 I ADVERTISING

Poll conducted by YouGov for Grayling Momentum finds favorite news channel

JWT Dubai lands Air Miles account Dubai. JWT Dubai has won the creative account for Air Miles, Rewards Management Middle East, following a competitive pitch. The agency will advise Air Miles on its strategic direction for 2011 onwards, and will deliver through-the-line creative services for the regional rewards program.  I TELEVISION Sony Pictures Television enters Studio City Dubai. Sony Pictures Television (SPT) has chosen Dubai Studio City (DSC), the free zone for film and broadcast production industries, and a member of TECOM Investments’ Media Cluster, to locate its regional operational base.

SPT has established Sony Pictures Television Arabia FZ-LLC, a new production company. Ziad Kebbi is president, and Dany Karam executive vice-president.

TSL to fit out Sky News Arabia studio

Dubai. Al Jazeera TV’s Arabic news channel is both the most watched and most trusted source of news, according to a survey conducted for independent PR consultancy Grayling Momentum.

The survey was conducted at the end of March by YouGov Siraj among 1,509 respondents in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Overall, 52 percent of respondents say Al Jazeera is their favorite news channel, with 44 percent agreeing it is the most trusted.

Guy Taylor, managing director of Grayling Momentum in the Middle East, says, “At a time when appetites for news have clearly increased, TV remains the most popular source. While social media has hit the headlines for putting forward new ideas and opinions, understanding how issues are reported is crucially important to our clients and our industry.”

The results indicate some curious discrepancies between popularity

and trust, reflecting a trend in society for objective, no-holds-barred reporting. For example, in Saudi Arabia, respondents rank their local news channels fifth in terms of popularity, with a 25 percent score, compared to 66 percent for Al Arabiya and 62 percent for Al Jazeera. Local TV news scores only 10 percent in terms of trust, compared to 50 and 49 percent for the most-watched channels.

TV audiences in the UAE tend to be more fragmented, reflecting the demographics and viewing habits of the country.

However, Al Jazeera still comes out on top in terms of popularity at 42 percent, with 38 percent saying it was the most trusted. BBC World News (English) was ranked second, with a significant 35 percent saying it was both the most watched and most trusted channel, followed by CNN at 32 percent and 30 percent respectively. Sky News was ranked 10th with only 7 percent.

Abu Dhabi. TSL, a broadcast systems integrator, has signed a deal to deliver the technical fit-out of studios, production and broadcasting functions, for Sky News Arabia, the new 24-hour Arabic news channel due to launch in spring 2012.

Sky News Arabia is a joint venture between British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) and Abu Dhabi Media Investment Corporation (ADMIC), a private investment company based in Abu Dhabi.

Real ROI launches in region Dubai. Real ROI, a research, retail and marketing company, is launching in the Middle East.

Chief marketing officer Arnaud Verchère (who also runs Tonic Communications), tells Communicate, “Real ROI brings research and retail innova-

tions fundamental to every marketer’s success: co-creation, content creation and amplification in social media, influencing influencers, and motivating retail at the point of purchase.”

One of Real ROI’s partners is eYeka, an international co-creation community.  I RADIO

Study indicates increase in listener loyalty for ADRN Abu Dhabi. The latest results from a study show an increase in reach, share of audience, and listener loyalty across Abu Dhabi Radio Network (ADRN) brands, according to a press statement.

The UAE radiometry study was carried out by independent media research specialists Ipsos MediaCT MENA in February, with results published at the end of March.

Highlights from the report include an increase in reach to 47 percent of locals and Arabs for the station Quran Kareem, as well as growth in reach to 32.7 percent of locals for Emarat FM, with listeners also tuning in to the station for longer. Star FM also saw growth in its reach and listener loyalty, especially among its target Arab demographic.

Meanwhile, newcomer Abu Dhabi Classic made a positive impression on the radio scene as the first western classical music station, and increased its reach among Arabs and locals, the statement adds.

The latest report is based on a sample of 2,763 people, aged 15 years and above, in the UAE.  I MARKETING Marketing agency Paragon expands into Oman Kuwait City. Paragon Marketing Communications, a Kuwait-based full-service integrated marketing communications agency, is expanding its operations from Kuwait and Bulgaria into Oman.

The move will help the agency cater to a wider market geographically, with the northern Gulf market being handled through the Kuwait branch, the southern Gulf region through the Omani branch. The Bulgarian office will handle Eastern Europe.

Communicate Levant I 11

© Getty Images

MAY 2011 | OPINION

The Communiquestion

Dreaming of apps

We ask the industry: What mobile app would you most like to see developed for Lebanon?

GEORGE SLIM CEO, Lowe Pimo A Discover Lebanon app. The idea is to have an app/ game for the whole of Lebanon: An app [that is] rather cultural/historical, and at the same time fun. It will be an app for foreigners and especially for the Lebanese to discover and appreciate their country. It’s a way to learn and visit the various Lebanese villages virtually, making you want to actually visit them… It’s a fun way for Lebanon to promote itself and give itself value.

RICHARD EL HACHEM Business director, Memac Ogilvy & Mather Beirut For the price of one you get four. What I would like to see are applications that can find solutions for daily worries, enable sane judgment, add joy to our lives and give depth to our spirits: A traffic advisor, where drivers would pinpoint through their mobile the streets with heavy and light traffic, helping others drive around; a news compiler, gathering all media points of view when it comes to issues, leaving the possibility for each mo-

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bile holder to cross-check all sides of the story and try finding “the truth” to form his own balanced opinion; a song fetcher, enabling users to sing and record on their mobile a song they heard, asking the application to fetch its name and link from the Net; a daily alert telling the story of a work of art, explaining its ins and outs.

JOE AYACHE Managing director, Impact BBDO A ski condition app.

JACQUES ASMAR General manager, MEC Beirut In today’s Lebanon, I would like to have a traffic application. Cameras spread on key roads that transfer instantaneously all information related to the traffic jams. I enter the destination and get the situation on the main roads that will take me there from my location, or any other location. It should work on all smart phones.

Š Getty Images

MAY 2011 | COVER STORY

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COVER STORY | MAY 2011

Beirut online

The digital revolution is shaking communication to the core. Where does Lebanon stand? by Ibrahim Nehme

A

t the Hello World_Digital Seminar held in Beirut in early March by OMD, Dimitri Metaxas, regional executive director of digital at OMG, revealed that only 4 percent of total advertising budgets in the Middle East are spent online. Metaxas also discussed how technology is changing the game dramatically.

However, according to Ipsos Stat’s published figures, the amount spent on digital advertising in Lebanon in 2010 totaled $3.3 million, which represents only 1.8 percent of total ad spend ($180 million). Why this reluctance to move budgets online, at a time when digital is growing exponentially in importance?

“While brands should be spending more online, I understand their skepticism as the online world in Lebanon is still relatively unexplored and no serious studies have been conducted to measure demographics, reach, and behavior of Lebanese Internet users,” says Michael Chaftari, digital planner at Leo Burnett Beirut, adding that there is also very little previous work to use as a frame of reference for campaigns.

Besides, according to Omar Habib, former regional business acquisition manager at crea-

tive agency RMG/JWT, the market is ruled by an old style of management that is slowing any improvement of marketing practices in the country, just because it has worked before and it sells.

The problem, he says, is that general marketing practices in the country are so myopic, and merged wrongly with the sales and finance divisions, that it makes it very difficult for the clients to start fathoming digital marketing.

“Lots of clients still regard having a website as a luxury, not a necessity,” says Ziad Al Chami, general manager of Web agency Eye Digits. “They think having a website is a prestigious thing. A client will put the URL on his business card, whereas his e-mail would be on a Hotmail account.” Chami also points to the fact clients “think that online marketing consists of having a group on Facebook with 1,000 people.

“It’s very nice, but it’s also very wrong, because online marketing is not only Facebook.

Facebook is No. 2 on Alexa, yes, but they wouldn’t care if their [own] website ranking on Alexa was 2 million. They are about these 1,000 on Facebook only.”

MARKET APPEAL. Yet, despite this disinclination to invest online, the Ipsos Stat figures indicate a significant 10 percent increase from 2009. There’s no denying that interest in the medium from clients and ad agencies alike is increasing; both are realizing that if they don’t invest now, they are only going to be left out.

“If we don’t ride the wave, we will be missing a big chunk of the work we do as communicators,” says Joe Ayache, managing director at Impact BDDO Beirut. Since digital has become an integral component of people’s everyday lives, choosing to be online or not simply isn’t an option.

“Clearly, the market is growing,” says Fadi Sabbagha of digital agency Born Interactive. “We can see it from our figures, from the response of our clients and the requests we’ve been getting, even in the worst of times. Awareness has increased dramatically, especially after everybody saw how [social media] stirred revolutions across the Arab world.”

Clients are beginning to see and reap the benefits of online marketing: lower cost, higher visibility, better targeting and more flexibility.

Communicate Levant I 15

© Getty Images

MARCH MAY 2011 2011 | COVER | COVER STORY STORY

OMAR HABIB. Former regional business acquisition manager at RMG/JWT

FADI SABBAGHA. CEO of digital agency Born Interactive

TAREK DAJANI. CEO of digital agency Cleartag

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Most players have been embracing digital: ad agencies are setting up digital departments within their traditional agency structures and clients are approaching digital agencies to do digital work without having to go through their ad agencies.

