Communicate | November 2011

The marketing and advertising resource • November 2011 • Issue N° 83 • www.communicate.ae Mammoth plans: Ali Ali from Elephant Cairo says his agency is ­poised for a big expansion Page 18

marketing The week that was Communicate visits New York Ad Week on Yahoo’s dime, and finds that storytelling is big in US advertising.

Overlaps between paid, owned and earned media are growing, but what (Page 10) does that mean to us?

Engine of growth: Larry Page could be the right choice to take Google to the next level Page 66

Going live: John ­Rossant’s Publicis Live opens regional base in Abu Dhabi Page 19

shelf interest

A special report on Middle East FMCG marketing

Digital Playing the blues Horizon Group has opened its digital division, Blue Barracuda. We see how the holding group plans to make its staff “T-shaped” and where how a two-pronged integrated/specialized strategy compares to other agencies’ plans. (Page 16)

opinion Parting ways In this month’s Communiquestion, we ask the industry how best to lose a client. Some say you should tell him yes; some say you should tell him no. Some say lie; others say tell the truth. Find out how the experts (Page 24) get dumped.

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november 2011 | Letter from the editor

Flavor of the month O n July 4, 2011, a skinny 23-year-old from Japan chomped his way into the record books by eating 50 hot dogs and buns – HDBs in the lingo of his trade – in 12 minutes.

Takeru Kobayashi came out of nowhere to beat a horde of other competitive eaters and win the Nathan’s Famous hotdog eating contest on Coney Island, New York. I know this because I recently finished reading a book about the sport (“sport” in the loosest possible sense).

As well as being the poster child of gluttons the world over, Koby (as he’s known to his friends) unconsciously epitomises fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) marketing, which is the subject of our cover story on page 28.

It’s almost impossible to be taken seriously as a gurgitator (that’s what they call themselves – and they do take it seriously) without appearing in the Nathan’s Famous competition.

Not that there aren’t other competitions and records, of course. Eric Booker once ate 15 BurritoVille burritos in eight minutes. Tim “Eater X” Janus ate 42 cupcakes in the same time at the Isle Waterloo World Cupcake Eating Championship this April.

Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas swallowed 65 hardboiled eggs in six minutes and 40 seconds. And Don Lerman ate seven sticks (45g) of salted butter in five minutes. It’s all there on the International

Federation of Competitive Eating website.

All of these records are impressive – and a bit freaky.

However, to show he has arrived, a gurgitator has to qualify for – and ideally win – Nathan’s. It is the top table of competitive eating, and has been running since 1916, 1972, or some point in between, depending on who you ask. It attracted more than 40,000 spectators this year (winner: Joey Chestnut, with 62 HDBs in 10 minutes), not counting the almost 2 million who watched live on sports channel ESPN. That’s some pretty good publicity for Nathan’s Famous, the hot-dog company behind the competition, and I bet those 40,000 spectators also ate a hot dog or two.

In our FMCG-marketing story we find that activation and events is crucial to FMCG brand strategy. Marketers are spending a lot on television and print (see our figures from Ipsos on page 34), and are looking at digital with interest.

But all talk about getting closer to consumers through on-the-ground activities.

Kobyashi and his fellow eaters also fulfil another marketing fantasy. Imagine how much product brands could shift if everyone ate like that. Koby moves fast when he’s consuming – what marketer wouldn’t say that was good.

Austyn Allison, managing editor editor@communicate.vg

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Contents | November 2011

Contents

COVER: FMCG marketing

FEATURES

34

47

28

38

Fast and curious: We see how FMCG manufacturers are marketing their brands in the region Fast figures: Who’s spending where? We trawl Ipsos for FMCG spend by numbers Shelf-ish giants: The movers and shakers of the FMCG world (in the region) as ranked on the Power List

SHORTS 10 12 16

NEWS 18 19 20 22

Spreading the news: We get to the core of the Big Apple’s New York Ad Week Making a stand: Can carbon offsetting by an exhibition company make a difference?

Kind of blue: Horizon Group launches its push into digital

24

We ask the industry: What’s the best way to lose a client?

50 54 60 64 66

Agencies. Elephant Cairo to grow across region Agencies. PublicisLive sets up shop in Abu Dhabi Agencies. MediaCom hires Nick Barron as regional CEO Digital. Yahoo partners with ABC news

THE COMMUNIQUESTION

46

68 72

Digital. Crossed wires: How social media overlaps with TV, magazines and more Public relations. Press send: Socially switched on hacks can be PR’s best friend Branding. What’s in a name: We talk to Interbrands about the 100 most valuable brands in the world.

Then we list them Digital. Birth control: Ad Age’s list of startups to watch Television. Watch with another: Seven things to know about social media Digital. Off target: Online ads are meant to be tailored to their audience. One man’s experiment finds that they’re not Marketing. A fresh page: We see what Google’s new CEO can do for the company Digital. How much of what? US advertisers come together to find an online currency everyone can use Digital. Friends un-united: Why consumers unfriend brands

DEPARTMENTS 76 90

Work. Selections from the regional and international creative scenes The Dish. Custard, milkshakes and booze

november 2011 Published by: Medialeader FZ/MediaquestCorp Medialeader, P O Box 72184, Dubai Media City, Zee Tower, Office 206, Dubai Tel: (971) 4 391 0760

Founder Yasser Hawari Managing Director Julien Hawari Group managing editor Nathalie Bontems Managing editor Austyn Allison journalist Sidra Tariq senior sub editor Elizabeth McGlynn ART DIRECTOR Sheela Jeevan ART CONTRIBUTORS Aya Farhat, Jean-Christophe Nys External Affairs Manuel Dias,

Maguy Panagga, Catherine Dobarro, Randa Khoury, Lila Schoepf, Laurent Bernard PRINTERS Raidy Printing Group ADVERTISING The Gulf MEDIALEADER, PO Box

CO-CEO Alexandre Hawari CO-CEO Julien Hawari Managing Director Ayman Haydar CFO Abdul Rahman Siddiqui Regional director of business development Bassel Komaty creative DIRECTOR Aziz Kamel, Assistant hEAD OF editorial Nathalie Bontems Head of circulation Haries Raghavan, h.raghavan@mediaquestcorp.com Marketing Manager Maya Kerbage, m.kerbage@mediaquestcorp.com KSA GM Walid Ramadan, walid@mediaquestcorp.com, Tel: +966 1 4194061 North Africa GM Adil Abdel Wahab, adel@medialeader.biz, Tel: +213 661 562 660 France Sales Director

Manuel Dias, dias@arabies.com, Tel: +33 1 4766 46 00

72184, Dubai Media City, Zee Tower, Office 206, Dubai, Tel: (971) 4 391 0760, Fax: (971) 4 390 8737, Dubai Business Development Manager Grace Maroun, grace@mediaquestcorp.com, Mobile: +971 55 607 81 61 Business Developer Sara Naja s.naja@mediaquestcorp.com, Mobile: + 971 55 851 01 00 Lebanon Peggy ElZyr peggy@mediaquestcorp.com, Tel: (961) 149 2801 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Walid Ramadan, walid@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.communicate.ae

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NOVEMBER 2011 | shorts

The week-est link Communicate heads to New York Ad Week with Yahoo to see what it can learn about paid, earned and owned media by Sidra Tariq

T

his half of Communicate has attended her fair share of advertising events in the UAE – but that is pretty much the farthest ventured. So, when I was invited by digital media company Yahoo to attend the New York Advertising Week, I was looking forward to a change – and luckily saw one.

For instance, judging by what I have seen at regional events like the Dubai Lynx and Abu Dhabi Media Summit, I expected most ad execs to be clad in blazers, jeans and sneakers.

But, while a fair few were donning the “casual business” look, so widespread in the ad world in this region, I saw more people in suits and formal wear than I had expected.

I was also reminded of how the Middle East is often looked at as a single unit. The US-centric talks at the event were in striking contrast to our regional conferences, where country-focused sessions are a rare find.

Yet, in all that was new, there was one thing that remained the same: Storytelling and social media were the highlights of this year’s Advertising Week, a lot like the Dubai Lynx, where these topics were all anyone could talk about.

At Ad Week, there were a number of talks revolving around branded storytelling and creating compelling content to attract consumers, as well as building a relationship through social media.

One such talk was given by Yahoo’s vice-president for strategic insights and research, Lauren Weinberg, and chief marketing officer at BBDO & Proximity Worldwide, Simon Bond.

The session focused on branded storytelling in the digital era, where Bond said the proliferation and advent of social media has fundamentally changed how brands create stories. It is no longer a one-way model. We have moved to a “multi-dimensional, multi-channelled, multifaceted, participatory model, where the consumer is demanding to be front and center.”

Telling brand stories across paid, owned and earned media is a lot like the development of human relationships, he said. “Almost like a love story.” Paid is the combination of attraction and connection; owned represents experience and attachment; and earned brings about passion and trust in the relationship, according to Weinberg and Bond.

When you think about it, Communicate’s trip to Advertising Week can be described in paid, owned and earned terms.

According to Bond, paid is like a first date. It is the initial step to get to know one another and the part where you need to make sure the consumer is attracted to the brand. For us, Yahoo’s invitation to Ad Week worked as an incentive for us to attend the event, and was the first step to get to know the brand.

The second step was attending the week’s sessions and conferences, and interacting with the advertising world, which can be defined as owned media – the part where people go to your platform to find out more about you and have a deeper experience.

Earned is when that level of interest and trust has been built, and serves as an avenue for word-of-mouth. This is where social media falls. But how does that apply to our trip? Well, I am writing about the event. While I’m not too sure about passion or trust, and quite certain I am not in love, I did come out of it with a good feeling, and a lot of useful material.

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NOVEMBER 2011 | shorts

The green stamp

© Getty/Gallo Images

Is offering carbon offsetting against exhibitions stands a way to greener marketing?

A

Dan Criscione.

Sales manager at Equinox Design

Charles Stephenson.

Director of AGT

s a part of the marketing industry, you’re probably used to getting giveaway bags at conferences and exhibitions. The bags full of pamphlets and brochures often end up in the trash. What a waste, you think. But that waste is only a fraction of the environmental waste exhibitions normally generate.

Take the UAE, for example. The exhibitions industry in the Emirates alone generates more than 200,000 tons of environmental waste every year, according to Equinox Design.

The exhibition stand production company has now partnered with carbon trading organization Advanced Global Trading’s (AGT) Middle East headquarters to offset environmental waste created by the exhibitions industry. Equinox’s ‘Exhibit Green’ initiative gives exhibitors the opportunity to offset their CO2 emissions and waste produced during the transport, manufacture and disposal of stands, by purchasing carbon credits.

For those who aren’t familiar with the concept of offsetting: One carbon credit is equivalent to saving one ton of CO2, and the money paid for the credits is invested in green projects (wind farms, hydra-facilities, methane captures around the world).

Something like a pay-off for one’s carbon footprint.

According to Charles Stephenson, director of AGT, “an [exhibition] stand could be responsible for a few hundred tons of C02.” But this could vary depending on other factors such as the size of the stand, transportation, labor, materials, etcetera, he adds.

by Sidra Tariq

He says the initiative with Equinox is an opportunity to raise awareness and educate clients about the environment.

That’s all well and good. But whatever happened to ‘Prevention is better than cure’? Instead of causing environmental damage and then offsetting it by paying money for green projects, why not cut down on the fancy schmancy, the enormous quantity of literature produced for exhibition stands? Or reuse the stands.

Dan Criscione, sales manager at Equinox Design, says only 70 percent of the materials used for an exhibition stand can actually be recycled. “The 30 percent that can’t be recycled are hazardous materials and so on and so forth,” he says. “Equinox Design last year built 304 stands worldwide – employing more than 100 staff at its head office in Leeds, UK. This translates to approximately 11.5 tons of waste per week – [with] 15 per cent of this ending up as landfill.”

“In fairness to Equinox, a lot of [the waste] is converted into energy,” he adds. “We actually separate a lot of our waste... and there will be electrical components, wood, etcetera, that gets converted into energy or incinerated. And as a last resort there is a lot that goes into landfill.”

“We do a lot of reinstalls too but there is a fine line in carbon offsetting between shipping a stand from Las Vegas to Sydney, and making a new one,” he adds. The company is also looking to join a scheme where the carpets used at a stand can eventually be sold for use in road surfacing, he says.

Equinox currently has brands such as Samsung, Hi-Tec Sports, and Magnum on board for the initiative, and aims to attract more. In addition to that, it eventually plans to expand the initiative from the exhibitions level to organizers and associations levels.

Many brands – large and small – may be stepping in for the good of the environment, but we can’t help but think of PR and competitive value as an incentive. Once they’ve purchased carbon credits, the exhibitors can receive the green AGT seal of approval, which can be demonstrated on the stand or in pamphlets, brochures and the like to show the exhibitor’s step towards green.

However, Stephenson says, “I think PR is a very tiny part of it. Obviously there is a bit of positive PR for any company that is offsetting its emissions, but we are finding – especially in this region – that big companies are taking the lead. They are doing it because they have to.”

Stephenson and Criscione suggest that most bigger brands are in it for the environment, and perhaps smaller companies may have some interest in the PR aspect. “But I don’t think it should be always seen as a negative thing. Whilst some people see these companies going at it from a PR angle, it’s actually doing a good, positive exercise to get people thinking about it.”

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november 2011 | shorts

BLUE HORIZON. (From left): Rafic Saadeh, chairman and CEO, Horizon Holdings; Laurence Boschetto; Martin Talks; Saad Hijjawi, vicechairman, Horizon Group; Gregory Tikhanoff, president and COO, Horizon Holdings

Blue for you Horizon introduces Blue Barracuda – its way of preparing for a digital future by Austyn Allison

H

orizon Holdings, the group behind ad agency Horizon Draft FCB, PR firm Golin Harris, and media shop Brand Connection, last month launched Blue Barracuda, its digital agency.

Well, agency might be too specific a term. Even the press release handed out at Blue Barracuda’s Dubai launch called it a “digital services offering,” (insider tip: “offering” is a word journalists often use when they don’t know if something is a department of a company, a separate company, or something vaguer, such as a set of universal insights implemented across a network).

Blue Barracuda will work across Horizon’s network.

Speaking exclusively to Communicate after the launch, Draft FCB’s worldwide CEO and president, Laurence Boschetto, says, “If you look at the way Horizon is currently constructed, it’s like a kind of mini holding company with all of the individual brands that are there.”

This fits in with the Draft FCB philosophy.

“The sense of integration is a psychological way

of working,” he adds. “It means that you understand that you have to be connected with all of the other disciplines to really help your clients think through the business issues.”

So, if Blue Barracuda is so integrated, why call it something else?

“Essentially we believe in a completely integrated agency,” says Boschetto. “That means there are no boundaries and there are no sub-brands.”

“However,” he adds, “in this particular area, since the discipline is still relatively new, since clients are still uncertain as to what its direct contribution happens to be, since you’re still borrowing from multiple practices – in social media you’re borrowing from PR; in CRM you’re borrowing from direct – the science around this particular discipline has not been really crafted completely.”

This means a two-pronged approach is needed: integration – to fit the company’s integrated philosophy – plus “pure-play” to give clients and the developing agency something more tangible and focused.

Horizon’s entire team needs to be “T-shaped.”

It’s a handy notion, and refers to general abilities and specialisms. The Horizon team should have a broad understanding of everything the network does, from media to PR to creative work to, yes, digital (that’s the crossbar of the T). But they are specialized deep in certain areas (the stem).

At the press conference there was plenty of talk of the future of agencies, media, and the world in general. And a cracking buzz-word thrown out by Martin Talks, Draft FCB’s global digital lead (and the founder of Blue Barracuda back in 2002): SoLo-Mo. That stands for social, local, and mobile, the future of media. He later admits to Communicate – we sense with some relief – that he didn’t coin the term himself.

Like all agencies, though, Draft FCB and Blue Barracuda – and the rest of the Horizon group – are gradually feeling their way into the future. They don’t know exactly how this will work, but they do know digital is going to be a massive part of it. And they are doing their best to be prepared.

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NOVEMBER 2011 | Regional news

Elephant Cairo grows

 I AGENCIES

Agency secures investor and contracts with four big spenders in Egypt

Cairo. Elephant Cairo, the Egypt-based independent creative agency behind the notorious Panda Cheese commercials, is expanding its base. “We’ve finally secured enough contracts to turn Elephant from a two-man boutique to an 18-people agency, while still staying independent, and avoiding any mergers with the big network agencies,” says Ali Ali, co-founder and executive creative director.

The independent shop has attracted investment from an Egyptian investment banker (Ali won’t say who) and has won contracts with four of the biggest spenders in Egypt, he says. The names of the clients are confidential too, but they are from the telecommunication, beverage, banking and real estate sectors, he adds.

As part of its expansion, the agency will be moving to a bigger office in Egypt and will be opening an office in Dubai Media City early next year.

A managing director will be appointed for the Dubai office which will house a team of five relationship managers.

However, the creative “kitchen” will remain in Egypt, says Ali, and so will

he, where he will be sticking to his title as executive creative director. Elephant is also acquiring a small digital agency to create Elephant Digital. “You cannot have an idea today without digital legs,” says Ali. Elephant – founded by Ali and Maged Nassar – had been approached by network agencies regarding a merger, but none of the deals worked out. “[After] the first Dubai Lynx, we were approached by two big network agencies, and then after our last Dubai Lynx, where we won two Grands Prix, we pretty much had calls from all of them – maybe all but one. And we sat with them all,” says Ali. “2010 was like a year of meetings with all the big network agencies. We sat and discussed whether to merge our offices with their Cairo office or restart the Cairo office, whether we keep the ‘Elephant’ name or [remove it], etcetera.”

“Some agencies were suggesting we completely [remove] the name, which we were against, because we feel Elephant has developed kind of a nice brand and we want to keep that going.

So that was one of our first objections to the deals that wanted to either kill the name or maybe have the name come after the network name, not before. We always wanted the name to stay, and we want our business cards to always say Elephant.”

In other situations, the corporate philosophies of big network agencies didn’t click with Elephant. “We still want to remain a creative agency first and foremost. We’re not a client servicing agency and we’re not driven by account people – we are driven by creative people,” he says. “So sometimes it was a difference in philosophy, and sometimes it was a financial disagreement.”

Many of the employees Elephant has recruited were working at big network agencies. Ali and Nassar have mainly hired people they have worked with before, and many of them are joining the agency with a 20 percent salary cut, says Ali. “I think [they’ve agreed to a lower salary] because they believe in the place and want to be working at a cooler, younger place. I think there is

an awful lot to learn there,” he adds.

Eric Hanna appointed CEO of Grey Group MENA London. David Patton, president and CEO of Grey Group Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), announced the appointment of Eric Hanna as CEO of Grey Group Middle East and Africa (MENA), effective mid-November.

Hanna will be headquartered in Dubai, UAE. He succeeds Philippe Skaff who has decided to leave the company, a press statement reads.

For the past two years, Hanna has worked as CEO of Mediacom MENA, a GroupM company, where he was the architect of the current Mediacom network in the region. He previously spent a decade at Grey serving in a number of key Middle East management roles.

Ghassan Kassabji appointed MD of TBWA\Raad Dubai Dubai. TBWA\Raad has announced the appointment of Ghassan Kassabji as managing director of its Dubai agency after completing a transition period. Kassabji was previously managing director of TBWA\ Raad Saudi Arabia for five years, according to a press statement.

Prior to his Saudi assignment, Kassabji worked as client services director and regional director for the Nissan Middle East business for four years at TBWA\Raad in Dubai. In 2006 he was promoted to managing director of TBWA’s operations in Saudi Arabia.

TMH wins International Creativity Award

Dubai. TMH has been presented with a Creativity International award for the “Mohawk Desktop Swatch Book Set” at the Creativity International Awards, which recognizes graphic designers, advertising agencies and marketers all over the world.

Its design was chosen from a host of international nominees in the Single Unit Print Collateral category.

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Regional news | NOVEMBER 2011

PublicisLive sets up Abu Dhabi office

I media OMD retains du account Dubai. OMD, the global communications planning network of the Omnicom Media Group, has retained telco company du’s media account. The agency was first appointed in 2006, and after a four-way review in April this year, which included Mediavest, Mindshare and MEC, won the pitch again.

Hala Badri, executive vice-president of brand & communications at du, says, “Despite the rigorous multi-agency evaluation process, OMD’s team’s demonstration of their sharp understanding of our business and quality of team really stood out.”  I pr

Abu Dhabi. PublicisLive, the Geneva-based event arm of Publicis Groupe, has opened an office in Abu Dhabi to serve as its hub for expanded operations throughout the Gulf and the Middle East.

The emirate is PublicisLive’s third global hub after Geneva and Paris, according to a press statement.

The office, based in Abu Dhabi’s twofour54 media zone, is managed

by Matthieu Daurces, PublicisLive’s

event manager. Daurces and his team are responsible for events such as the Abu Dhabi Media Summit, an annual gathering of players in old and new media and the Internet.

PublicisLive also hosted the Summit on the Global Agenda in Abu Dhabi in October for long-time partner the World Economic Forum, for whom PublicisLive produces the annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the statement adds.

John Rossant, executive chairman of PublicisLive, says, “We are very excited about setting up a shop in the UAE and Abu Dhabi….We have always wanted to be present on the ground in the Gulf so that we can respond quickly to the growing needs of clients in the region for high-level, world-class events. Abu Dhabi makes the most sense for us thanks to its forward policies, openness, and the ease of doing business.”

 I AGENCIES

opportunities for not only Leo Burnett, but for our clients and their brands to grow as well.”

Traboulsi has been working with the Leo Burnett Group for the past 22 years, most recently as deputy managing director. He says, “We have to take into consideration that this is a new age of communications, in which we must constantly drive results to the requirements of clients and to think in a manner that is triggered by continual changes that affect our industry.

I am confident we have both the ability and the talent to continue to affect the advertising world in the most meaningful way.”

Kamal Dimachkie and Jean Traboulsi promoted at Leo Burnett

Dubai. Leo Burnett’s Kamal Dimachkie has been promoted to executive regional managing director, in charge of the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and the Lower Gulf region. The position of managing director has been taken over by Jean Traboulsi, who will continue to report to Dimachkie.

Dimachkie, who has been working in the role of managing director since 2001, says, “I will be focusing my attentions on the specific areas in which we can bring even greater value to our clients, creating regional

Asda’a named MEA agency of the year Abu Dhabi. PR consultancy Asda’a Burson-Marsteller was named Middle East and Africa Agency of the Year at the International Business Awards, which took place in Abu Dhabi in October.

The agency was also presented with the International Campaign of the Year – Multicultural award for its work on behalf of the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF), while the Burson-Marsteller Arab Youth Survey was commended in the Global Issues category, a press statement reads.

According to award organizers, more than 3,000 submissions were received from firms and individuals in more than 50 countries, it adds.

Wild Planet Productions wins Active PR service Dubai. Active Public Relations & Marketing Communications Consultancy (Active PR) has declared Wild Planet Productions, a natural history production company, as the winner of its Entrepreneur Loudspeaker Competition 2011.

The competition was launched in June to give regional start-ups a chance to win $20,000 worth of PR consultancy

by Active PR, by presenting a pitch for their business in a two-minute video.

According to Sawsan Ghanem, managing partner of Active PR, the agency will support Wild Planet Productions in a three-month PR campaign.  I digital GoNabit officially rebrands to LivingSocial Dubai. Local group-buying website GoNabit has been rebranded to LivContinued on page 20

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NOVEMBER 2011 | Regional news

MediaCom hires Nick Barron as MENA CEO

Dubai. Nick Barron has been named the new CEO of MediaCom in the Middle East and North Africa.

While based in Dubai, Barron will lead the agency’s operations in the UAE, KSA, Lebanon and Morocco, which currently employ more than 100 people.

He will report directly to Nick Lawson, chief executive of MediaCom EMEA, and Roy Haddad, chairman of MediaCom MENA, and the MENA board, which he will also sit on.

Barron was previously CEO of Me-

diaCom Russia, Ukraine and CIS and has replaced Eric Hanna, who is returning to Grey Group MENA as chief executive after overseeing the 2010 merger between MediaCom and sister WPP agency Media Insight.

Barron’s brief is to expand the footprint of the network across the region, initially in Qatar and Egypt.

Lawson says, “The MENA region has continued to show real resilience and its increasing importance in the global economy is demonstrated by our commitment to building a centre

of excellence in the region. Nick’s time in Russia has given him extensive experience of developing MediaCom’s offering and I’m confident that both our current clients and future prospects will be impressed as we expand our capabilities across the region.”

Barron has spent 27 years in the media and communications business, working at JWT, OMD, and as a consultant dealing with sports rights, interactive TV and mobile. He has also worked as head of MediaCom’s Russian operation.  I digital Tiger Translate comes to Dubai Dubai. Global art, design and music showcase Tiger Translate will be held in the Middle East for the first time on Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2011. The event is coming to Dubai for workshops and collaborations between Thai and local artists and designers at a venue yet to be announced, a press statement reads.

International and local digital artists will create ideas and designs under the theme “Universe”, in the context of modern Asia and the Gulf region.

All artists will be involved in a collaborative cross-border design exchange called “Ping Pong” in the run up to the event, where a work of digital art will be passed back and forth between the artist pairings to produce a unique piece of Tiger Translate digital art, with finishing touches to be made live during November’s event, the statement adds.

Other activities include a photographybased creative process, live music, and a chance for guests to create their own art.

Continued from page 19 ingSocial Middle East, following its acquisition in June 2011. The rebranding requires existing GoNabit members to create a LivingSocial account in order to purchase daily deals.