“In a year’s time, digital moved from being something that only the adventurous would venture into, to something that everyone wants to do, and this is suddenly being reflected in budget allocation,” says Tarek Dajani of digital agency Cleartag.

“In the past, clients would approach us after they’ve done all the communication work with their ad agency, and ask us to adapt the campaign visuals online. Now they want us to help them put together the digital budget of the entire year. Sometimes they’re even thinking of a different strategy for digital that’s not necessarily shadowing the offline strategy,” he adds.

BEHAVIORAL SHIFT. So budgets are increasingly spent on digital in Lebanon. But does that translate into successful campaigns and approaches?

As Metaxas mentioned during his presentation, social media is not a media channel, it’s a behavior, and a lot of marketers are still failing to grasp this change of approach. “People speak of the growth in digital in terms of numbers, but they forget to see how it’s imposing a social change that we have to embrace, understand, and address. There’s a whole bunch of new consumers who hardly watch any TV, read magazines or buy newspapers,” says Ayache, adding, “They are the consumers of the future that marketers are not talking to.”

“Going online” isn’t simply a matter of building websites and Facebook apps. It’s a complete transformation in one's way of thinking, says

Dajani. “With the emergence of the device universe, suddenly everything and everyone is connected and the focus is not on Internet penetration, but on everybody who is connected: my mother, my grandfather, my friends, my colleagues.”

However, a lot of marketers still think of the Web as an outlet to place advertisements and push marketing messages, and are approaching digital marketing in the same way they approach traditional marketing. “They care about gathering as many people as they can to like their Facebook pages, instead of directing their efforts toward creating real engagement,” says Cyril Hadji Thomas, CEO of digital agency Keeward. Dajani goes even further, saying that marketers “still think about it in an above-the-line/below-theline mindset, and even some are trying to figure out whether digital falls under ATL or BTL.” As Habib puts it, the digital spectrum is a tool, a means to an end, to finally start creating relationships between brands and people, which is, after all, what marketing is really all about.

“We’re still doing marketing communication, nothing has changed. Digital only forces us to see that there’s a relationship to be had,” he says.

AGENCIES FACE OFF. Those who have jumped on the bandwagon are doing it any way they can, and that’s probably why there’s such a plethora of banner ads, e-mail bursts, e-newsletters and Facebook presence like we’ve never seen before. But Habib says this sudden surge in ecommunication is rooted by the fact that “it’s just what [clients] know, because that’s just what their ad agencies and marketing consultants know.”

If a few years ago clients weren’t receptive to digital activations, “it was because ad agen-

COVER STORY | MAY 2011

cies didn’t understand them and therefore badly explained them to their clients, putting whatever digital ideas they had on the last slide,” says Jocelyne Tawk, digital account manager at Impact BBDO. This, she adds, has de-motivated clients and lowered their interest in digital.

However, Tawk quickly adds that today ad agencies, especially the big networks, are aware of the fact they can’t realize a brand or a campaign idea without digital. Hence the creation of so many digital departments, arms and/or subsidiaries.

But is starting digital departments at the agency the solution to all digital predicaments?

Maybe not, at least according to Sabbagha, who says the problem with ad agencies when doing digital work is that they’re relatively new to the industry; therefore their approach is driven, to a large extent, by a traditional advertising mindset. “Most of them, even the ones who have digital departments, may come up with digital concepts, of which a lot fail on usability and technical implementation because the agencies’ digital experience is limited. They’re used to the message that runs fast [one that expires versus a conversation that builds up] and remains a message as opposed to a real interactive experience,” he says. Dajani, says he believes that digital agencies, like his, understand the digital mindset by virtue of the nature of their work.

“Companies that are fully digital at the core are very well geared to benefit from a new world where communication is not just about a message [as opposed to a conversation or a relationship].

Digital agencies are primed to be at the center of communication,” he says.

Today, digital agencies and traditional agencies are facing one another in an awkward relationship not void of synergies. However, they are strained by underlying defiance and confusing mechanics in the work process. “Ad agencies like to think – incorrectly – that digital agencies are like the production companies who produce their TVCs, and this is not the right alignment,” says Dajani, who claims that, on the other hand, most clients prefer to work with just one entity.

“So they ask the ad agency to deal with the digital agency, or if they work with both, then they’ll have a hard time liaising between the two agencies. There’s confusion at this point as to who creates what role when. But, if [advertising agencies] keep thinking that the digital agency is simply a company they outsource to for the development of websites, then at some point in the future these companies they’re outsourcing to will become their competition,” he says.

Marc Dfouni, CEO and co-founder of online marketing strategy firm Eastline Marketing, even says that digital agencies becoming the new competition for ad agencies would be the natural evolution from offline to online.

“Ad agencies don’t have the right resources to strategize any online activation; they don’t have the technical know-how to implement these strategies, and their profit margin on online is much less than on offline,” he says.

CENTER STAGE. Digital agencies are primed to play a pivotal role, says Tarek Dajani The new trend in “digitalization” of traditional agencies may even push online agencies to follow their tracks, only the other way around, and venture into more traditional territories, says Sabbagha, who believes the more the ad agencies decide to integrate, the more the digital agencies who are experts in their fields will also decide to integrate. “Either we create a balance where we complement each other, or we will overlap, and in this case, digital agencies should better understand the industry as they may have to extend the scope of their services to handle the clients’ needs. In the same way that it’s easy for ad agencies to bring in digital experts, it’s also easy for us to bring marketing experts,” he says.

DIGITAL RACE. Obviously, advertising agencies have quite a different perception of this apparent arm wrestling and, most importantly, of its possible outcome. According to Leo Burnett’s Chaftari, digital agencies positioning themselves as alternatives to ad agencies in the online world are on the wrong track. “At some point there was a void left by ad agencies that was filled by these digital agencies, but today ad agencies are moving back into that space and that’s the way it should be,” he says, considering that agencies know the brands and people best, and work on communication strategies and ideas on a brand level that lead to executions across different mediums, digital being one of them.

“Having multiple agencies working on different aspects of the same campaign leads to schizophrenic communication and hurts the brands in the end,” he says.

JOE AYACHE. Managing director at Impact BDDO Beirut

CYRIL HADJI THOMAS. CEO of digital agency Keeward

ZIAD AL CHAMI. General manager of Eye Digits

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MAY 2011 | COVER STORY

MICHAEL CHAFTARI. Digital planner at Leo Burnett Beirut

MARC DFOUNI. CEO of Eastline marketing

JOCELYNE TAWK. Digital account manager at Impact BBDO

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Arguing that one should go back to the conception of these digital agencies to understand the current situation, Ayache goes as far as saying that digital agencies’ founders are “people who knew how to design a website; they launched themselves on the market on that basis and started providing their services to agencies and clients from a pure technical angle. So they started as technical entities and grew as technical entities because they had to approach websites as projects. They have a different disposition from the standard ad agency because they were not equipped to think like an ad agency from the beginning: they don’t have the capabilities to work from a 360-degree perspective and they don’t have strategic planners or marketing people to create advertising in the sense that we understand it. They don’t know how to make a TVC or a press ad; they will need a lot of planning, marketing and creative skills that they don’t possess.”

This sensitive issue was touched upon at the ArabNet Shift Digital Summit that was held in Beirut in March (see page 28). During one of the panels on digital marketing, Yousef Tuqan Tuqan, CEO of Dubai-based digital agency Flip Media, said that since in the future every communication touch point will have a digital element to it, the role of digital agencies is bound to grow, not only in importance, but also across various communication channels, including the ones that, for now, are considered to be in the ad agencies' territory (billboards, direct mailers, TVCs, and so on). According to Tuqan, the one thing that differentiates ad agencies from digital agencies is that they have a completely different business model; a traditional structure center has three main departments – creative, accounts and

production – and the way of work is very linear, whereas in digital it’s much more flexible and agile. As a result of this difference that favors digital agencies’ efficiency, traditional companies will have to step on the gas in order to compete in the digital era.

But is the system missing the point or, at least, is it not yet on the mark? According to Habib, ad agencies still have problems dealing with digital internally; something is still missing in their strategy and vision, even among the ones that have taken the lead and merged with digital entities (JWT absorbed its CRM and digital arm RMG, and Leo Burnett absorbed Arc a few years ago). On the other hand, digital agencies are stuck in their territory. “They’re so entrenched in where they are, they need to meet the ad agency halfway. They are too focused on the technology, while there is a user experience that has to be had. They lack the middle ground in terms of communication and providing customers with an experience. Very few agencies have user experience specialists,” he says.

As things stand, the many challenges that are hampering or may hamper, either today or in the future, the partnership between advertising and digital agencies, are slowing down the trend towards online work and investment. With the fast pace of evolution in the digital sphere, particularly with the events taking place across the Arab world and with the expected introduction of 3G technology (a recent mobile internet technology much faster than GPRS, which is currently used in Lebanon. 3G would make Internet connections very fast and allow more people to start accessing it via their mobiles) to Lebanon in the coming year, it will be interesting to watch how the market, and the relationships between the different market players, will develop.