As part of the new platform, LivingSocial members will also be able to buy and redeem vouchers via a mobile application that has been launched, as well as view unexpired vouchers in their area. Moreover, they can access more than 600 daily deal markets in 25 countries around the world with their account.

Wordy to relaunches website Dubai. Wordy, an online platform offering sub-editing services, will be relaunching its website, www.wordy. com, and is extending its services to the Middle East, says Lars Nielsen, sales manager at Wordy and a former owner of AMEinfo.com “Given that Klaus Lovgreen and I (AMEInfo.com owners for 12 years) know the region very well, and having experienced first-hand the editorial market and how often we and others get published content wrong, it is a natural place to introduce Wordy, we feel,” he says.

“Our starting point has been Dubai and the UAE, given we have our network primarily there, but through these networks we are spreading our wings into the GCC and beyond. We will, to a large extent, be relying on partnerships and affiliates to help penetrate most of these surrounding countries as our manpower and resources are quite limited,” he adds.

Wordy.com is run by CEO Anders Schepelern.  I film Image Nation rebrands and restructures Abu Dhabi. Image Nation Abu Dhabi has unveiled a new company structure and has rebranded to Image Nation.

The company has created two distinct divisions to better align its core objectives: Image Nation Abu Dhabi and Image Nation International.

“Our new company structure reflects Image Nation’s mission to build the foundations of a strong local film industry in the UAE,” says Mohammed Al Mubarak, chairman of Image Nation. “Both our local and international activities contribute to the local industry; we are developing projects and talent within the UAE, while supporting them through vital international partnerships and investments.”

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NOVEMBER 2011 | International news

Yahoo partners with ABC News International digital media company Yahoo has partnered with ABC News to share and create news and information online.

The announcement was made

by Ross Levinson,executive vicepresident of Americas at Yahoo, and Ben Sherwood, president of ABC News, at a press conference held at New York’s Times Square Studios during Advertising Week.

As part of the strategic alliance, ABC News’ content will be available on the Yahoo network, and the editorial teams from both entities will work together to develop online news content. The networks also announced the launch of GoodMorningAmerica.com, which is now available on Yahoo, and three new online video series: Newsmakers, Around the World with Christiane Amanpour, and This Could Be Big.  I pr McDonald’s to launch in-store TV

McDonald’s is introducing a TV network in its restaurants that will include content from Mark Burnett and BBC America, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

The fast-food chain will introduce the channel over the next few months to 800 restaurants in Southern California and Central California, where customers will watch on two 42-inch HDTVs visible from 70 percent of seats, the Times says. “Quiet zones” will also be available.

Ketchum wins Gillette PR business Procter & Gamble has selected Omnicom’s Ketchum as its global and North America external relations agency of record for Gillette. The account had been handled by Omnicom sister agency Porter Novelli for approximately 20 years.

“We believe the depth and breadth of Ketchum’s global expertise, combined with an innovative, creative client-engagement model, will help accelerate the growth of the brand,” says Damon Jones, director of global external relations for P&G Shave Care.

Additional programs will debut this year and next.

“Each and every day more than 25 million people are going to Yahoo News, and with the combined breadth and depth of experience and talent at ABC we think we can revolutionize the online and digital news landscape,” Levinson says.

According to him, Yahoo News and ABC News now reach a combined “Porter Novelli remains a valued and trusted partner and will continue to support Gillette’s regional business units and other P&G brands in multiple countries around the world.”

The agency will work closely with Omnicom creative shop BBDO, which serves as the lead agency on the Gillette brand, adhering to P&G’s brand agency leader structure. Within this structure, social-media duties for Gillette are handled by its PR firm in the US. Losing this $4 million to $6 million business doesn’t bode well for Porter Novelli, which has lost at least 20 executives over the past few months.

 I research Ipsos competes acquisition of Synovate Ipsos has announced that it has successfully completed the acquisition of the Synovate business for an enterprise value of £525 million ($842 million). Following this transaction, Ipsos becomes the third largest global market research company, reads a statement.

The acquisition was first announced on July 27, and was conditional upon various approvals, which have been obtained since then: The transaction was approved by Aegis’ ordinary shareholders on August 16 and obtained the mandatory antitrust clearances after that.

audience of more than 100 million in the US. Sherwood adds, “The purpose of this relationship, very simply, is to win the championship of news and information in the future.” He adds that Yahoo and ABC want the deal to be more than a content licensing relationship. “We already do something like that with Yahoo,” he says. “We provide around 20 or 25 percent of the video streams to Yahoo news right now. We really wanted to do something – to use a phrase of Mickey Rosen [senior vice-president of Yahoo Media Network] – truly transforming; to change the entire experience and the way people get their news and information online, and the people they get it from.” They seek to do this by leveraging Yahoo’s reach and technology and ABC’s journalism.

Levinson says that currently there aren’t any plans to introduce the model in other markets. “I think in the right circumstances we’ll look at other categories, but right now I think we have to make this one work very well.”

He adds that the ABC and Yahoo news content will be available on multiple platforms, pointing toward the imminent launch of publishing platform, Livestand. “This is as much a mobile deal as it is a PC deal,” he says.

On the second day of Advertising Week, Yahoo also launched a line-up of original online shows featuring Hollywood talent, in addition to the Beta version of Yahoo Screen, an online destination that hosts video content from Yahoo and other content partners such as ABC News, Hulu, and CBS.

 I outdoor

the majority of the business, declined to comment.

The global budget will likely exceed $86 million, which is what the company spent on US measured media in 2010, according to Kantar.

JCDecaux wins 2011 Autonomy Prize Outdoor advertising company JCDecaux SA has been awarded the “2011 Autonomy Prize” by the Paris branch of the Association des Paralysés de France (APF). The award recognizes the development of universal access automated public toilets, designed by Patrick Jouin for the city of Paris.

The toilet was created specifically for the Paris authorities following their 2007 decision to provide the French capital with 400 universal access automated toilets.

Saatchi wins Kraft’s Trident global account

 I AGENCIES MEC wins Marriot’s media account Marriott has selected WPP’s MEC as its new global AOR for media buying and planning, following a competitive review to consolidate global accounts. The selection includes a one-year contract with the option to renew.

Incumbents, including Aegis’ Carat (US), Publicis Groupe’s Starcom (Latin America), Publicis Groupe’s ZenithOptimedia (Asia Pacific) and MEC (EMEA), which earlier this summer began working with the brand on a project basis, were invited to participate in the review.

At the end, it came down to MEC and ZenithOptimedia. Carat, which had

Saatchi & Saatchi has snagged creative advertising duties for Kraft Food’s gum brand, Trident, after a global review. The Publicis Groupe agency beat independent Wieden & Kennedy and Omnicom Group’s TBWA in the final round.

Kraft pulled Trident from WPP’s JWT in July, saying at the time it wanted to bring “fresh thinking” to the brand. The food giant’s gum business has underperformed globally, and correcting that trend seems to be a particular focus of CEO Irene Rosenfeld, who indicated at an investor conference in early September that the key is boosting sales in more mature markets such as the US.

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NOVEMBER 2011 | OPINION

The Communiquestion

Kiss them goodbye

We ask the industry: What’s the best way to lose a client?

DAVID PORTER Media director, Unilever MENA The easiest way? Talk about your business more than that of the client. The best way? When your brilliant marketing means that global demand for their product or service is so utterly satiated that they decide to close the business as it no longer has any purpose.

YOUSEF TUQAN TUQAN CEO, Flip Media Make promises you can’t keep. Unfortunately, the amplification of a pitch always lends itself to this, so I always make a priority of never proposing something we cannot deliver.

HUBERT BOULOS Head of strategic planning, JWT I don’t know. It has never happened to me. (Just kidding.)

TONY ORSTEN CEO, twofour54 Tell them August here is rather mild and a brisk walk on the Abu Dhabi Corniche at lunchtime is refreshing.

RONALD HOWES Regional managing director, GCC, Memac Ogilvy There is no best way to lose a client, rather many ways to keep them.

ALAIN BRAHAMCHA General manager, UAE, Starcom MediaVest Group The best way to lose a client is complacency.

ROY BARGHOUT Senior manager, digital exchange, Mindshare UAE Keep telling them the competition is spending more than them.

YVES-MICHEL GABAY General manager, MEC MENA To not listen [to] what he or she is expecting.

ZOYA SAKR Editor-in-chief, nawa3em.com Ignore his requests.

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Etisalat wanted to engage with business professionals always on the move.

Yahoo! Maktoob enabled them to specifically target interested and relevant customers using advanced Behavioral Targeting technology which delivered a click through rate (CTR)* 15x greater than industry standards.

That’s the power of Yahoo! Maktoob.

See what Yahoo! Maktoob can do for your brand at advertising.maktoob.com or email us at: advertise.me@yahoo-inc.com *CTRs of this magnitude are generally reserved for bold rich media campaigns, home page takeovers or overlay ads.

SCIENCE + ART + SCALE

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NOVEMBER 2011 | OPINION

FADI CHAMAT General manager, PHD Abu Dhabi Lose his trust. Transparency is the most important thing that holds the agency-client relationship; trust the agency is giving the best rates, service, skills, people, etcetera. Once lost, trust is extremely hard to earn back.

NAVIN VIJAY Senior exchange executive, Mindshare UAE 1. Providing below-average work; 2. Over promising and under delivering; 3. Deadlines never being met; 4. Never dedicating time for planning; 5. Having a casual approach to [the] client’s business, rather than a professional one; 6. Not responding to calls or e-mails.

ALI AWADA Manager, exchange digital, Mindshare UAE Losing a client is easy with dishonesty and no back rubs.

MARWAN QUTUB CEO and co-founder, 3Points Advertising Either by not challenging his thoughts at all or not knowing when to stop challenging him.

EDMOND GEBARA Senior exchange executive, Mindshare UAE Not seeing eye-to-eye and not remaining frequently aligned with [the] client.

SAWSAN GHANEM Managing director, Active PR The best way to lose a client is first and foremost through a lack of a thorough understanding of who they are, their business objectives and what they want to achieve with their communication campaigns. This, combined with little or no creativity and not achieving the agreed results, and failing in managing a client’s expectations, usually does the trick.

NASSIB BOUERI CEO, Y&R & Wunderman Challenge them. Or ask them to pay the fees the agency is worthy of.

RACHID MTAINI Managing director, Euro RSCG Take on a new client before you’ve lost the previous one.

JOELLE JAMMAL Managing director, Leo Burnett Jordan Say yes [to] everything they ask you for.

HERMANN BEHRENS CEO, The Brand Union Middle East Drink too much and tell them their product is crap.

Make them feel unimportant, like you don’t care.

MOUNIR HARFOUCHE CEO, Lowe MENA You lose yourself.

MOHAMMED TAYEM Managing director, Entourage The human way: rudeness. The professional way: indifference. The basic way: zero understanding of the client’s products and services, needs and aspirations. Business relationships cannot start without common courtesies that we often take for granted.

How about being proactive? How do you expect the client to think about you if you are not doing the same? Finally, unless you spend time and effort to understand your client’s business, you’re in no-man’s land. No pain, no gain.

MICHEL BORT Client relationship director, Kassab Media Take him for granted (regardless of the size), [and] bad service and follow-up.

YOANN EL JAOUHARI Managing director, JC Decaux Dubai & Northern Emirates Not listening, or thinking you already know what they want – which sometimes means exactly the same.

AZHAR SIDDIQUI General manager, Magna Global Undermine the importance of the small issues.

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NOVEMBER 2011 | Cover Story

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Cover Story | NOVEMBER 2011

Fast mover advantage Communicate investigates the state of FMCG marketing in the Middle East by Sidra Tariq

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he fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry has always been an attractive one for marketing professionals. Come rain or shine, it is an industry where demand doesn’t see a massive drop. When crises hit, people may choose not to invest in the car they were saving up for, the latest iPad or new smart phone, but they won’t necessarily stop buying toothpaste, soap or cream.

Some FMCG categories may suffer, but overall the industry is considerably robust. The fact that it was one of the few industries standing tall during and after the financial crisis is proof enough.

In this month’s cover story, we look at some of the most thriving FMCG categories in the Middle East and North Africa – food and beverage, household products and toiletries, and personal care products – the market they operate in and their strategy for the region.

The market. Middle East consumers are an interesting mix to work with. While they are similar to those around the world, there are a few things that set them apart from many others. For instance, consumers here, particularly in GCC countries, are value-driven. They look for quality products and are willing to pay a good price for them. Kumar Ramamurthy, business unit director at MEC MENA (which was recently appointed as General Mills’ media agency) says that regional

consumers wouldn’t think twice before paying a premium for quality.

Vishal Tikku, the GCC managing director of food company Kraft Foods, which has brands such as Philadelphia and Oreo, told Communicate in an earlier interview, “If you can show a consumer value they will always pay you for it; which is why adding value to your brand is always better than trying to take away from your brand and selling it cheap.”

Consumer purchasing habits do tend to vary in different parts of the region. GCC consumers tend to buy products in larger packs, as opposed to some developing and emerging markets where there is a considerable market for small packets such as shampoo sachets, says Madhusudhan Rao, vicepresident for marketing, Unilever MENA (which has brands such as Lux, Pond’s, and Sunsilk). Yet consumers in North Africa, Egypt and the Levant region still buy small packets, he adds.

According to Nahla Gouda, marketing director for female beauty at Procter & Gamble (P&G) Arabian Peninsula and Pakistan, “Shoppers in the Arabian Peninsula markets are eager to learn more about the products; they spend quality time in the store checking different products, reading about them, and interacting with the sales consultants to decide on the best [one] meeting their needs.”

“In P&G we call this as the First Moment of Truth, where the consumer may decide to purchase

the product based on the product benefit claims and promise,” she adds. “The Second Moment of Truth is when consumers try our products at home. That’s when our products should deliver on their promise.”

The diverse population of the region also gives marketers reasons to explore new ways to deliver brand messages. While this can make their job more challenging, it helps bring innovative ideas to the table.

Maya Tayara, associate media director at Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) Dubai, which handles the P&G account, says consumers in the region are becoming more sophisticated. “They are looking for new experiences and are in need of variety and are more aware and connected than ever. If you think about youth, who constitutes about 50 percent of the population, they are very open and liberated,” she says. “In Saudi, for example, they are looking for ways to express themselves and stand out from the crowd, yet still want to be true to their origins.”

The region’s youth are very important to marketers. They are increasingly interacting with brands and sharing their experiences with friends, and are capable of driving social movements, as has been seen during the Arab Spring.

More than half of MENA’s population is younger than 25, says Unilever’s Rao. “This sizeable youth segment makes them an extremely attractive seg-

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NOVEMBER 2011 | Cover Story

I should cocoa. Kraft recently acquired Cadbury, pushing up its ad spend

Rayan Hajjar. VivaKi commercial director

Pankaj Pagarani.

Associate media director, Starcom Dubai

Maya Tayara. Associate media director at Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) Dubai

ment for beauty and personal care products such as deodorants, face creams, skin care products, shampoos and conditioners.” In addition, they have a greater propensity to spend on personal grooming than youth in other developing and emerging markets, he says.

According to Pankaj Pagarani, associate media director at Starcom Dubai, who handles the Kraft Foods account, consumers here are also more receptive to advertising than some others. In addition to being heavier consumers of media when compared to the global average, they are more influenced by advertising they come across, he says. “They assign more credibility to advertising and massmedia versus the rest of the world. In some cases, [they] view advertising as a form of entertainment, versus a nuisance in other markets.”

Strategy. Opportunities in the region’s FMCG industry are vast. While we have local players such as Al Marai, Masafi and Aujan, we also have international food giants such as Kraft, Nestle and Mars, plus household and personal care products biggies such as P&G, Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser.

In a market of such fierce competition, it is important for brands to have not only a strong product and value, but also a sound marketing strategy.

“Some FMCGs are focusing on growing their core business as top priority by directing their efforts on specific prime prospects and tapping into niche segments,” says Tayara. “Penetration is also a strategy of focus, whether it is via geographical expansion or segment growth. When looking at categories, there seems to be a focus on increasing assortment – building their line up to satisfy different consumers’ needs. In the objective of catering for more sophisticated consumers, some companies

are driving brand extension via tiering up or bringing close-to-home products to MENA markets.”

P&G’s Gouda says, “We continue to focus on strengthening the brand-building fundamentals of share, penetration, trial, equity, value, communications quality and ROI.” The food sector is a particularly competitive market in this region. While local brands have built their trust with consumers, international brands have also gained a considerable market share and attracted a loyal following. While some aim to maintain their positions as market leaders, others try to expand their market share, and as some reach out to new audiences, others try to make the most of their existing consumer base. In any case, the marketing strategy varies depending on each product category.

For General Mills, one of the main aims with its cake mix brand, Betty Crocker, is to increase product consumption, says Nareena Mehra, regional strategic planning director of analytics and insight at MEC MENA. According to Ramamurthy, “Betty Crocker is massively dominant in terms of the market share, so the challenges were a little different for the marketing strategy.”

The idea was: More can be done with the brand. “Cakes are usually associated with occasions such as birthdays and holidays. So if we want to increase the frequency of consumption, we have to generate new occasions for people to start eating,” says Mehra.

That was the essence of MEC’s pitch process for Betty Crocker, which will soon be rolled out as a campaign targeting women as gateways to the family. However, with General Mills’ ice cream brand Häagen Dazs, the team is working on a different approach. While other ice cream brands are about fun and spontaneity and appeal to the younger

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generation, MEC found that Häagen Dazs is an ice cream for adults and is often a planned purchase, say Ramamurthy and Mehra. Hence, the campaign for Häagen Dazs focuses on indulgence. In other Häagen Dazs markets, the idea of indulgence is all about pleasure and sensuous moments, but the regional campaign will put a different spin on the concept, keeping cultural sensitivities in mind, says Mehra. While MEC cannot reveal the details of the campaign, Ramamurthy says it will involve a fair amount of on-the-ground activation.

Innovation is an important part of the industry, and a key component of that is tailoring products to consumers’ needs. After intensive research into the market, a number of FMCG brands are developing localized products to cater to regional consumers.

P&G, for example, came up with a variation for Tide to try to provide better whiteness for men’s thobes (traditional Arab robes), and introduced Head & Shoulders Menthol to provide relief against the region’s heat, says Gouda. “On Ariel, we have created a specific variant called Ariel Abaya to deliver excellent cleaning of delicate fabrics,” she adds.

Gouda says that P&G tries to focus on “cost innovation” as well – providing consumers with a better brand experience at a lower cost, “which also yields higher returns for shareholders.”

Meanwhile, Rao says that “for Unilever [innovation] is not just about introducing new products; it also applies to the execution of our strategies in the markets, be it distribution, in-store activation or even media placement.”

Channels. Television has been a safe haven for FMCG brands, and continues to account for the majority of the brands’ budgets. In some cases, it accounts for more than 70 to 80 percent of media budgets.

Pagarani says that “in-home media [is] gaining share after the recession, specifically key Pan Arab TV stations, as a ‘safe bet’ versus local media, as well as to benefit from their spillover into markets such as Iraq, Egypt, Libya, etcetera.”

Rayan Hajjar, Vivaki commercial director, adds, “The scale and reach across markets behind TV is still much higher than any other medium. In addition, there has been a boost in the quality of programming over the past couple of years across several TV stations (free-to-air and pay TV) to keep consumers entertained and, more importantly, to try and grow their viewership base while maintaining a competitive edge versus other mediums and drive clients to spend more.”

Print has always come second to TV and will continue to receive a considerable share of advertising dollars, but digital is turning out to be a new favorite among FMCG brands. It still accounts for only a single-figure percentage of the region’s total advertising spend, and is not even close to overtaking print, but is becoming a major part of FMCG campaigns. The tremendous increase in Internet penetration, broadband speed and increasing online engagement by consumers in the region – especially on social networking sites – has put wheels on the medium.

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Cover Story | NOVEMBER 2011

Media and spend The FMCG industry is one where we have seen a good assortment of above- and belowthe-line activities. We have seen ads on TV, in newspapers and online, and also in-store promotions and on-the-ground activation.

And we are bound to see more 360-degree approaches in the industry.

“A client needs to get an understanding of the factors contributing to business growth and what kind of ROI they’re getting from each activity, and based on that they can arrive at a healthy divide between above the line (ATL) versus below the line (BTL),” says Pagarani. “In cases of a launch where trial is key, BTL gets more importance than otherwise.”

In our February cover story about media spend, it was clear that while many other sectors became conservative in spending after the financial crisis, the FMCG sector remained consistent with its spend. Even now, the FMCG industry is the top spender on media in the region, says Elie Aoun, chief operating officer of research company Ipsos MENA, which monitors media spend in the Middle East and North Africa.

According to Ipsos data, which is based on rate card figures of media spend (it doesn’t take discounts into account), hygiene and beauty care is the highest spending category in the region overall, having a monitored spend of more than $1.3 billion between January and August 2011. The food and beverage sector is also among the top 10 spenders.

Rayan Hajjar, VivaKi commercial director, says, “In terms of [FMCG] categories, soft drink, shampoo/hair care, snacks, washing detergent and soap products are the most active and seem to be taking the highest share of spend among FMCG categories.

There are several brands that fall under each of those categories, with intense competition to capture share, leading them to be the most active players.”

Sector-wise, hygiene and beauty care may be the largest spenders, but when it comes to brands in particular, those in the food and beverage sector seem to outspend them all if rate card figures are taken at face value.

Pepsi, Coca Cola and Mars’ Galaxy are the biggest spenders in the FMCG industry and are among the top 10 overall spenders in the region, according to Ipsos data.

Pagarani from Starcom adds brands from companies such as P&G, Unilever, Reckitt Benkiser and Kraft to the highest spenders list [see page 34].

As far as rate card figures are concerned, Pepsi spent more than $190 million in the Middle East and North Africa between January and August this year. Coca-Cola came close in the FMCG category with more than $126 million, followed by Mars’ Galaxy, which spent more than $99 million.

Hygiene and beauty care brands Dabur, and P&G’s Head & Shoulders and Pampers are not among the top 10, but spent more than $75 million, $63 million and $60 million, respectively.

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NOVEMBER 2011 | Cover Story

Vishal Tikku.

Managing director GCC, Kraft Foods

Elie Aoun.

COO of research company Ipsos MENA

Madhusudhan Rao. Vice-president for marketing, Unilever MENA

Starcom’s Tayara calls digital the new ZMOT (Zero Moment Of Truth). “Before heading to the store and closing the deal, before reaching the First Moment Of Truth (FMOT), consumers are browsing the Net, doing their homework, and going to the shops well informed. Hence, digital is the first place consumers make their choices; digital is becoming a key pillar in communication strategies.”

“This is a lifestyle shift rather than a short-term trend,” she notes. “Google is consumers’ new best friend (and so is their smart phone).”

Meanwhile, Pagarani says the trends he has noticed in the FMCG industry are the use of display advertising, social media and search marketing, social media to help drive a “two-way dialogue with the consumer,” and search “to drive traffic to their online destination and to solidify association with certain brand platforms.”

“You see leading FMCGs more and more active online, increasing their online budgets as they have immediate results, tracking and improve possibility and high ROI,” adds Tayara. “Of course, some others are slower to respond, yet the domino effect will play its role in getting many marketers on board.”

Gouda from P&G says that the main idea is to connect with consumers where they are most receptive to a brand’s message.

“Digital will enable P&G to serve new consumers throughout the world. With more than one billion people online and 2.7 billion mobile users, digital is a powerful tool to help more of the world’s consumers discover P&G brands,” she says. “With continued retail partnerships, digital as a new channel offers low-cost access and convenience for consumers to experience and buy P&G brands.

It will create engaging consumer experiences not possible before digital to offer brand information, as with Pampers.com, or create a community such as Beinggirl.com.”

In its latest campaigns, General Mills is mainly focusing on television and digital, with some support from on-the-ground activation, says Susannah

Llewellyn, international and new business director at MEC MENA. Ramamurthy adds that MEC has proposed that General Mills spend more than five times what they previously spent on digital.

Llewellyn says social media is also an important part of the mix. “General Mills, as a company, has been trying to progress its social media and their online presence… and build that into campaign plans.”

Many of Unilever’s brands, such as Sunsilk, Comfort and Close-Up, are very active in social media too, says Rao. The brand’s social media presence has been a key part of campaigns, such as a Close Up promotion with musician Karl Wolf, where, according to Rao, more than 1,000 videos were uploaded by consumers.

“Social media is an extremely important medium that is exploding globally, as well as across our region,” says Rao. “We have brands and propositions that appeal to a wide spectrum of target groups, and it is therefore a powerful medium to invest in.”

Outdoor is still a medium commanding the attention and ad dollars of FMCGs. In an interview earlier this year, Ahmed Shaboury, head of brands at beverage company Aujan, said that the drop in real estate spending made way for FMCGs to advertise more on outdoor as well as print. “With the change in the scene, prices went down accordingly and FMCG brands came back into the game, because they are consistent spenders,” he said. “In short, as the rates became favorable, FMCGs came back strongly on the outdoor and print scene.”

Radio and cinema are also receiving a fair share of the media budgets, but according to Hajjar they are used on a more tactical basis.

Markets. As far as geographical focus is concerned, Saudi Arabia is a market that is often on the top of the list for FMCG brands. Its population of more than 25 million screams of potential customers and growth opportunities. The relatively high purchasing power of Saudi consumers also makes it an

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attractive market, says Elie Aoun, chief operating officer of research company Ipsos MENA. Hence, the kingdom typically gets the lion’s share of the budget, often followed by the UAE and Kuwait, which are considered important and growing markets. “[It] depends if Asians and other expats in the UAE are seen as a core consumer or not, in which case the UAE can get the nod ahead of Kuwait,” says Pagarani.