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Untapped potential At Communicate Levant, we like bloggers and believe they can yield actual power in the communication realm. So we asked them directly how to go about it by Louis Parks

B

ubbling under the feet of Lebanon’s collective advertising agencies lies a vibrant, educated, socially aware and growing community. What’s strange about this community is that it remains a resource largely untapped in the daily fight for our attention.

Lebanon is home to an increasingly large number of social media users and involvement with social media is expanding year-on-year, with approximately a million Facebook users, thousands of Twitter accounts and approximately 460 blogs at present. Despite this, according to a number of influential bloggers, advertising agencies have, to date, largely ignored these key online opinion makers.

Communicate Levant sat down with a series of movers and shakers from the blogosphere. We rounded up Liliane Assaf of Lebanon Aggregator, Najib of BlogBaladi, Beirut Driveby, Ayman Itani (digital media strategist at ThinkMedia Labs) and The Identity Chef’s Darine Sabbagh to discuss how and why corporate communication departments interact with the Lebanese blogosphere

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and how social media might be able to change how these companies deal with consumers.

What is the state of Lebanon’s online community?

Ayman Itani – ThinkMedia Labs You’ll never meet a more vibrant, active, nonsectarian community in Lebanon. People do this on their own time, out of passion. If you asked a question on Twitter, on your blog, needing an answer, there’s an army of people who would go out and try to answer your question, or refer you to someone. There have been fundraising events, self-managed, self-run. No political, no sectarian issues. And they’re undervalued by corporations.

Liliane Assaf – Lebanon Aggregator Look at the UAE, they’re really strong as a community and agencies listen to them.

The Lebanese environment is more social.

Abroad, they talk about more serious things.

We’re more chaotic, we’re still discovering.

The scene has been really strong in Lebanon for a short time.

Beirut Driveby We’re running into each other more and more.

When I see something happening on Twitter, I know the people involved; I know who they are.

Once you’ve been to a few events you start to see people, names and faces.

You’re already influencing companies in Lebanon.

For example, Leo Burnett’s changing of Exotica’s Mother’s Day campaign (that sparked online outrage by depicting mothers and daughters with strong facial characteristics, such as a big nose under the slogan “Thank you mom for the good and the bad”), is an example of the positive impact the community can have. What are your thoughts?

Liliane Assaf – Lebanon Aggregator The blogosphere didn’t like it, that the agency would use a negative similarity between a daughter and a mother.

But the agency listened. When the bloggers started it, Maya Zankoul was first, then Plus 961. They [Leo Burnett] were on Twitter, they saw it, they listened. They interacted, they knew

COVER STORY | MAY 2011

people didn’t like it. They were positive. They enhanced the campaign. It was good.

But do you think they did this as a result of online pressure?

Najib – BlogBaladi When I first saw the ad I thought, “This isn’t finished, it’s not done.” I’m not sure. Maybe they had this planned: Cause a controversy, have a back-up plan, it’s a marketing strategy.

But they listened. Most of them check [online] comments. But I’m not sure how much impact bloggers could have on marketing companies, or even their clients.

Darine Sabbagh – The Identity Chef Maybe they [Leo Burnett] did it on purpose.

They started high and then took it down a level.

Beirut Driveby I don’t think they did it this way. But they took a situation and turned it around. There’s a reason they say there’s no such thing as bad press.

So, you think they changed it as a result of the blogs?

Beirut Driveby On the public outcry, definitely.

Darine Sabbagh – The Identity Chef I think they already knew that something was going to happen.

What can bloggers bring to marketers?

Ayman Itani – ThinkMedia Labs If you want an honest answer you talk to a blogger. If you want a sugar-coated answer, you talk to the mainstream media. There are so many options, honesty is hard to get.

How do you maintain your independence, that honesty?

Beirut Driveby As [the number of] bloggers is growing and they are uniting, they’re maintaining their independence through a system of checks and balances. We do check and update each other by asking questions. People in Lebanon are sharp, they’ll get after you if you don’t do what you say you do.

So you’d never feel obliged to write a glowing review after attending an event, or being contacted by an agency to take a look at a product?

Najib – BlogBaladi I don’t feel obligated to write about it. If it was outrageous I’d criticize it. That’s how bloggers should be.

Beirut Driveby That’s how Lebanese bloggers are. They’ll engage you right there and then and check that you’re doing what you said.

If the social media community can interact with,

ABOUT FACE. Exotica changed its Mother’s Day campaign after getting feedback from blogs and influence, corporate communication, why is this interaction so limited to date?

Ayman Itani – ThinkMedia Labs From the corporate communication perspective, you can categorize the agencies into three groups: one, the part that denies the need for anything to do with the Internet, for feedback, input or inspiration for their ads; two, the part that’s interested and knows that there’s something out there and that they should get out there, but they’ve been doing this for a long time and it’s easy to hide behind slow Internet and low penetration numbers; three, they actually want to do it and they’re very upfront, “Hey bloggers come on, come to a free dinner and you talk about the product,” it’s not the right way to do things.

Najib – BlogBaladi More than half don’t know what a blog is. I was at an e-marketing conference and only one person I spoke to knew what a blog was.

How should agencies interested in working with you approach you and deal with you?

Liliane Assaf – Lebanon Aggregator Go to someone who knows about bloggers. They need statistics. For example, we have 20 percent Internet penetration, but one million people on Facebook, that means that every blogger is on Facebook; when they post, it goes everywhere.

You’re reaching 25 percent of the Lebanese

population. They should go to someone who knows and looks at every blog, see their ranking, be more scientific. Go to the right person, look it up.

Ayman Itani – ThinkMedia Labs Just be honest, be genuine.

Darine Sabbagh – The Identity Chef Be creative, engaging, get to know us, talk to us as a person. I write about this, she writes about this. We’re a community, but you need to talk to us differently. That’s the honesty Ayman’s talking about. Give us the time, make it more interesting to us. Let us discover it. It has to be interesting or fun, challenging.

Beirut Driveby First of all, they need to recognize that our readership contains some of the most educated people in the country, the richest, the people who might control the country, the dollars and lira, in the future. The next thing is, many people in advertising don’t use social media, they have no idea what’s happening. Finally, they can’t just come to us and say “Hey look what I’ve got.”

We don’t care. They need to engage with us, and like Ayman said, be honest. In being genuine, they can’t come to us, but they can be one of us.

Log on, come to Twitter, Facebook. They need to join us, be one of us, in a genuine manner.

Then they’ll know what’s going on.

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MAY 2011 | COVER STORY

What’s the big deal?

With group buying fast becoming the next big thing in local advertising, why are so many failing to see the appeal? Communicate Levant takes a closer look by Ibrahim Nehme

I

ABDALLAH YAFI. Managing partner, ScoopCity

ANTOUN ABOUZEID. Business development director, SCAS Inc.

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n a span of five months, between September 2010 and January 2011, four group-buying companies (GoNabit, Makhsoom, Cobone and GoSawa – a fifth one, ScoopCity, launched in April) have ventured into the Lebanese market, starting operations in a country where the concept of group buying was unheard of.

Group buying, or collective buying, is the process of offering online products and services at significantly reduced prices (in Lebanon, for example, discounts range from 50 percent to 90 percent) under the condition that a minimum number of buyers make the purchase. These platforms usually feature a different product or service each day or every two days; the deal tips when a specific number of people agree to buy the offer during a specific period of time.

Buyers then print a voucher in order to claim their discount at the retailer.

The concept has been making waves in the US and Europe with a worldwide market that has been witnessing exponential growth during the past two years (group-buying giant Groupon, launched in Chicago three years ago, boasted $500 million in revenue in 2010). And Lebanon seems eager to follow.

MARKETING APPEAL. GoNabit was the first group-buying company to launch in Lebanon, arriving in September, following successes in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and plans to roll out business in seven other Arab countries during 2011. Announcing the launch of its Lebanese operation, Dan Stuart, CEO and co-founder, said the timing is right, foundations are in place to develop e-commerce in Lebanon, people are savvy consumers, credit card usage is growing and Internet access is improving.

“The Lebanese are always on the lookout for a great deal,” says Sharbel Abou Tayeh, Lebanon country manager of Cobone (the third entrant, in December 2010), as the mushrooming of retail outlets across Beirut selling pricey brands at discounted rates also indicates. According to Abou Tayeh, the market’s demand for better deals in terms of price to quality ratio is what’s creating the appeal for the groupbuying platforms.

Add to that the fact Lebanon is a country dominated by small and medium enterprises; SMEs are primed to benefit from the group-buying services, if only because they

COVER STORY | MAY 2011

often do not have significant marketing budgets and therefore need to find other ways to make themselves known, according to Sara Karam, community manager at GoNabit Beirut. Karam advocates the concept of “assured marketing,” a term coined by Sohrab Jahanbani, her company’s co-founder.

Jahanbani’s idea is simple: The main issue with most traditional campaigns is that you never really get to see the results.

The industry, for a long time, has tried to solve this issue by looking at models of cost-peracquisition, as they’re very results-based and very measurable. The underlying strategy at GoNabit is based on cost-per-acquisition.