Ramamurthy agrees that while Saudi is a priority market, growth is very high in the UAE. “For Häagen Dazs, (which doesn’t sell in retail in Saudi), it is the UAE and Kuwait and Qatar. But I think as a company [General Mills’] focus is also growing the geographies now. Egypt is obviously coming as a big market. [They are also] expanding in some of their Levant markets.”

Road blocks. While the diversity of the region is one of its unique selling points, it is one thing that can make a marketer’s task quite difficult too. This is a region where there are markets within markets, says Unilever’s Rao. “[For] example, within the UAE there are more than 100 nationalities and 50 percent of the population is Asian – from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Indonesia, etcetera. Offering products that appeal to different ethnic groups and reaching them through media is an exciting challenge.” In addition to that, “this region has some of the wealthiest [consumers] in the world, as well as the poorest. Therefore developing products, formats and propositions that are relevant to both extremes is both a challenge and an opportunity,” says Rao. Budget constraints are also getting in the way of some FMCG companies. “There is an increasing pressure on FMCG companies to perform on the sales front, while their budgets are flat to shrinking,” says Starcom’s Tayara. It becomes even more challenging to stay ahead of the competition when some companies have the money and resources to be more active, she adds.

Rising commodity costs is another problem haunting the FMCG industry. “It is not always possible to pass the costs to the consumer,” says Unilever’s Rao. “Cost efficiency through scale is therefore increasingly important in the FMCG market.”

For some FMCG companies, the challenges are different as you move across the region. General Mills’ Betty Crocker is an established, old brand with a loyal consumer base. However, in Kuwait, Betty Crocker faces competition from another General Mills cake mix brand. “Pillsbury is very strong in Kuwait. So that kind of cannibalizes the Betty Crocker brand itself. The challenge…is in managing distribution and trying to separate the two brands,” says Ramamurthy. Pillsbury, however, does not get any advertising support, only shelf support.

He adds that product variety is a factor that can make it difficult for brands to compete. In Saudi Arabia, Betty Crocker is a dominant brand but a challenge General Mills faces there is that some local brands have a greater variety of food products, and hence dominate the aisle in supermarkets, he explains: “Al Ali is one such brand.

It is the biggest competitor in the dessert mixes [category]; Because [its brand] presence extends… across different food products, there is a sort of familiarity with the consumer and the trust which they have been able to build with the consumer.”

That, coupled with dominating isles at the supermarket, makes it a strong competition even though it is not the biggest spender in advertising, he says.

Pagarani agrees that, at times, there is heavy local brand bias, which can lead to “uneven playing fields.”

He adds that there is heavy clutter in above-theline and below-the-line activities, and the region faces challenges in terms of measurement. “Lack of strong media research (people meters for TV, more outdoor research etcetera) and lack of media monitoring for some mediums (digital) … makes ROI calculations less accurate and dependable,” he says.

At the same time, FMCG brands see a number of opportunities for growth in the region. Pagarani sees potential growth in the chocolates, snacks, cleaning products and pharma categories. He adds that Iraq, Egypt and Saudi are potential growth markets. Tayara agrees, and adds Sudan and Libya.

Meanwhile, Unilever’s Rao says, “The headroom for growth… is immense, both at the top as well as the bottom of the market, as the per capita consumption of many product categories is still n below global average.”

Nareena Mehra.

Regional strategic planning director of analytics & insight, MEC MENA.

Susannah Llewellyn.

International and new business director, MEC MENA

Kumar Ramamurthy.

Business unit director, MEC MENA

INVITATION TO TENDER

Tourism Ireland is responsible for the overseas marketing of the island of Ireland. Tourism Ireland is pleased to advertise the following tender opportunities:

Travel Trade & Destination Marketing Services And PR Services To represent Tourism Ireland in the GCC markets

Interested applicants are invited to apply to provide either or both of these services. Please refer to the full text of the Tender Notice and accompanying documentation which may be downloaded at the following website: www.etenders.gov.ie Enquiries by email to amcdermott@tourismireland.com Closing date for receipt of tenders: Thursday 15th December 2011 @ 12.00hrs (GMT).

Contract(s) will be awarded to the most economically advantageous tender(s) consistent with the criteria listed in the Request for Tender documents.

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TOP 15 BRANDS IN THE MENA REGION Seven of the top spenders by monitored rate-card spend are FMCG brands

(US$) 190,385,948 126,009,132 99,509,771 75,541,356 65,298,690 63,253,310 60,575,578

Pepsi Coca-Cola Galaxy Dabur Almarai Head & Shoulders Pampers FMCG CATEGORY SPEND BY COUNTRY Monitored rate-card spend (excluding digital) in $ 000

Soft drinks

PAN-ARAB 24,1097,115 110,109,173 179,120,978 189,046,623

EGYPT 201,996,151 127,794,322 32,575,865 7,846,991

LEBANON 20,599,365 1,845,821 12,308,777 10,546,183

UAE 6,912,136 193,839 4,027,690 2,468,678

IRAQ 1,146,679 104,344 532,150 158,207

JORDAN 1,145,336 49,126 216,706 441,076

PAN-ASIAN 1,076,897 601,807 4,543,888 2,617,237

KSA 888,630 1,564,369 2,263,595 3,274,168

BAHRAIN 751,340 43,458

OMAN 39,675 17,333 53,897

KUWAIT 328,992 645,522 1,594,622 3,943,058

SYRIA 184,636 78,192 227,731 282,659

QATAR 121,709 2,666 2,154 104,756

SUDAN 11,699

Snacks & appetizers

Shampoo

Chocolate

FMCG CATEGORY SPEND BY MEDIA

SOFT DRINKS TV 462,060,299 Cinema 4,825,122 Radio 4,634,862 Outdoor 3,136,896 Newspaper 1,388,252 Magazine 254,928

SNACKS & APPETISERS TV 240,027,589 Outdoor 1,639,538 Radio 724,434 Newspaper 502,336 Magazine 156,074

CHOCOLATE TV 213,722,906 Outdoor 5,996,578 Radio 625,149 Newspaper 236,692 Magazine 179,296 Cinema 22,912

SHAMPOO TV 230,722,903 Outdoor 4,444,816 Magazine 1,484,417 Radio 466,254 Newspaper 295,766

Source: IPSOS

Monitored rate-card spend (excluding digital) in $

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Power players We revisit Communicate’s Power List to examine some client-side big hitters in FMCG marketing

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n July Communicate published the Power List 2011. It ranked the 50 most powerful people in the media, marketing and advertising industry. There were media own-

ers, agency chiefs, policy formers and more.

Here we revisit the list and see who made the grade from the FMCG client side.

These are the men (there are no women

in their number, sadly) who are shaping the industry.

You can find the Power List on Communicate’s website at communicate.ae.

Vishal Tikku Managing director GCC, Kraft Foods Vishal Tikku, managing director of Kraft Foods in the GCC, is neither awkward nor obstinate, but beneath a casually relaxed attitude he likes to be different. Take his moustache, for example. When Communicate complimented him once on his trademark whiskers, he replied, “It’s just a thing that I do.”

At university, says Tikku, he studied not to be a lawyer. “I had a certain manner of arguing things,” he says. “I was advised either to be a lawyer or a marketeer. I thought, Lord, I didn’t want to be a lawyer – so I studied to be a marketeer.”

When he graduated, Tikku got a job with Ogilvy in Delhi. It wasn’t as glamorous as he had hoped, though; it was hard work. Tikku was a lowly account executive. “I struggled to buy soap, often, because shops closed by the time I got out of the office. I could only buy stuff on

the weekend.” The accounts he handled included British Airways, Beechams, and Marmite.

In 1989 he came to Dubai on Unilever’s management scheme, and stayed with the company for 16 years. He still calls his former employers a great company. Among other roles, he headed up Unilever’s consumer research division, and between 2000 and 2005 he lived in Saudi Arabia.

Going against the grain of expat opinion, Tikku likes the kingdom. “Saudi gets a lot of bad press, but it’s a nice place to live,” he says.

“Communities are very strong, especially the expat community. I was in Jeddah. I dived, which was really good; if you pick up diving in Saudi it’s really special. The Red Sea is beautiful.”

Tikku saw Unilever becoming top-heavy and slowing down, though, and in 2005 he took the marketing director job at Kraft.

He misses old friends such as Omo, Comfort, and Unilever’s shampoos, though. “What you are fond of are your brands, really,” he says.

As well as being fond of his brands, Tikku is also fond of the region’s consumers. “It’s a real privilege to be part of brands like Tang,” he says.

“When you sit and talk with consumers you get a real kind of warmth from the consumers, and that humbles you as to how that brand is part of their lives. It gives your work some meaning.”

Tikku has learned that while Tang may generate a cosy glow, the powdered drink is not to be messed with. When Kraft tried to build lunchtime consumption, he says, “we didn’t give the consumer a good reason to use Tang at lunch. …

Not that it took us back in any manner – brands continued to grow – but we probably missed a growth opportunity in moving the brand forward.”

As Tikku says, it is hard to change consumer habits. But marketers can challenge habits in their own way. That’s how Tikku works. Like his moustache, it’s something different.

– Vi s h a l Ti k k u w a s r a n k e d 2 2 n d o n Communicate’s Power List.

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Anthony Ponsford Managing director, L’Oréal Middle East Anthony Ponsford is the voice for the global beauty brand, L’Oréal, in the Middle East, which first set up base in the region in 1998 in Jebel Ali. As managing director for the Middle East, his goal has been to boost the firm’s more “mass market” offerings such as Garnier, L’Oréal Paris and Maybelline, especially in a period where more consumers are cutting down their costs on high-end beauty products.

“That element of accessibility is integral to these brands,” he points out in an interview with Gulf News.

The cosmetics giant aims to expand its consumer base by 1 billion people globally within the decade, and to do this it is focusing on doubling its customers in the Middle East.

“L’Oréal wants to develop products specific to emerging countries,” says Ponsford in the interview.

“To design products specifically suited to emerging countries, it is essential to innovate where the consumer is and to know the culture, eating habits, climate, etcetera.”

Now based in Dubai, that’s exactly what he has been doing – launching ‘Arabised’ versions of cosmetics to appeal to customers in the region. To launch its first Arab fragrance, L’Oréal collaborated with Giorgio Armani and the Armani Privé club to come up with a product that could connect to a larger audience in the Arab world.

Ponsford had attended high school in Scotland at Fettes College, where former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair also studied.

He later went on to study at Insead, one of the largest global business schools. He then began working for L’Oréal in France, the headquarters of the cosmetics firm, before he came to represent the brand in the Middle East. He arrived well-versed in the company’s offerings and goals.

When examining the region’s specific trends, he notes in an article in The Saudi Gazette that

the speed at which shopping malls have developed across the region has made a huge impact on the luxury sector. “Malls are open-access academies of social distinction,” he says.

According to him, brands, including L’Oréal, need to stir up more awareness to make connections with their audience.

While building up a brand name for L’Oréal in the region, Ponsford also helped push forward a new launch of pan-Arab fellowships for women in science in partnership with the Arab Science and Technology Foundation (ASTF) in 2010.

The fellowships are aimed at empowering female Arab scientists and recognizing their contributions to science.

“Women across the pan-Arab region are changing the face of science and we want to ensure they get the recognition they deserve,” he says in a company statement.

Sanjiv Mehta Chairman, Unilever North Africa and Middle East Sanjiv Mehta, chairman of Unilever in North Africa and the Middle East, had a baptism by fire. Or, to be more accurate, by pesticide. As a rookie accountant with Union Carbide chemical company, he was on the task force sent to Bhopal, India, in 1984, when one of the firm’s plants released methyl isocyanate gas, killing and maiming thousands.

“I was a young guy,” he says, “And I believe that was the time that a boy became a man.”

Mehta and his colleagues had to go to work under police protection, but it wasn’t the danger that changed him; it was the experience of handling people. “As a 23-year-old, one of the tasks I was given was to handle the separation of thousands of people,” he says. “I had grown-up men sit before me with tears rolling down their cheeks because they were losing their jobs.”

Through trial and error, Mehta learned how to

let people go. “If you have to take a tough line, don’t take too much time; don’t delay. Do it in the most humane manner. The important bit is never to let the self-esteem of a person get destroyed. A person may be a worker in your factory, but when he goes home he is a king within his household, so never trample on his self esteem.”

“One of the things that really got ingrained in me is that the certainty of misery is much better than the misery of uncertainty,” he adds.

He was lured to Unilever when the company invited him to visit Dubai in 1992. “What made a difference to me was the way the company treated me for those two days,” he says. A senior manager met him at the airport, and he was entertained by board members for the following two days. “I still tell the guys that whenever anyone comes to you to join the company, treat him well,” he says. “Treat him with respect, treat him like a king, and he will really get interested.”