“A very competitively priced daily deal will create and drive real customers through the doors of our merchants, multiplied by many when customers spread the word about a good deal. This way we close the loop at the bottom of the marketing funnel by converting people to customers. We’re able to tell our merchants before the campaign starts what the cost of acquisition per customer might be, and then, at the end of the campaign, what that cost is.

That’s why it’s called ‘assured marketing’: you know exactly what you’re going to be paying per customer,” he says on his website.

The merchants also get free publicity as their deal is promoted across various social networks such as Facebook and Twitter; hence their brand gets to enjoy a lot of buzz and amplified word-of-mouth via social media. “Even if the deal is not bought, it’s still free advertising for them [when the deal goes up on the site, the group-buying company promotes it heavily on social networks and on its own website, which usually has high traffic]. And, even if the deal doesn’t tip, the client won’t incur any cost; on the contrary he is granted exposure, they just have to lower the cost of their product,” says Karam.

CHALLENGES. Many local merchants, however, were hesitant to join the fray. Karam says that at first the concept was very foreign to a lot of them, even the ones familiar with social media and who have lived abroad. “Like every new idea, it will take time for people to get used to it and accept it, particularly since the concept of discounting a product is still a bit sensitive in [Lebanon],” she says.

Antoun Abouzeid, business development director at SCAS Inc., the company that owns Makhsoom (the second entrant, in October 2010), agrees that the Lebanese, in particular, often consider a huge discount on a product as a sign that it’s of bad quality. But he says this perception has been changing; more people are seeing the benefits and embracing the trend.

This doesn’t mean there aren’t more obstacles standing in the way of group-buying websites. One major concern that needed – and still needs – to be addressed is security issues. For example, Abou Tayeh says that some

PLASTIC NOT SO FANTASTIC. Many people in Lebanon do not use credit cards due to security concerns of Cobone’s clients were worried that someone would copy the voucher and use the offer more than once. The answer lies in a unique code that Cobone develops for each voucher, allowing the merchant, who is given a user name and password, to log in and trace all the vouchers sold with the name of the purchaser and respective unique code.

Another setback is the low credit card penetration rate in Lebanon. Ziad Al Chami, general manager of Web agency Eye Digits, believes it’s a major challenge to convince people that using credit cards online is very secure, and he blames the Lebanese banks. “You go to the bank to open an account and they ask if you need an Internet card. Why would I want an Internet card if I have a credit card? Are they trying to tell people that it’s risky to use their credit cards online? It’s the banks that are scaring people,” he says, adding that Lebanese banks “invented the Internet card. It’s a debit card. Why isn’t it a normal credit card? Because [banks] are still afraid there will be fraud. So, if banks are afraid of fraud, how do you expect the consumer to feel secure?”

After some hesitation, Cobone recently introduced a cash-on-delivery payment system for purchases above $7, as well as another pre-paid card system. Makhsoom also accepts cash on exceptional occasions only – if a client is desperate and comes knocking at their office door, for instance – but they’d rather people pay online.

GAITH YAFI. Managing partner, ScoopCity

SARA KARAM. Community manager, GoNabit Beirut

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MAY 2011 | COVER STORY

Both Karam and Abouzeid assure that with the Bank Audi payment gateway their sites use, it is extremely safe to buy online.

In fact, Karam says the partnership they’re working on with Bank Audi aims to encourage people to apply for online credit cards by making the process much easier.

Considering e-commerce is a relatively new industry in Lebanon, lots of education has to be made about the security issues, she says.

The oldest Lebanese e-commerce website Buylebanese.com just celebrated its 10th anniversary and, like most other Lebanese e-commerce ventures, such as Librairie Antoine and Exotica, is mainly geared towards Lebanese living abroad. Hopefully, and despite the fact that only few options are available for transacting online so far, group-buying online ventures could be key catalysts that couldhelp boost e-commerce and online purchasing habits in the country.

SHARBEL ABOU TAYEH. Lebanon country manager, Cobone

ZIAD AL CHAMI. General manager, Eye Digits

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POTENTIAL. GoNabit consumers who buy via Dubai and Abu Dhabi sites allegedly saved more than $350,000 in the company’s first few months of operation. We are yet to see how the numbers will add up in Lebanon, but the opportunity seems exciting and the potential huge.

The various market players are still testing the waters, trying to see what works and what doesn’t, and most of them offer one deal every two days. A growth in the market could see them move towards one deal a day, and if it gets more competitive in the near or distant

future, then maybe more than one deal a day.

Once they reach this point, Abou Tayeh says the market will have really grown.

However, ScoopCity, the latest company to join the competition in April, is seeking to challenge the conventional group-buying business model by offering something a little different from the competition.

Managing partners Abdallah Yafi and Gaith Yafi admit that the Lebanese market is small, but they say it’s growing, which allows room for new competition. And their Lebanon-based platform is not about massive discounts and saving money.

In fact, the Yafi brothers do not even use the words “save” or “cheap” on their site. “We are a means of showing people how to spend their money wisely on quality places and products.

“Our philosophy is ‘Get a 30 percent off deal on a reputable restaurant rather than 80 percent off a struggling café.’”

But, as more companies join the competition, driven by the market appeal and low barriers to entry, the question will always be: Who will survive and why?

According to the ScoopCity managers, it may be very easy to buy a template and hop on the group-buying bandwagon, but “the key to a sustainable presence is differentiation, and what new features are brought to the table.” But for Maksoom’s Abouzeid, the real competition in the future and success of any group-buying company will depend primarily on its ability to offer a great deal.

Only the future will tell who’s right, but for now, one thing is certain: the group-buying game is on.

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MAY 2011 | COVER STORY

What’s app-ening?

Mobile apps may be enjoying worldwide success, but Lebanon seems reluctant to join the party just yet. Communicate Levant examines what’s holding the country back

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NEHME ABOUZEID. Publisher of Time Out Beirut

AYMAN ITANI. Digital strategy consultant, ThinkMedia Labs

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obile apps are enjoying worldwide success, except in Lebanon, it seems.

The evolution of mobiles has been quite extraordinary, with the smart phone marking the dawn of a new digital period, one that combines the multi-functions of a computer with the entertainment of a games console. However, it’s the mobile apps feature that is making Homo sapiens stand up and take notice.

While mobile apps may be making an impact, Lebanon is failing to be wowed. None of the biggest brands in Lebanon has a mobile app, despite all of the big players in the West making it a must-have feature. So what’s all the fuss about? Well, with an app, your brand will have the consumer in its pocket, so to speak.

PLANET OF THE APP. “As a brand, your user’s mobile device is always within arm’s reach, and in this fastpaced business world, it is a solid, stable connector to the shifting world around you. It is undoubted that your users would like to have an enhanced and advanced interaction with your brand in a mobile environment.

The explosive growth in mobile technology in 2011 can be compared to the growth of the Internet in 1996,

by Samer Zouehid

when brands made a significant jump to an online presence,” says digital strategy consultant Ayman Itani, who works for research-based digital media strategy agency ThinkMedia Labs.

So, if the Internet revolutionized our computers, apps have brought the revolution to our mobiles. And the figures show this is a popular revolution and not a manufactured coup by the technology industry.

According to the International Data Corporation, in 2010 there were 300,000 apps developed for iPhone alone, which were downloaded 10.9 billion times. That figure doesn’t reflect Lebanon’s progress in the industry, with just over a handful of apps – eight according to our research, although no official statistics are available – having been developed. What’s holding Lebanese brands back?

Is it understanding? Are Lebanese companies from Mars and apps from Venus?

“Companies want apps, but they don’t know what they want them to do, or even why they need them.

So now every company wants to have an app just for the novelty,” claims Nehme Abouzeid, publisher of Time Out Beirut, a magazine that has recently launched its own app.

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THE SMART WAY. There is no rule on what apps should do or look like, but according to Elie Haddad, a mobile applications developer with six years’ experience in the industry of developing apps, including the Live Ramadan app addressing Muslims, and the Ayna app for traffic and mapping info, a “successful mobile application should be designed to accomplish the user’s visions. It should be easy to use and the flow of the application should be very user-friendly, as well as graphically appealing and bug-free.”

The Kraft iFood Assistant app, for example, has all the right ingredients for success, and received worldwide acclaim. It is simple and user-friendly.

By allowing you to browse recipes by occasion, Kraft has created a useful tool that is mutually beneficial to the consumer and its own brand equity.

The consumer gets to learn new recipes and Kraft becomes synonymous with cooking.

There are other reasons Lebanese brands haven’t followed Kraft’s example. They lack the programmers needed to cook up a great app.

“As far as I know, universities in Lebanon do not offer any kind of course, even as technical elective, for mobile application development. There are not that many programmers around, but I know a lot of fresh graduates are willing to learn,” says Haddad.

A quick search on the iPhone apps store and Nokia’s Ovi store shows just a handful of amateurlooking Lebanese apps, but no household names.

Among these, there is an app to keep you up to speed with Lebanese basketball, there’s the 101 Lebanese Recipes app to give us food for thought, and the Lebanese Wizard app that adds its magic touch to local news. A curious assessment, in a country where potential app ideas are so numerous that two bloggers, Qika Nabki and Maya Zankhoul, jokingly came up with a common blog post under the title “Solving the dilemmas of life in Lebanon, one app at a time.” The post features creative proposals such as accessing a collection of Abu l-Abed jokes or keeping track of the various religious holidays (see picture, right).

So, apart from the obvious need for talented programmers, what does it take to make a goodlooking app? Does money make the app world go round?

“The cost of development becomes significant when there is a need for a brand to be available on different mobile platforms (Apple iOS, Google Android, Windows Phone, and so on), leading to additional non-incremental costs per platform.

Moreover, the costs of maintaining and updating the apps as new devices and ensuring updates to operating systems are rolled out also need to be factored in to the budget. In general, if running on a tight budget, a good place for a brand to start is by customizing an off-the-shelf app to gauge user interest. Once that succeeds, an investment in a custom mobile app becomes more critical,” says Itani.

MOBILE PRESS. There is one industry in Lebanon that is starting to take notice of this new phenomenon, and it might not be too long before we start

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COVER STORY | MAY 2011

UN-APPY. Despite worldwide attraction, the Lebanese market is failing to fall for the charms of mobile apps – for now, at least reading the morning paper on our mobile. “The publishing industry is very active and we will start to see innovations in this sector,” says Abouzeid.

His own publication, Time Out Beirut, has already developed an app that can turn your mobile into a pocket guide. But what has it done for business?

Has it put Time Out Beirut on the digital map?

“For a magazine and content provider like Time Out, the main benefit is opening a new user channel.

We now have a user base of 2,300. Eight hundred of them are regular and very active users.

We took the strategy not to have the magazine on sale in the app [the app version of the mag is free]; this is what all the other publishers are doing, simply selling their print edition online. Our app can be used online as well as offline (so you can have the content with you at all times). In addition, we have dedicated content for the app, including specially formatted articles, events and listings content.

Users can also search for events and view the events calendar, search for listings, views videos and listen to music,” says Abouzeid.

While it doesn’t look like the Lebanese market will fall in love with apps soon, the attraction is there.

According to Itani, for this relationship to work, it’s not only us that need to make the first move, but rather apps need to understand us better as well.

“Currently, the number of Arabic content apps is not huge, thus creating an opportunity for expansion in that direction. Smart phone penetration in the region is healthy and continues to grow. Moreover, the regional mobile carriers are already offering high-speed mobile Internet (or are currently deploying them), which makes the mobile application experience much richer. It is only a matter of time until more and more brands are available across mobile platforms,” says Itani.

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Digital watch Crowds flocked to Beirut in March for the second ArabNet 2011 Shift Digital Summit.

Communicate Levant was there by Ibrahim Nehme

T

he ArabNet 2011 Shift Digital Summit, one of the largest gatherings of digital executives and entrepreneurs in the Middle East, convened for the second time in Beirut in March. The four-day event was rich with talks, panels and workshops, and was also high on networking. Omar Christidis, founder of ArabNet and vice-president of event organiser IBAG (International Business Alliance Group), described the summit as a forum for executives working in the digital industry to meet and a platform from which entrepreneurs could launch ideas. It was attended by 974 registered delegates and 104 speakers from 22 countries, including China, Russia and the US. The first day was dubbed “Developers’ Day,” dedicated to Web and app developers, during which participants took part in discussions on various topics, such as mobile platforms, building for Web with HTML5, user interface and user experience, product development, app and game development, and cloud computing The second and third days were forum days, which focused on discussions on two main topics: entrepreneurship and trends in Web and mobile.

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FOSTERING ENTREPRENEURSHIP. Entrepreneurship in Web and mobile is gaining increasing importance in the Arab world as a way to create jobs for young people and move Arab countries towards the knowledge economy. This was a key topic at ArabNet, as the summit brought together top-tier entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, such as Gideon Simeloff, head of Ibtikar (one arm of twofour54 in Abu Dhabi, its mission is to encourage the creation and production of Arabic content); Reshma Sohoni, CEO of SeedCamp (an early-stage micro seed investment and mentoring programme); Rashid Al-Ballaa, CEO of National Net Ventures (one of the largest Internet holding companies in the MENA region); Usama Fayyad, executive chairman at Oasis 500 (an early stage investment and incubation fund, and extensive mentor and angel network); and Peter Kellner, co-founder of Endeavor Global (an organization that promotes entrepreneurship and job creation in emerging markets), to speak about incubation programs, seed stage investment, and the entrepreneurship ecosystem, as well as share their lessons and experiences from supporting early-stage entrepreneurs.

Fayyad said now is the best time to invest in the Arab world, urging delegates to direct their

COVER STORY | MAY 2011

efforts toward igniting the region’s long-awaited Internet revolution. Kellner, however, said change would come into the Middle East only when regulations are amended, calling upon regulators to rethink the transaction and labor laws. Kellner added that it takes up to six months to launch a startup and an entire year to shut it down in case, for example, it wasn’t successful.

Day One was marked by a special appearance

by Mike Butcher, editor of TechCrunch Europe (a Web publication that offers technology news and analysis, as well as profiling startup companies, products, and websites), who took to the stage to speak about European startup trends, describing the entrepreneurship world as revolutionary.

Butcher highlighted the importance of clustering, explaining that the speed of innovation is hampered by distance, which is why it’s important for startups to cluster in specific locations.

The entrepreneurship conversation culminated with the Ideathon and Startup Demo presentations.

During the Ideathon pitches, which aim to turn bright ideas into functional products, 10 selected finalists from around the region were given the chance to present, for two minutes, their idea in front of investors, incubators and developers. Following the Ideathon came the Startup Demo, where 10 selected Arab entrepreneurs presented their startups and showcased their products in a bid to convince the audience and judges of their company’s market potential.

The Startup Demo initiative aims to support early-stage startups by giving them the opportunity to network with investors, executives and media to build the relationships they need to help them grow.

This year, the ArabNet organizing committee received more than 70 startups and 80 ideas for the Startup Demo and Ideathon respectively from across the Arab world.

DIGITAL TRENDS. Discussions explored various trends shaping the digital sphere, from group buying and gaming, to social media and digital marketing.

During a panel entitled Connectivity Trends, examining how media companies and telecom operators are navigating the rapidly changing mobile landscape, Jawad Abbassi, founder and general manager of Arab Advisors Group, a business consultancy firm focused on the communications, media, technology and financial markets throughout the Arab world, said the performance of the Arab world in online communications compared to previous years is good, although 50 percent of Arab states have their telecommunication outlets monopolized. He added that the mobile network penetration has tremendously increased in the Arab world, reaching 63 percent in Lebanon in June 2010.

Rob Jonas, VP and MD at InMobi (a global mobile ad network) for Europe and the Middle East, said that mobile apps could become a $38 billion market by 2015, adding that the Middle East has a fascinating potential, especially as the user base continues to grow. The panelists agreed that mobile apps have become a phenomenon, which media

MEETING OF MINDS. The summit explored various trends shaping the digital sphere outlets cannot underestimate or ignore any longer.

They stressed the need to develop content tailored to the Arab audience and highlighted the role that operators could play in facilitating content production.

In a panel on social media marketing, Patrick Atallah, CEO of 90:10 Group (a London-based social media consultancy) in the Middle East, warned that marketers can’t initiate a social media campaign by attempting to market and sell products. On the contrary, it should be approached as a conversation, just like a morning chat. “Social media channels are not billboards for selling products. It is important to engage communities and it is important that the communities are local for them to understand the culture of the product,” he said.

The speakers gave some recommendations regarding social media marketing, such as encouraging compliments from users; making sure their brand has a human face; working on engaging their fans in creating content; researching their competitors on Twitter, following their users and engaging with them.

Christidis closed the forum by announcing the winners of the Ideathon and Startup Demo.

Alla Khalife from Egypt, who was behind the “Presto-Wireless” idea – a software that speeds up Internet connection by allowing the usage of both wireless and 3G connection at the same time

– won the first prize. Alexandra Tohme took second place for her popular idea that aims to introduce lingerie to Saudi women. She suggested launching an online platform that democratizes access to lingerie for women in Saudi Arabia by allowing them to choose their lingerie and have it delivered to their doorsteps. The “Bookmark Visualization” idea, a page that helps organize information and bookmarks the Web in a visual way, by Abraham Kamrack, from Qatar, ranked third.

On the Startup Demo front, Hassan Baydoun, from Saudi Arabia, won first prize. His startup Cashbury is a location-enabled mobile payment platform combined as a reward system for the user’s favorite places.

Karim Helal from the UAE, who presented Monaqasat, an online e-tendering platform that enables users to work with tenders in an easy, secure, cost- and time-efficient way, won second prize. Karanveer Singh from the UAE, founder of iShopaholic, a shopping guide app that includes mall directories with access to savings based on location, came in third.

The final day of the summit was dubbed “Community Day.”As the name implies, the doors were opened to members of the public, giving them the chance to participate in the ArabNet summit for free.

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Q&A

Citizens’ advice

90:10 Group’s Patrick Attalah talks about how to define a social media strategy by Nathalie Bontems

P

atrick Attallah, MD of 90:10 Group for France, Italy and the Middle East, is adamant: his company is not a social media agency, but a social media business consultancy – and there’s a big difference. 90:10 Group, launched in 2009 in London, entered the Lebanese market with the clear ambition to demonstrate that there’s an online life beyond Facebook. Attallah tells Communicate Levant how and why.