When Mehta was offered the chance to go to Bangladesh, it was 1998 and the country was in the

middle of terrible flooding. The company was in negative growth, and the challenge was huge. Again he was hesitant. But he and his wife, a corporate banker, talked it over. “We said, where in your life would you get a great opportunity to turn around a business?” he says. They took the risk.

Over the next three years, he did just that – he turned the company round. “The Bangladesh business today is one of Unilever’s iconic businesses,” he says.

His strategy included developing a network of pallydutt rural ambassadors to distribute products to their villages. “For the rural youth it became a source of gainful employment.”

Mehta has also worked for Unilever in the Philippines, but has been in his current, Dubai-based role since 2008. “I’ve been lucky,” he says of his opportunities in life. And he’s made the most of them by being authentic and respectful, and never losing touch with human dignity.

Tolga Cebe Regional marketing manager, Coca-Cola Middle East Tolga Cebe is Regional Marketing Manager at Coca-Cola Middle East and has just overseen the launch of the “Brrrrr” campaign, of which more later.

Melissa Gates (of the Gates Foundation, and also Bill Gates’ wife) recently gave an impassioned lecture at TED, in which she argued that children in India could not get medicines or vaccines. “But,” she added quietly, “they can all get Coca-Cola.” Her lecture went on to advocate that the world should copy Coca-Cola’s distribution methods to reach around the world.

The Coca-Cola Company was established in 1886 in the USA. It owns four of the world’s top five non-alcoholic sparkling beverage brands and

has more than 90,000 associates worldwide, reaching more than 200 countries. On any given day 1.5 billion servings of 2,800 different products are consumed worldwide. Tolga Cebe was educated at Bogaziçi Üniversitesi in Turkey. He then went on to become an assistant brand manger at Procter & Gamble before finally coming into the Coca-Cola tent.

He is the man behind the “Brrrr” campaign being extended across the GCC, Iraq, Jordan and Palestine.

It is the first time the concept has been launched in the Middle East.

It is an extension of Coca-Cola’s activities in other parts of the world, with the “Brrr’”concept first launched in Africa. We all know the phrase “It’s the real thing,” but this slogan is intended to localize our thirst.

Cebe picked a mixture of football and music to ignite the flame of the region’s consumers. He

wants people to say “Brrr” when they drink Coke.

Using Omar Sharif helps.

He has the luxury of a brand that can’t be damaged, but that’s a double-edged sword – it can’t be made much better either.

This is not just marketing – Tolga’s product affects people’s lives. Here is a story from the Coke website – one of dozens: “I remember the first Coke I had also is the first kiss that I had. I was seven and her name was Debbie. Not only am I still an avid Coke drinker, but I also married Debbie. We have two kids, and they will be Coke drinkers as well”.

Let’s hope for Cebe’s sake the new campaign will ignite a huge increase in Coke drinking in the region, and doesn’t leave consumers cold.

– Anthony Ponsford was ranked 29th on Communicate’s Power List.

– Sanjiv Mehta was ranked 15th on Communicate’s Power List.

– Tolga Cebe was ranked 37th on Communicate’s Power List

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Raef Labaky Communication and marketing services director, Nestlé Middle East “There is always a goal; you plan where you want to go,” says Raef Labaky, communication and marketing services director at Nestlé Middle East.

When he started at Leo Burnett in Lebanon, his first assignment was to work on the media plan for Philip Morris. The yearly plan was a thick, daunting book. “It was exciting, dealing with something for the first time, and I felt proud when you see this document that you worked on,” he says Labaky had come to Leo Burnett after a short stint in a bank. A very short stint. “After three days I left the bank,” he says. “Banking for me was a bit too serious and strict.” And advertising suited his plan better. But Labaky’s plan is flexible. After five years with Burnett, he moved to Impact BBDO. He wanted to marry his fiancée, and was offered a job that would either be in Dubai or Saudi Arabia, to work with the agency’s media department. It was 1996. “The funny part is I was in training with Leo Burnett in August 1996, here in Dubai, with colleagues from Saudi. And they were telling me the

Saudi story. I knew all that was going on in Saudi, and what life was like in Saudi, and I said, ‘I will never go and live in this place.’” Four months later he was working in Jeddah.

“In life, you never know where things will go,” he says. “It was interesting.”

Labaky was running the media department, with Pepsi as his biggest client, and he stayed there for two years. Then he came back to Dubai, still with Impact BBDO. He helped run the media department for another year, and was then approached by Nestlé.

“After so many years in the agency, I got the opportunity to join Nestlé at the time as a media manager,” he says. “They hired an international media consultant to basically work with them on consolidating all of the media planning and buying. … They identified that they needed someone within Nestlé with media experience, to basically coordinate this task.” Mindshare had just taken over the company’s media duties.

The move – in October 1999 – was a win-win situation, he says. At the time he thought, “If I manage to grow within the company, it’s good. And if not, I can always go back to the agency world with additional experience.”

He was Nestlé’s media manager, and then his role began to grow and develop. Answering to a marketing director, he began handling the creative agency as well. After a couple of years the company was growing, and in 2005 he took over Nestle’s communications.

Having started with a department of one, Labaky now has 16 people directly reporting to him. And he is still developing the company’s marketing. Four years ago he hired someone to work specifically on digital, and the company now spends between 5 percent and 10 percent of its marketing budget in that field.

That’s a long way from when Labaky was in Saudi Arabia with BBDO. “For Pepsi they had a direct e-mail via Bahrain, and I was the only one at the agency connected to it,” he says. “And because of the shortage of phone lines, we used to have a switch. If I wanted to use the e-mail I would flick the switch to steal a line from the company just to download the e-mails, and then put it back again.”

Raymond Khoury Marketing director, Procter & Gamble Raymond Khoury has trotted across the globe for more than a decade, representing the international Procter & Gamble. He is now based in Dubai, where he is a marketing director for the firm.

After his four years of school at Washington University’s St. Louis Olin Business School, Khoury started his 16 years with P&G.

Since then, he has worked in Western Europe, including a three-year stint at the company’s headquarters in Geneva. But just as P&G is a global firm, Khoury has moved between geographies, exploring the group’s divisions in the Middle East after his time in Europe. Climbing up the corporate ladder, he was appointed the director and site leader of its Lebanon office in 2008 (he shares a name with an acclaimed Lebanese novelist).

Managing a brand like P&G in the Middle East meant that he soon moved on to explore markets in the Emirates as well. Despite being in the marketing industry in an evolving world, Khoury seems to opt out of the social media trend. He has never used his Twitter account to update his nine followers with P&G’s latest developments.

– Raef Labaky was ranked 47th on Communicate’s Power List.

– Raymond Khoury was ranked 25th on Communicate’s Power List.

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Omar Salim Franchise director, Africa, India and the Middle East, Mars Mars is one of the world’s largest family-owned companies, and since its corporate strategy is not driven by shareholder returns, this can make it a little different. Omar Salim, Mars’ franchise director for Africa, India and the Middle East, was tempted by this difference.

In the late 1990s Mars contacted him while he was working in Procter & Gamble’s development arm in the UK. Mars asked Salim, a Jordanian who has also lived in Egypt, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia, to come out to Dubai where Mars was still a fresh company.

“It was a pioneering environment,” he says. It moved fast, and impressed on employees that it was all right to make mistakes if they learned from them.

Salim worked on Mars’ “sugar business” (brands such as Skittles and Starburst) and M&Ms. Then he took over the Galaxy portfolio, “the heart and soul, the backbone of this business,” as he calls it, in 2001. Galaxy products make up around 40 percent of Mars’ business in the region. He became marketing

manager for all Mars brands, and three years ago was promoted to his current position.

In developing relationships with agencies, Salim took on the company’s open, family ethos. “We built a lot on our relationships with suppliers,” he says.

This applied to Mars’ growing relationship with Mediavest media agency and D’Arcy, the creative agency (since reabsorbed into Leo Burnett) that launched Galaxy Jewels.

“We acknowledge that we are going to have a mutual benefit, and that also gives us so much confidence that we’re not going to be hiding things,” he says. “In my previous job, it was about treading with care. Treading with care is incredibly slow, and it doesn’t necessarily bring about a lot of trust with your suppliers.”

Galaxy’s growth was one of Salim’s big achievements. He worked with his agencies to develop Galaxy Jewels as a Ramadan offering. Before, chocolate sales had dipped during the holy month, but by adopting a “Christmas model” of seasonal packaging and promotion, Mars raised sales. Salim would also sit with Starcom and plan media buys based on actors and program topics, as well as raw data. Previously Galaxy hadn’t advertised during

Ramadan, but it spent a “a lot” (several hundred thousand dollars was a lot to the brand then, says Salim) to start Jewels on the rise to its current 40-percent market share.

In the free-to-succeed model, Salim says, Mars doesn’t have a central unit. This means that the Middle East can play a role in global policy. The region is becoming more corporate, dividing its activities into divisions (chocolate, drinks, pet food, and so on), and Salim is sharing what he has learned about emerging markets. “This region has almost been a role model,” he says. “But also it can have a lot of applications to the rest of the emerging market.”

But Salim isn’t cocky about his achievements.

In his free time, he enjoys playing with his twoyear-old son, debates the state of the world with friends, and reads history books. We ask him about his indulgences. Fast cars, perhaps? “I drive a Honda,” he says. “If that gives you an idea. It’s a great car.”

And this is from a man who’s taking Mars in the region to a global level.

Ahmed El Azizi Marketing vice-president and CMO, Asia, Middle East and Africa, Pepsico When he’s not marketing Pepsico’s products, the firm’s marketing vicepresident and CMO for Asia, the Middle East and Africa, is playing Pro Evolution Soccer as Barcelona or Real Madrid. He says they are the strongest teams, but he must also have an affinity from when he took his MBA in Spain.

El Azizi’s other indulgence when he has time to himself is reading. He likes sci-fi fantasy and historical fiction, and is currently reading a trilogy about Genghis Khan.

“What’s interesting is the culture; it’s not just about the person,” he says. “You read a lot of things about Genghis Khan, about how he brought the Mongols together and how they were aggressive and oppressive. But if you go into the culture of the people, how they work together, how they bond together, the importance of the tribe and the family, you get a lot of insight into a bigger sense of you as a leader, and teamwork, and you as a parent of the family.”

If you “sort of brush away” some of Genghis Khan’s issues, says El Azizi, you can see how he used cultural insights to his advantage. “For example, how he went into China: He learned the culture and themes that conquered them later on; he made

a few trips into China before he conquered them.”

El Azizi is big into learning about cultures (and less into conquering and pillaging, he assures Communicate). For example, when he returned from Spain to work for German company Henkel’s detergents division: He initially worked on the Persil hand-wash products, and quickly learned that most Egyptians can’t afford washing machines.

He also learned, as Persil developed more products, that Arab consumers like their detergents to be more perfumed than western consumers, so the product appears more robust and their clothes smell cleaner.

When he moved to Eastern Europe with CocaCola, consumers were in a state of flux. It was 1997

– Omar Salim was ranked 30th on Communicate’s Power List.

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and the Soviet Union had recently collapsed.

“Pricing was very, very important, because a lot of things you take for granted in this part of the world or in Western Europe or the US, about the price of a can of Pepsi, you don’t really think about it that much. But in those places people (at the beginning) were thinking about the price of a can or a bottle.”

In 2002, El Azizi left Hungary to come home to Egypt with Pepsico. “Pepsi is really a company that is high on being entrepreneur; it’s very high on moving fast, very high on creative solutions, and it’s a company that has a vast portfolio of foods and beverages,” he says. This means there’s plenty to learn.

There is also plenty to learn about regional consumers. “We approach consumers in a different

way because we are market leaders,” he says. “We need to continue to connect with the consumer, to innovate, and we ought to be asking, ‘What is it they want next from us?’”

Then El Azizi can send in the Mongol hordes.

Hussam Abdul Qader General manager of marketing, Almarai Hussam Abdul Qader is general manager of marketing, and group executive member of the Almarai Company in Saudi Arabia.

He used to work for Nielsen Market Research so he’s a numbers man, and the numbers he deals with now are staggering.

Start with 90,000 cows producing milk that is processed on more than 70 production lines by 2,500 employees. Then 400 refrigerated trucks move it to 90 sales depots and then to 40,000 sales outlets across the region.

So Qader must feel very positive about his achievements. Well, yes and no. “We want to grow our market shares in all categories faster than the competition,” he says.

He seems driven to capitalize on the company’s 25 years of success and has appointed a team of more then 40 professionals to build the brand. The team is split into four strategic product categories: dairy liquid, fruit juices, potted products, and foods.

This specialization is key, according to Qader, who says, “Our strategy is to be leader in every segment and to be recognized as best quality products and packaging.”

Qader is committed to making his customers healthier, trying to switch them from powdered to fresh milk, and persuading them to increase their liking of fruit juice (it must be working – consumption of fruit juice in Saudi Arabia has doubled over the last year). “This confirms the company’s move from a pure dairy company to a food and beverage company offering a broader range of food products,” he says.