What’s a social technology consultancy, as you describe 90:10?

Getting consumers’ attention online is more difficult than throwing a billboard on a highway. You have to engage with the right community and talk to the right people who are interested in your products or type of products.

So we help clients define their social media strategy, chiefly based on social media audits that we conduct for them. We listen to and monitor online conversations on the brand and its products, be it on blogs, Twitter and what have you. Based on the results, we provide analysis, recommendations and business insights, as well as a “community landscape.” For any specific product, we find where the adequate communities are and how to potentially reach and engage with them online.

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We also deliver business insights on an ongoing basis – monitoring conversations on a weekly or monthly basis, so whenever we detect something that could be specific to sales leads or PR inquiries, for example, we can escalate it within the company and they can react immediately. We also do crowdsourcing; for example, if a client doesn’t know if their new product should be yellow or brown, why go to meeting rooms and reinvent everything?

Just ask your consumers. This is where the 90:10 concept comes in.

What does 90:10 stand for?

Until now, 90 percent of the actual effort was done by the company and the brand, and the remaining 10 percent by the consumers; we reverse that by involving consumers more.

What motivated you to enter the Middle East market?

Last year, when I was invited to talk at the social media panel of the first ArabNet conference, I met a lot of people hungry for knowledge, information, and case studies. Companies were getting mature enough to at least listen to new propositions. So I started studying how the 90:10 services that we have in Europe can be adapted to the regional markets.

Nine months ago, we partnered with Beirut-based

DEPARTMENTS | MAY 2011

How is your approach different from that of other social media agencies?

Most social media agencies consider that social media equals Facebook and Twitter (which in fact are only platforms). You cannot ignore the fact that there are 1.2 million Lebanese on Facebook; that’s 25 percent of the total population and 50 percent of the Internet population. But nobody approaches the client asking, “Are you ready for social media?

How do you need to change your processes or your management systems? How are you going to handle the transparency issues?”

Brands want to go on social media to get 10,000 fans on a Facebook page, thinking it’s the next billboard; it’s great to have 10,000 fans, but then what? How do you handle negative comments?

After 25 years in power, dictators in the region had to let go in three weeks because populations pushed them away, partly thanks to these online tools. Similarly, are you, your PR and your communication executives prepared to handle 10,000 fans with a negative buzz? You need a preparation in what we call “social media readiness.”

You need to first think about what your objectives are, what your target is, what it is you’re trying to achieve. Do you just want awareness? Referrals?

Sales? CSR? You need to make sure that your organization is ready to do whatever is necessary to take potential hits, positive or negative, because consumers will be waiting for you.

We automatically hook whatever strategy implementation and engagement of communities we do to return on investment and KPIs, because the bottom line is, our clients want to sell products or services. It’s not about having a Facebook page with thousands of fans on it; at the end of the day, you have to sell.

How do you explain the supremacy of Facebook in Lebanon?

People believe in Facebook because that’s the only thing they’ve been exposed to so far. Facebook is appreciated because it’s visual: You can see pictures, the brand, the logo. Twitter is different, it’s more institutional, everything is text, and to start with, it requires an Internet connection on your mobile phone, which in Lebanon is not that easy to get. The same goes for YouTube: Whereas many companies use YouTube and Twitter in Europe or the UAE, in Lebanon most companies post only pictures and text, even on Facebook, and very few videos, because of the [poor] bandwidth. When it improves and 3G is available in Lebanon, things could change.

Most importantly, people in Lebanon need to understand the real use of Twitter and the strength of virality: It can bring traffic to a website, a microsite

© Getty Images

digital company Nel Interactive and we built up 90:10 Middle East, being present at the various events, lectures and conferences in the region, such as Jordan’s Arab Social Media Forum, Abu Dhabi’s Internet Show, etcetera. In the past four months, we have finalized proposals with several clients who liked the fact that our approach and methodology are different.

FACES IN THE CROWD. Social media is about people, enabling them to react or an advert, be used for a product launch, etcetera.

An offline-to-online silo connection can easily be made through Twitter: For example, a hotel that is empty in low season can invite its neighbors or clients to come and have tea with a 50 percent discount, and a voucher can be pushed to it. But Twitter hasn’t reached critical mass in Lebanon yet.

How can use social media in Lebanon improve?

Education is paramount. If agencies or social media professionals are not pushing corporations in the right direction, corporations are not going to blind guess what’s good for them. Conferences such as ArabNet are very important in that regard. 90:10 will also organize Lebanon’s first Social Media Week this September. This event, launched in the US, is held twice a year across the world; for five days, and for a cheap entrance fee – as per the inherent democratization aspect of social media – people can attend workshops designed vertically by sector. For example, how social media is changing the medical industry, NGOs, government communication, etcetera.

These workshops will be held simultaneously in five or six different locations across Beirut, possibly a hotel, a wine bar, a museum, etc. Everything will be live-streamed and Tweeted, with 30 cities across the world doing the same.

What’s so special about social media?

Social media is about media becoming social, meaning that every media has a comment box where people can react. That starts a conversation, and a conversation isn’t advertising; you don’t push your products, you have to push dialogue. That takes time for organizations to understand. Setting up a Facebook page takes five minutes; some people can sell you fans, but having these fans really becoming loyal ambassadors and buying your products, that’s a different story. Everybody wants to sell technical solutions, but social media is about people.

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Take it away Communicate polls the audience at this year's Dubai International Advertising Festival to see what messages the industry took from this year's speakers by Sidra Tariq

T

he Dubai International Advertising Festival kicked off on Sunday, March 27, with the screening of British street artist Banksy’s documentary “Exit Through the Gift Shop.” While the Lynx awards night is always the headline draw of the festival, the seminars and workshops held during the event can be a good chance for the region’s creatives to crawl out from behind their Macs to listen, learn, network and pick up SPEAKING HUMAN – THE LANGUAGE OF PEOPLE MARK TUTSSEL Chief creative officer, Leo Burnett Worldwide MICHAEL CANNING Creative director, Leo Burnett Today is the most exciting time for the communications industry, and it is important for brands to speak the language of people – to “speak human.” Brands that speak human give something real, honest and authentic to talk about.

The brands that are most proficient at speaking human are “humankind brands.” “Humankind brands are those that project a clear sense of purpose and deliver that purpose through acts. They activate and amplify that purpose in the most imaginative ways, using every single communication channel available to them to create that conversation and create that connection with people.”

Audience reaction: NAJI BARDAWIL Manager – digital marketing & CRM, Dubai Properties Group “[The speakers suggested] that as a brand you need to be speaking to your consumers more as a human, as a being, rather than as a product or service or an organization with policies, procedures and rules and regulation.

“Approach it more from the human side of things; interact directly with them, and get them involved.”

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and share ideas. Most of the sessions at this year’s Dubai Lynx showed industry works and revolved around the concept of continued consumer engagement and tools – such as creativity, technology, social media – that can be employed to create that level of influence. We present the highlights of some of those sessions and what you – our audience – took away from them.

However, he says that some brands are not always in a place where they can speak human and that it takes some time to get there. “If your brand has some issues, your product has some issues, or you are growing and you are not quite there yet, how can you then embrace something like this when your customers might not see you yet as a brand, service or product that can be a human?”

FUELING THE NEW DIGITAL REVOLUTION SIMON BOND Chief innovation officer, Proximity Worldwide In this digital age, it is consumers who have the control. “The world has changed because technology has democratized the world that we live in,” he says.

Just as people look back at the industrial revolution, people in the future will look back at our age as the social revolution.

Word-of-mouth is the strongest form of communication, and technology acts as an amplifier for it. Hence, brands need to understand how to start getting involved with this “fueling of the new generation.” They need to “get out of the mentality that it is all about campaigns” and focus on continued engagement.

However, “don’t just jump into social media and think it will be a success.”

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Audience reaction: SCOTT FEASEY Managing director, Expression “[The session was about] getting a positive consumer engagement through innovation, mostly online and digital,” says Feasey. “It was about getting positive interaction and engagement from consumers so they actually promote your brand, and a simple loading up of a Jpeg on Facebook can get you 20 million people looking at it – [if you do it] in the right way.”

Although this region is slow to start, he says, “there’s a definite move to empower the consumer to talk about your brand a little bit better than they are at the moment.”

DOUBT: UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM FROM THE WORLD'S GREATEST S**T DISTURBER PAUL LAVOIE Chairman, Taxi “Doubt the Conventional. Create the exceptional.”

This is the message Lavoie tries to convey to agencies through his talk. He talks about Taxi’s new book which personifies the notion of “Doubt” as a character. Lavoie says that unless you doubt convention, you’ll keep looking at problems in the same way. “With doubt, you have a much bigger chance of doing things that are a little more spectacular, and bigger ideas become possible.”

Audience reaction: SARA AL TUWAIJRI Creative planner, DDB “The complete message was very interesting: ‘Doubt the conventional. Create the exceptional,’” says Al Tuwaijri. “And this is something in the creative process you actually want to do; but it is not really easy to do that. Doubt in the beginning of the process is very good for you, but not at the end of the process.”

“The rejection part is very important – because you work a lot and then you get a rejection [from the clients].

What [Lavoie] was trying to say is, ‘Make “No” your bitch.’ So it is something that would make you stronger rather than put you down,” she says.

Al Tuwaijri adds that another point of Lavoie’s that resonated with her is, “Pitching is a waste of intelligence, and we should stop pitching. We should figure out a way to use credentials as advertisers or creators. For instance, my name would be enough or my reputation would be enough, rather than three agencies pitching for one product or client.”

consistent is originality, adhering to the concept of “newness.” “In literal terms, it is a word that describes freshness, novelty and originality; but it is also something that evokes the feeling of first experiences and new discovery,” he says. “Newness is about changing the existing status quo.

It is about following your own rule and knowing when to break it. It is about fearlessness and bravery. The word, in all its meaning, essentially defines us as an agency.”

Touqan has worked in the Middle East for 15 years.

“There have been three major changes in the Middle East that have changed things for us growing up here.

First, the Internet happened, then it went mobile, and then everything went social,” he says.

Arabs, he says, love to talk, and social media is just another way to get the conversation going. However, “Arab governments really like control; and they really haven’t figured out why they have to let go of it.”

People are always faster than brands and governments, he says. “If brands and governments don’t do their job, somebody else will do it for them.”

Ali talks about Elephant Cairo’s approach to advertising and gives a few tips. “It’s about not thinking about the client at all. When we start to work on a brief, we start to think of who are the people [the ad is addressed to]. … It’s not about whether the client will like it,” he adds. “Your client is not here to tell you what is good and what is bad. Your client is here to pay for the ad. You are here to make amazing things happen on the screen.”

Ali says that very few consumers are willing to believe that brands can “change your lives,” so brands and agencies should stop saying that. “With YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and the revolution that is going on [in Egypt] it is clear that people are very smart. Let’s not talk down to them any more.”

“Big agencies are dinosaurs,” he says. “But independent creative shops are obsolete as well. I think now is the time for a one-man agency. Anyone with a $500 Canon camera and YouTube account can kick all of our asses.

And this is the realization we all need to come to,” he says.

NOHAD MOUAWAD Strategic planner, FP7 Dubai The main point Mouawad took away from the session is to think differently and to give one’s work a second thought. “In this region especially you’ve always got to take a step back and say, ‘How can I question what’s going on and come at it from a different angle?’ Because that makes the best work.”

Audience reaction: KORNELIA MARIA WITECKA Brand manager, Hamac Dubai “The most important [point] for me was never end up with a good idea, always search for the best. Come up only with one idea for every customer,” says Witecka.

SHANE MARTIN Executive producer, Boomtown Productions “[The session] was just about being new, different, original. It was about communication. The most informative and entertaining and, I’d say, revolutionary thing I’ve seen at the Lynx,” says Martin.

He adds that one of the main points he learned from the session was “that you can be different and still be successful, and you can break the traditional mould; that has sort of kept the agency a bit creatively hide-bound for a long time, so I found it very exciting, [and] inspirational.”

THE MIDDLE EAST INDEPENDENT AGENCY SHOWCASE

PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS: CREATIVE BLOCKBUSTERS

JULIAN BOULDING President, thenetworkone ALI ALI Creative director, Elephant Cairo FADI MROUÉ Founder & creative director, République YOUSEF TUQAN TUQAN CEO, Flip Media The world is recognizing the need for independent agencies, says Boudling, before he introduces Mroue, Tuqan and Ali – three heads of independent agencies.

Mroue says that one thing République aims to keep

ARMIN JOCHUM Chief creative officer, Jung von Matt Jochum talks about how to make “creative blockbusters” – great work that resonates with people.

“Don't spend all day thinking about 360-degree rubbish. Think about the real 365-days-a-year dialogue,” he says. In other words, instead of limiting communication to campaigns, one should focus on keeping the consumer engaged throughout the year.

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In order to create a “creative blockbuster,” there are certain points that one has to keep in mind, says Jochum: It’s not about the money, it is all about the story; if there is no big story, draw a big picture; be the first man on the moon; a good laugh starts a good relationship; if you can't tell it, sing it; don't talk, listen Audience reaction: MAHER ABOUZEID Group general manager, Lower Gulf, Publicis Graphics “[The presentation] had a lot of ideas from different parts of the world. I liked the fact about putting a smile on the face of the viewer; this is important to attract his attention. But then, where is the meat, as they say? From then on you should have a very enticing and grounded communication,” says Abouzeid. “We need the communication to interest you, so much so that you want to share it with somebody else.”

KHALED SHUWAIL Saudi student “Most of [the session] was about thinking outside of the box, and it’s not about giving advertising to people or to consumers; it’s about telling them a story,” say Shuwail.

He adds that he particularly liked “the last point [made

by Jochum], which is the story part, or the song part: If you don’t know how to say it, just sing it. Because I think [with] singing, you will link it or remember it any time.”

PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS: SOCIAL MEDIA MIKE COOPER Worldwide chief executive officer, PHD Cooper presents the results of a number of studies on social media from around the world, and highlights the impact of social media and the results it can bring. One study he quotes estimated the value of a Facebook fan to be $136.38, while another puts the value at $3.60.

Another study, which looked at 100 top global brands, shows that well-managed companies are taking social media very seriously, says Cooper. “It demonstrates a clear correlation between sophistication in social media and the financial performance of companies.”

Audience reaction: FERAS SOBH Graphic designer, TBWA\Raad “As a graphic designer, we work a lot with the digital at my agency, so it is very important for me to know about these numbers and figures… to see if my work is successful enough… or just to get an idea of which level I am at with my specific work right now,” says Sobh. “[Cooper] was talking about [how] every brand needs to have a social root. I think that was the main thing that I managed to think about and I agree with a lot. I need to apply it more and more. Every brand needs a social existence in a way.”

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KHRIS ALVEZ Junior designer, Multiply “[The session is] about going where the fish are right now, investing where the market is. So, from what I understand, nowadays people are spending more time in social media networks,” says Alvez.

“It’s about learning where the market is right now, because it’s actually evolving.”

CREATIVITY: WHAT IS GETTING IN OUR WAY? DR LANCE DE MASI President of The American University in Dubai & president of the IAA UAE chapter (moderator) JOSEPH GHOSSOUB Chairman & CEO, Menacom Group ROY HADDAD Chairman & CEO, JWT AKRAM MIKNAS Chairman, MCN (Middle East Communication Networks) RAJA TRAD CEO, Leo Burnett Group MENA The heads of advertising networks in the region discuss industry challenges and why creativity in this region is limited. They say one of the things preventing the region’s creative world from doing better is determination – on both the client and agency side. There needs to be more risk-taking and trying of new things, instead of playing safe, they say.

Ghoussoub, Haddad, Miknas and Trad agree that clients have a “fair share” of the blame for limiting the region’s creativity. At times, clients reject bold and creative ideas because they are conservative or hesitant. Limited budgets and financial demands placed by holding companies are often restrictive too.

Another problem they see is that there is a lack of advertising targeted to specific markets, compared to panArab advertising – geared for the whole region. Creative planners should observe the particular markets they are operating in, understand the culture and create customized and targeted ads for their audience.

Audience reaction: PAUL SABBAGH MD and partner, Wonderful Productions “For once [the discussion] is more honest than usual and addresses what Lance [de Masi] suggested at the beginning: What is becoming the threat of this field – is it the client or the agency? It was honest that clients are more and more exercising pressure to get more for less and [to ask if] this is affecting the creativity and result,” says Sabbagh. He adds that he understands this point as he is in the service part of the industry. “I come in the third row [in this business] – client, agency, then service – I service for the agency; I produce for them.

We feel that when an agency comes with a great creative with very little budget, the pressure comes from the client himself.”

“Creativity is key, and this is what will bring more money, and not the contrary. It’s not by limiting the budget that you are going to make more money.”

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RAZAN AL-SALAH Creative coordinator, JWT MENA “I’m going to be biased. I’m a JWT-er and I really listened carefully to what Roy Haddad, CEO for JWT MENA Group, was saying. He pointed out a very interesting subject, which is: What is standing in our way as creative agencies is pan-Arabism, providing the lowest common denominator for the region as a whole, instead of creating culturally relevant work for each market,” says Al-Salah.

“And he gave an example: Egypt is now producing the best work in the region because Egyptian creatives are writing for Egyptians, are creating work for Egyptians, and not for the region as a whole.

THE EIGHT CREATIVE HABITS

EUGENE CHEONG Regional executive creative director, Ogilvy Asia Pacific Cheong discusses the eight habits of creative people: “Courage, Idealism, Curiosity, Playfulness, Candor, Intuition, Freespiritedness and Persistence.” He says each has an evil twin: “Fear, Expedience, The Status Quo, Boring, Tyranny of Politeness, Cold Arithmetic, Bureaucracy and Surrender.”

“When we work at adopting the eight creative habits, we have to work equally hard to replace the old habits of self-defeating and expedient behavior [the eight vices],” he says. Cheong adds that habits are different from principles and core values which are “wishy washy things.”

Habit means a complete change of behavior.

Audience reaction: LOUAY AL ASFAHANI President of IAA Kuwait chapter, managing partner at Paragon Marketing Communications “[Cheong] said in 15 minutes what I have been preaching in the Kuwait industry for the past 20 years, since 1991 when I started my career.