He has worked his way up and around the region with postings in Amman, Beirut, Dubai and Riyadh. His leadership over the past six years has helped in turning Al Marai from a regional dairy company into a major international force.

Al Marai is already the largest vertically integrated dairy company in the world and is set to become one of the next global brands, according to the Financial Times. So you’d think that Qader could relax in his spare time. Not really; he talks about his hobbies as “the outdoors, automotive,

riding horses and cultural experiences.” He is also a committed family man.

It takes strong drive to manage a company with sales of more than 113 million euros and well over 10,000 employees. Qader’s education at Amman Private University, Jordan, and the University of Kansas have helped give him an international perspective and the ability to look at his operation from a global viewpoint.

The adoption of international brand values and strict market research have lead to a disciplined – even multi-disciplined – approach to what is essentially a very competitive business in a tough trading environment. His marketplace is an attractive target for large multinationals, and his dominance of it is a salute to his adherence to traditional values of customer satisfaction and respect. These values have helped the company into double-digit growth. “We invest large sums of our marketing budget in consumer understanding and communications,” he says.

Qader is totally sure of what makes his brand great. As he says, “Our consumers are the key.”

Tomas Hajek Marketing director Middle East, Danone Tomas Hajek has traveled around a lot. He has studied at the University of Limerick in Ireland, Hanzehogeschool Groningen in the Netherlands, and Vysoká škola ekonomická v Praze in the Czech Republic. Hajek is now the marketing director for the Middle East for French dairy

company Danone. Previously he worked with Procter & Gamble in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Canada, before moving to Danone in Saudi Arabia in 2008. In July 2009 he was promoted from marketing director, Saudi Arabia, to his current position.

Danone in the region is partnered with Al Safi, a Saudi company that’s part of the Al Faisaliah

Group. It produces and distributes more than 300,000 tons of dairy products a year under the slogan, “Good health tastes great.” It has been active in the Middle East since 2001, and supplies 30,000 retailers in 11 countries.

– Ahmed El Azizi was ranked 26th on Communicate’s Power List.

– Hussam Abdul Qader was ranked 34th on Communicate’s Power List.

– To m a s H a j e k w a s r a n k e d 4 9 t h o n Communicate’s Power List.

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Like its readers,

Aficionado is sophisticated, stylish and intelligent.

Aficionado is more than just a magazine; it’s a way of life.

Out in November 2011

For advertising inquiries contact: grace@mediaquestcorp.com

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NOVEMBER 2011 | DIGITAL

It’s a social media jungle out there How social media overlaps with all media, from TV to newspapers by Kunar Patel

Y

ou can like your favorite magazine on Facebook or Tweet about Beyonce’s baby bump at the Video Music Awards. Here’s a look at how social media drives readers and growth, and sucks time out of all categories of media.

TELEVISION Eighty-six percent of US mobile Internet users watch TV with their mobile devices, according to a January Nielsen and Yahoo study. Forty percent of that set uses those devices for social networking.

More than 275 million Facebook users have liked a TV show, says the social network. The average user in that group has liked at least six TV shows.

MAGAZINES In August, 16 percent of Cosmopolitan’s Web traffic came from Facebook, according to ComScore. That’s just 4 percent shy of entries from Google. People saw 10 percent of traffic come from Facebook in that period, but top circulation magazines Better Homes & Gardens, Reader’s Digest, National Geographic, Woman’s Day and Good Housekeeping grabbed only single-digit Web traffic from Facebook and fractions, if any, from Twitter. Time Inc. says social media accounts for 14 million referrals to all of its sites

each month (and suspects that’s underreported thanks to third-party apps).

NEWSPAPERS In August, Google and Yahoo were the two top traffic drivers to the websites of the top US five newspapers by circulation; Facebook’s position varied, according to ComScore. USAToday’s websites saw the biggest percentage of traffic from Facebook at 8.4 percent. Despite news content composing a large volume of Tweets, Twitter drove only fractions of a percent of traffic to those sites.

WEB Americans spend one-quarter of their time online on social networks and blogs, according to Nielsen, and in May 2011 spent more time on Facebook than any other website.

MOBILE Nearly 40 percent of social media users access social media from mobile phones, according to Nielsen – and Internet users 55 years and older are driving social’s growth on the mobile Web. Some 250 million active users access Facebook through mobile devices and they are twice as active as nonmobile users. And 55 million users access Twitter from mobile phones or tablets each month.

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PUBLIC RELATIONS | NOVEMBER 2011

PR’s new best friend: social journos

A substantial following of a person or news group can make or break a story, but engagement counts

by Alexandra Bruell

R

emember that guy who caught Derek Jeter’s 3,000th home-run ball, politely gave it back to the Yankee and was showered with gifts that amounted to an unaffordable sales tax? Miller High Life offered to pick up the tab. And although other brands were also capitalizing on the news, the beer brand’s coverage might have been the most prominent – all thanks to one journalist’s considerable Twitter following.

Call it new-school PR. High Life was neither the first brand to try to piggyback on the goodwill story, nor is it an official Major League Baseball sponsor. But with help from its agency Olson PR, High Life pitched the story to the right person – CNBC Sports Biz blogger Darren Rovell, who immediately blogged about it but, more importantly, Tweeted the link to his 100,000-plus followers.

From the retweets, the news spread to a number of outlets, including ESPN.com.

Having to explain to PR clients why they should be more excited about a placement on a blog versus a print magazine is so yesterday.

Today, PR pros are drooling over the journalist or news organization with the most followers on Twitter. In some cases, where a journalist’s followers are so substantial they can make or break a story, that might mean reaching out to

the individual before giving their media brand a thought.

Stephanie Agresta, executive vice-president and managing director of social media at Weber Shandwick, says, “People are effectively thinking about media-relations strategy first and foremost from a social perspective, and a piece of that is thinking about journalists and how social media-savvy they are.”

She agrees that it’s not just a numbers game and that the level of engagement of these widely followed journalists, which includes how many people they’re following and how often they’re Tweeting, says a lot about the potential impact of the content on the reader and the influence of the people who might retweet and cover it. It’s about generating that kind of coverage instead of racking up celebrity retweets.

Jamie Stein, director of digital initiatives at PepsiCo, explains that there’s no one way to interpret a journalist’s huge following, and the company is still trying to figure out how content might be digested differentially if found via Twitter before another outlet.

“Even if we have a reporter with a specific following, the story could be read differently from when someone is reading a magazine. It’s

weighted differently,” she says. “It’s a different approach to revealing the news, and we’re certainly considering it.”

Marian Salzman, CEO at Euro RSCG PR, describes a 9/11 memorial service in Paris by client The French Will Never Forget. The team achieved placements in The New York Times and USA Today, but the “thing clients were most wowed by was the fact CNN retweeted it,” she says. “Somehow, it gives them in their mind hundreds of thousands of custom reaches: personal marketing.”

Despite that kind of excitement, she says, “I don’t think clients are asking about how many followers a journalist has yet. It’s still based on brand names of traditional media.”

PR execs also struggle with trying to understand the value in 4,000 retweets versus an article that only a few people read.

David Weiner, manager of digital media at PepsiCo, says, “[A Twitter following] certainly helps to increase our reach but we have not really cracked the nut on how to measure this.”

Salzman adds, “Are [retweets] just amplifying it, or are people actually engaging? We need a tool to measure this impact. Nobody knows, but we better figure it out fast.”

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NOVEMBER 2011 | BRANDING

Branding the best

What does it take to be one of the 100 names included in the Interbrand Best Global Brands 2011 list?

by Austyn Allison

O

mnicom branding agency Interbrand has released its annual list of the 100 most valuable brands in the world. Michael Benson, Interbrand’s regional director, was in Dubai to explain the research.

Founded in 1974, Interbrand has almost 40 offices in 25 countries, and has worked on big, big brands in its time. “We created the name for the Wii; we created the names for Prozac and Viagra; we created Land Rover Discovery, we created Bing,” he says.

The firm has been evaluating brands since 1984, and has evolved its process since then.

Simplified, the way to find the value of a brand works like this: Remove tax and the cost of generating brand revenues from an organization’s net operating profit to find its economic profit.

This economic profit is then multiplied by the role of brand. (The role of brand measures how much of the decision to purchase is attributable to the brand – Benson gives the example

of fashion labels as having a high role of brand, and sugar or gasoline as products with low role of brand.) This gives branded earnings. Finally, a discount factor is applied to these branded earnings, according to the strength of the brand.

(Interbrand examines 10 factors to establish brand strength, including responsiveness, protection, relevance and authenticity.) The result is the brand value. For equation junkies, there is a much more detailed run-down of the process on the Interbrand website.

Communicate is intrigued by what the value of a brand would buy. For example, what would you get from The Coca-Cola Co. if you offered it $7.9 billion? But that’s a bit of a moot point, as although Coca-Cola is much more than just a brand – it comprises bottling plants, licensing agreements around the world, distribution, and so on – if you took the brand away, it would be worth nothing. So the chances are the men in Atlanta would tell you to buy the whole shebang or put your cash back in your pocket.

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WHERE’S THE VALUE? Brand valuations by firms such as Interbrand can be used for processes including calculating company values for mergers and acquisitions, and for working out the value of reputation damage in legal cases. They can also show whether brands are being managed well.

In 2011 Coca-Cola topped the list for the 12th year in a row. There was a lot of growth from tech brands, with Apple, ranked eighth, growing its value more than any other brand – 58 percent since last year. Amazon, Google and Samsung all grew by a lot, too.

One of the keys to tech brands increasing their value is flexibility and the ability to adapt their business models. Amazon is a good example, says Benson. “They are a retailer originally, but now, with the new services they’ve put on board, they have extended what they offer. The Android app store that they have, for example, and the Kindle, have brought new revenue streams. They’ve been more relevant, more engaging to consumers, and as such their brand has strengthened itself over time as well as their business growing.”

Fashion brands are also doing well. Burberry grew by 20 percent, successfully moving away from its recent reputation as the label of choice for thugs and chavs in the UK. “The popular take-up of the Burberry cap, for example, did damage their brand as it was seen as a badge and hallmark of a certain type of person Burberry did not want to stand for,” says Benson. “So they took out all the product lines that were being used by the football supporters and whoever else, and priced them up again.

Not only that, they made a huge amount of effort moving their brand from being just about the check to being a British brand.” Burberry has also embraced digital marketing with live feeds to its catwalk shows, and Twitter pictures of models seconds before they hit the runway.

QUALITY AND CRAFTSMANSHIP. Other luxury fashion brands that rose in value this year include Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Hermés, Cartier and Armani. All have recently put a renewed focus on quality and craftsmanship, as well as embracing digital marketing.

Fashion brands have to tread a fine line between exclusivity and engaging new consumers, leading to an ongoing fluctuation between inaccessibility and availability. For them, the role of brand is very high.

Watches might seem the same, but they can offer a good example of the evolution of a brand. “When you get to the luxury end, brand is incredibly important, but also not,” says Benson. “People buy luxury for the quality, the engineering, the craftsmanship that goes into it, but then the brand begins to stand for it, and so you become known for it.”

He adds, “If you’re an industry like that you have to make sure you are delivering all the right things to create a brand.”

© Getty/Gallo Images

© Getty/Gallo Images

BRANDING | NOVEMBER 2011

The real thing. For the 12th year, Coca-Cola is the most valuable brand in the world There are no regional brands on the list.

Emirates might seem an obvious contender for the title of the strongest brand in the Middle East, but there are no airlines at all in the top 100. “There’s a very good reason for that,” says Benson. “Despite having distinct brands, the role of brand is still very low in that category. If you want to fly from A to B, you want to fly with a carrier that is going on the dates and times you want to go, and the price you want to go at.”

Big regional brands such as Emirates and Jumeirah are internationally recognized – Emirates especially, because of the volume of its advertising. Benson says, “They are tremendous ambassadors for brands in the Middle East, and in terms of making them all feel so much more premium and luxurious, they have been very good at getting across those qualities in all the things that they do. They’ve been very consistent about it.”

Other notable no-shows on the list are companies such as Mars and Facebook, which are privately held and therefore don’t have their finances listed publicly, making it hard to put dollar values to them.

When Facebook goes public, as it plans to late next year, it’s a safe bet it will be on the Interbrand list of the 100 most valuable brands in the world. Time will tell if it will be joined by any from this region.

– Turn the page to see the list in full.

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NOVEMBER 2011 | BRANDING

BEST GLOBAL BRANDS 2011 The most valuable brands in the world according to the Interbrand survey described on the preceding pages. The increase/decrease numbers shown represent the percentage change in brand value since last year's list was published.