“He was able to get through to my team members here in 10 minutes what I have been trying to preach to them in 10 years (that’s the age of Paragon in Kuwait). So this is what it’s all about. It’s not about just the money; you need to have the courage, the dreams, the ambition. You need to say no when you have to. You need to have a spine.”

ACTIVATING IDEAS: INSPIRING CREATIVITY THAT CHANGES BEHAVIOR WILLIAM ROSEN, President & chief creative officer – North America, Arc Worldwide Rosen talks about how one can create successful activation campaigns. “The keys to developing world-class breakthrough creative campaigns that change behavior can be boiled down to six key concepts,” he says. These are inflection points, activating ideas, value creation, experience architecture, cross-channel coordination, and experience stamps.

Inflection point: “Where the most consumers are veering off the path” to purchase. Marketers should identify and address the behavioral inflection points of the consumer.

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Activating ideas: “Leverage the insight of the inflection point to develop a core activating idea that can trigger the desired behavior and hold the entire campaign together.”

Value creation: “Everything has to start with people and what has value to them,” says Rosen.

“New broader and technologically available faces of value can be leveraged or applied to create activation, such as utility, experience, access, personalization, connection and self-expression.

Experience architecture: “The sequence of communication is critical to how consumers engage with a program, and how effective it is, and moving them closer to desired behavior.”

Cross-channel coordination: The way various marketing disciplines and media channels are utilized has to be effective.

Experience stamps: “You want to leave behind a positive association with the brand – a strong feeling and impression – that will build loyalty and facilitate future marketing efforts.”

Audience reaction: TAREK AYNTRAZI General manager, Mars Media Services Ayntrazi says he took away from the session the message, “You have to think different.”

“Every marketing or communication challenge is different from the one you have experienced before. So you need to always think out of the box. Think creatively.

And basically find solutions that are tailor-made, either to your target audience or to the marketing challenge that your particular brand is having.”

THE CONTAGIOUS CONVERSATION PAUL KEMP-ROBERTSON Editorial director & co-founder, Contagious Communications RICHARD PINDER Chief operating officer, Publicis Worldwide Kemp-Robertson and Pinder talk about creating long-lasting conversations with customers and what business impact they can have. Kemp-Robertson talks about running “projects, not campaigns.” “People don’t need advertising,” he says.

“What they do crave is information, education enlightenment… People do crave things that brands provide, but their interpretation of what advertising is is very different from the traditional advertising industry perspective.”

Speaking about the importance of social media, Pinder says that we are now in a world where “we’re moving from a paid media model to a paid, owned and earned media model.”

Audience reaction: SHAJI KIZHAKATHRA Senior art director, Ikon advertising “The main gist was [that for] ad agencies yesterday their work was a very underground activity. Nowadays it has become more about engagement. As far as I know it’s true.

In the past, every day, ad agencies were behind a curtain.

Now we are more on social media and digital media.”

MAY 2011 | DEPARTMENTS

Blogosphere L

ebanon’s blogosphere is probably one of the most vibrant digital scenes in the region. Lebanese bloggers are many, dedicated, and very, very outspoken.

Agencies are now turning to social media and online communities, listening intently to this direct feedback on how they are perceived. Here is what increasingly influential Lebanese bloggers – inside and outside our borders – have to say about local work and news.

THEY’RE LISTENING, AND WATCHING. Contrary to some current theories claiming that Twitter may be the death of bloggers, the vitality of the Lebanese blogosphere is ever increasing, surprisingly feeding on the new and growing interest in Twitter and, of course, on a very fertile news terrain. Beside the new OntorNet, (yes, that’s “Internet” with a strong accent transforming “inter” into “ontor,” which means “wait” in Arabic) initiative and passionate discussions on the latest Leo Burnett stunt (see News, page 6) that got a lot of virtual ink flowing, a mysterious case of disappearing Zs is raising interest, as is the massive controversy about possible plagiarism of Lebanon’s national anthem.

38 I Communicate Levant

Rami, from +961, is just one of the many bloggers who received an anonymous letter from the “Z. Liberation Cell.”

This campaign for Zaatar w Zeit is still unfolding, but it’s already caught a lot of people’s attention who, like Rami, say “Let’s wait and see.” http://www.plus961. com/2011/04/15/zaatar-wzeit-and-the-missing-zs/

Darine, from the Identity Chef, was also contacted by the Z kidnappers, but we chose instead to feature her post on @TaxiLb, a new venture that she describes as the “Second Twitter-based business startup model in Lebanon.” h t t p : / / t h e i d e n t i t y c h e f. com/2011/04/05/taxilb-secondtwitter-based-business-startup-model-in-lebanon/

Lebanese Voices is just one of the blogs debating the authenticity of the Lebanese anthem, but the recap offered on the controversy, plus links to other blogs offering various points of view, made this one particularly interesting. http://blkbtrfli.wordpress. com/2011/04/15/nationallyconfused/

Campaigns to get better Internet are multiplying. But Samer from Bloggingbeirut is offering a detailed account of why the FastLebanon one will definitely not get his support, turning out to be, in his opinion, counterproductive, which is why he’s calling for a boycott. http://www.bloggingbeirut.com/ archives/1758-Fast-LebanonCampaign-Practicing-Coercionand-Suppression-UPDATED.html

Not so long ago Mustafa from Beirutspring was so dismayed at the Daily Star’s website that he came up with his own version. Now the site has been revamped, he’s giving objective feedback on it. http://beirutspring.com/ blog/2011/04/11/quick-noteson-the-new-daily-star-websitedesign/

Nadine is the designer behind the customized Arabic font suite An-Nahar has been using since mid-April. She will post more on this, but for now offers links to a short video showing the first prints of the newspaper. http://www.arabictype.com/ blog/2011/04/12/lebanonwakes-up-to-a-new-day/

DEPARTMENTS | MAY 2011

Regional Work

All insect killer.

Client: PifPaf Advertising Agency: Euro RSCG, Dubai Creative Director: Neeraj Sabharwal Art Director/Copywriter/ Typographer: Vikram Divecha Art Director: Jose Basug

Let it taste the way it should.

Advertising Agency: DDB, Dubai, UAE Group Creative Director: Shehzad Yunus Creative/Art Director: Firas Medrows Copywriters: Swati Sholapurkar, Firas Medrows Photographer: Daryl Patni Illustrator: Firas Medrows

You never know what happens when you fall asleep.

Client: Bodyguard mosquito repellent Advertising Agency: FP7/RUH, Saudi Arabia Executive Creative Director: Ahmad Beck Art Directors: Mohammad Baalbaki, Ahmad Beck Copywriter: Mohammad Baalbaki Illustrator: Max Kostenko These ads (and more) can be found at adsoftheworld.com

Communicate Levant I 39

MAY 2011 | DEPARTMENTS

International Work

What happens in the kitchen stays in the kitchen.

Advertising Agency: Lowe, Jakarta, Indonesia Executive Creative Director: Din Sumedi Associate Creative Director: Derry Gautama Art Directors: Adam Pamungkas, Yuri Heikal S. Copywriters: Bondan ESP, Din Sumedi Photographer: Clarissa Peddy

Some get there. Others go beyond. Who are you?

Alfa. You are the Man. This is your magazine.

Advertising Agency: Mood, S達o Paulo, Brazil Creative Directors: Aaron Sutton, Ant担nio Rosa Art Director: Guilherme Jorgetti Copywriter: Felipe Silva

Until he learns to fly, we will do the job.

Advertising Agency: Lesch+Frei, Zurich, Switzerland Creative Director: Thomas L端ber Art Director: Matthias Kadlubsky Copywriter: Thomas L端ber Photographer: Scheffold.Vizner Published: April 2011 These ads (and more) can be found at adsoftheworld.com

40 I Communicate Levant

DEPARTMENTS | MAY 2011

International Work

For a smokeless world. Chupa Chups.

Advertising Agency: TBWA\Barcelona, Spain Creative Directors: Ram贸n Sala, Miquel Sales Art Director: Jordi Rins Copywriters: Miquel Sales, Ana Vida Photographer: Pere Ferrer

Termites Eat 24 hours a day Client: Terminix Advertising Agency: Publicis Dallas, USA Executive Creative Director: Shon Rathbone Group Creative Director: Julia Melle Creative Director/Art Director: Pete Voehringer Creative Director/Copywriter: Steve Grimes

These ads (and more) can be found at adsoftheworld.com

Communicate Levant I 41

MAY 2011 | DEPARTMENTS

Drive By One anonymous blogger critiques Beirut’s billboards. All of these examples, and more, can be found at beirutdriveby.com

42 I Communicate Levant

Z BEST Where’z z best place to live?

In z new building.

FACE THE MUSIC Sometimes it’s hard to know where surgical enhancement starts… and where digital enhancement ends.

CALL OF DUTY She hears you even without the phone… or words.

LEBANON’S FASTER INTERNET Maybe K-Lynn’s online store will make the promise of better Internet arrive a little faster. Thanks for your support K-Lynn!

ALL GROWN UP! Happy Mother’s Day from your little girl.

HANDLE WITH CARE A sobering reminder...