01

+2% 71,861 $M

02

+8% 69,905 $M

03

-3% 59,087 $M

04

+27% 55,317 $M

05

0% 42,808 $M

06

+6% 35,593 $M

07

+10% 35,217 $M

08

+58% 33,492 $M

09

+1% 29,018 $M

10

+6% 28,479 $M

11

+6% 27,764 $M

12

+9% 27,445 $M

13

+9% 25,309 $M

14

-15% 25,071 $M

15

+10% 24,554 $M

16

+3% 23,997 $M

17

+20% 23,430 $M

18

+6% 23,172 $M

19

+5% 19,431 $M

20

+16% 17,262 $M

21

+2% 16,459 $M

22

+4% 14,590 $M

23

+5% 14,572 $M

24

+14% 14,542 $M

25

+6% 14,528 $M

26

+32% 12,758 $M

27

+6% 12,536 $M

28

+1% 12,437 $M

29

0% 12,252 $M

30

-5% 12,115 $M

31

-5% 11,863 $M

32

+2% 11,792 $M

33

+2% 11,715 $M

34

+3% 11,372 $M

35

-13% 9,880 $M

36

+16% 9,805 $M

37

+6% 9,515 $M

38

-3% 9,091 $M

39

+5% 8,763 $M

40

+9% 8,699 $M

41

0% 8,658 $M

42

-3% 8,620 $M

43

-6% 8,347 $M

44

+8% 8,065 $M

45

+27% 8,005 $M

46

+8% 7,900 $M

47

+14% 7,857 $M

48

-14% 7,731 $M

49

+1% 7,609 $M

50

+4% 7,483 $M

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BRANDING | NOVEMBER 2011

51

+3% 7,127 $M

52

+9% 6,936 $M

53

0% 6,694 $M

54

-4% 6,634 $M

55

+1% 6,613 $M

56

-5% 6,424 $M

57

+5% 6,414 $M

58

-5% 6,383 $M

59

+13% 6,171 $M

60

+12% 6,154 $M

61

+19% 6,005 $M

62

+1% 5,902 $M

63

-3% 5,604 $M

64

+19% 5,598 $M

65

+6% 5,376 $M

66

+12% 5,356 $M

67

+9% 5,345 $M

68

+5% 5,088 $M

69

+16% 5,047 $M

70

+18% 4,781 $M

71

+3% 4,672 $M

72

+4% 4,580 $M

73

+9% 4,498 $M

74

+12% 4,483 $M

75

+12% 4,478 $M

76

-11% 4,413 $M

77

+9% 4,383 $M

78

+7% 4,319 $M

79

+1% 4,259 $M

80

+15% 4,170 $M

81

+3% 4,092 $M

82

+2% 4,090 $M

83

-2% 4,072 $M

84

+2% 4,040 $M

85

+10% 3,945 $M

86

+2% 3,924 $M

87

+64% 3,883 $M

88

+8% 3,842 $M

89

+6% 3,841 $M

90

NEW 3,819 $M

91

+8% 3,809 $M

92

0% 3,799 $M

93

+10% 3,794 $M

94

+8% 3,769 $M

95

+20% 3,732 $M

96

+10% 3,663 $M

97

NEW 3,651 $M

98

NEW 3,605$M

99

+1% 3,591 $M

100

+7% 3,512 $M

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NOVEMBER 2011 | DIGITAL

10 startups to watch

Ad Age’s experts check out the hottest new dotcoms to hit the market Gazehawk By turning webcams into eye-tracking devices, startup can tell where people are looking online and for how long by David Teicher Remember the last time you clicked on a banner ad? Me neither. Online is the most measurable medium, but we’re still largely allocating ad dollars based on raw impressions or clicks.

But what if you could know what people are looking at when they watch their screens? Eyetracking, of course, has been used by advertisers, agencies and TV networks for years, but it requires expensive technology and specialized facilities.

That’s the problem being tackled by GazeHawk, which has built eye-tracking technology that can be used with any webcam.

For the display-ad business, this kind of analysis can be incredibly valuable, showing creatives exactly which part of the unit catches people’s attention – regardless of whether they click.

GazeHawk has its own testers, and will deliver a signature “heatmap” that details where people are looking and for how long. Alternatively, publishers or agencies could recruit their own panels or offer site visitors incentives to participate.

A note on the inherent creepiness of all this: Co-founder Joe Gershenson, who developed the technology as a grad student at Carnegie Mellon, stresses GazeHawk is 100 percent opt-in. The software first has to be calibrated with the user’s eye movements, so no video or recording can take place accidentally or without consent.

Millward Brown and IPG Labs have already worked with GazeHawk, as have Mozilla and Bell Canada’s Sympatico.ca.

Glympse Taking location-based services a step further, startup incorporates the use of a real-time map, time-limit component by Irina Slutsky Check-in apps such as Foursquare made location exhibitionism all the rage, but someone wants to take it further, and that’s where Glympse comes in. Glympse allows users to show their location and update their geostatus on a real-time dynamic map. The visibility of the user’s location can be set to a time limit, expiring after a designated period. The time limit and the friends-only settings are there. But how can brands use this technology?

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Glympse CEO Bryan Trussel sees Glympse as an obvious next step for marketers who want to move from one-way communication to having real-time physical interactions with consumers.

After all, a retailer with a bricks-and-mortar store or one that sells products such as cars or houses will want the consumer physically present during at least a portion of the sale.

“We’re bridging the gap between the digital and the physical world,” Trussel says. “If the brand has an event or an activity, it’s a great way to have location interaction, and this can be applied to celebrities, road shows, events or concerts.”

Investors seem to agree – Glympse raised $7.5 million Series B funding this summer.

Trussel says Glympse has been approached by “many global brand-name companies – everything from mobile operators to car manufacturers to event organizers.” Glympse was expected to announce a partnership with an automaker at Ad Age’s Digital West conference. “For the first time in history, people can share their location with other people in real time,” Trussel says.

“We saw an opportunity to make it very simple and clear and fun for consumers.”

© Getty/Gallo Images

© Getty/Gallo Images

DIGITAL | NOVEMBER 2011

Percolate A Twitter- and RSS-filtering formula serves up an automatic content brew that’s customized to consumer needs by Jason Del Rey Does the world really need another content-curation tool? Another blogging platform? Another contentdiscovery site? And all of this rolled into one product? Noah Brier and James Gross, co-founders of New York-based Percolate, are betting yes.

Brier, a former Barbarian Group exec, and Gross, a Federated Media veteran, launched Percolate this year with the goal of surfacing compelling content from users’ online networks and then presenting that content back to the user to comment on.

Percolate mines an individual’s Twitter and RSS feeds (and, soon, Tumblr) for repeated links and then uses an algorithm to surface content that is meant to both be timely and represent the user’s individuality, among other things.

While building a consumer platform is the goal, Percolate is funding its development by licensing out its application programming interface (API) as a content-curation engine to brands, agencies and media companies for $10,000 to $20,000 a month.

The startup also helps brands decide which sources to mine. Reuters launched Counterparties.com, a news-aggregation site powered by Percolate, earlier this month. And General Electric will begin to publish links to Percolate-surfaced stories on Healthymagination.com’s blog in October. The goal is to complement the longer-form “stock” content already on the blog with a “flow” of quickhitting- related content from the Web. “There’s always going to be great content online,” says Linda Boff, executive director of

global digital marketing at GE, “but finding ways to be certain that the content being served is ultra relevant, is niche, is current. … I just felt like they were on to something as soon as I heard about it.”

Miso Social TV app lets viewers share what they’re watching, chat with other fans, or answer trivia by Kunur Patel There are already a gaggle of social-TV applications born off the check-in boom: Open up an app in front of the tube, tell your social networks what you’re watching, and see all the chatter stream in.

What we like about Miso, one of many social TV apps founded last spring, is that it recently hooked up with DirecTV so that your set-top box can tell your smartphone what you’re watching through a home Wi-Fi network. (Miso has a similar deal with French set-top-box manufacturer Netgem.)

That means no searching in an app to find a show, or activating listening technology to sync the app with what’s on-screen. After that, viewers can share what they’re watching to social networks, chat with other viewers, or answer trivia.

So far, the San Francisco-based startup has raised a little less than $2 million in funding from investors such as Google Ventures, Hearst and YouTube cofounder Jawed Karim. What’s next? A tool to create social apps to supplement Miso’s own service. Miso will be releasing a platform so anyone – a celebrity, a superfan, a network – can build a mobile companion to a show or movie.

“For the last year, you’ve seen networks say, ‘This is the [social-TV] experience people want,’” says Miso co-founder-CEO Somrat Niyogi. “Turns out we’re all wrong. Only the fans know what they want.”

That has a lot to do with how differently individuals experience TV, he adds. Think about how you watch X Factor (say, for the music) versus how your spouse watches (perhaps for gossip on the contestants). With the coming Miso platform, there could be apps for both.

Want The ability to gather and find the objects of consumers’ desires makes this a mobile application retailers might, well, want by Irina Slutsky Could Want kill the ubiquitous like button? Some tech sites are predicting it might. More likely, it will take the idea behind the Facebook feature to another level. The function of the app is simple: Take a photo of the item you desire and share it through geo-located photographs.

Users can follow other people’s wants and search through curated lists of wanted items based on filters such as popularity or location.

The founder of Want is Gene DeRose, former CEO of Jupiter Communications, who has some experience working with marketers. Obviously, he thinks Want is a natural fit. “What’s great for advertisers, marketers, retailers and publishers is that Want keeps track of interactions around products, goods and services, and attaches that interaction to neighborhoods and venues,” he says. In his vision, advertising on Want is targeted based on

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NOVEMBER 2011 | DIGITAL

stated desires. “We haven’t introduced anything like banners, but we bring value to consumers through highly targeted offers based on their lists of wants.”

Like a lot of startups in these pages, Want has yet to see any revenue, but it is working on partnerships with a number of US national retailers.

“We are creating co-branded versions of wants for certain retailers and brands that fit really well into this model,” DeRose says, adding that, for example, Barney’s could curate a list of ties or shoes and users could follow Barney’s lists.

An easy fit for the Want app are deals and offers based on users’ want lists and their real-time locations. “Soon, when I open the app in TriBeca, the app knows who I am and what I want, so it’s going to give me fine-tuned offers based on that information,” says DeRose.

“Our philosophy is to follow people’s actions [where they’re] really putting money where their mouths are,” says Bundle CEO Jaidev Shergill. Microsoft and Morningstar are also investors. “If we can map out the DNA of spending in a city, where all the money is going, and every merchant’s spending DNA, we can get at information that’s a lot more pure.”

There’s also a Mint.com personal-finance tool to visualize spending in addition to the Yelp-like city guide that’s slicing and dicing millions of transactions to look at a different kind of data-driven loyalty.

Instead of the never clear dollar-sign system, where more dollars equal bigger bills, Bundle presents the average check size at local establishments. Keep in mind that you can’t tell if two people or 10 dined at once, but Bundle’s betting that it all evens out in the end.

Bundle

Luminate

Sidestepping emotional reviews, venture looks at loyalty by numbers by Kunur Patel We’ve all been there: Faced with a wall of gushingly positive and raving-mad Yelp reviews, you can’t help but wonder how socialmedia active a restaurateur’s family or foes might be. While user-generated reviews have become the new, not-always-fail-safe norm in finding local businesses, a Citi Ventures-backed startup is looking at loyalty by the numbers. Side-stepping the emotion and potential bias in reviews, Bundle looks at aggregate data from 20 million anonymous Visa and Mastercard credit cards to show the restaurants, bars and shops where consumers like to spend their money again and again.

Here’s how it works: Bundle determines a “loyalty score” based on the number of repeat purchases, share of customer spending and relative popularity for each business. Only those locales with 25 or more customers are eligible.

Company’s mission: “make images more interactive” on Web by Jason Del Rey There are more than 3 trillion images on the Web, Luminate executives like to say. And while the diversity of those images is enormous, there’s no straightforward way to identify and capitalize on the contents of those images. Enter Luminate. Launched as Pixazza three years ago by Jim Everingham, the company’s mission sounds simple: “to make images more interactive,” as chief revenue officer Chas Edwards put it.

But in practice, it’s anything but simple.

Luminate uses a combination of image-recognition software and human research to tag products and attributes found within images on the Internet.

Luminate then partners with online publishers to carry a single line of Javascript on their sites that overlays images with product carousels that link to products for sale on external sites similar to those found in the photo.

Brand advertisers and merchants can partner with Luminate in four ways: with a product carousel takeover, a carousel sponsorship, an appearance as a featured merchant or with a visually-targeted banner ad within the carousel.

More than 5,000 sites carry Luminate-enhanced images, including AccessHollywood.com and Goal. com, according to Edwards, previously chief revenue officer of Digg and co-founder of Federated Media.

Luminate, based in Mountain View, California, also recently launched apps within images that allow readers to share an image, a section of an image, or even an annotated image from a publisher’s site out to their social networks.

LocalResponse Location-based network works with GM, Verizon and others by Kunur Patel With millions of consumers voluntarily broadcasting their whereabouts, here’s an ad network that plans to reach them based on location, regardless of what medium they are using. So far, LocalResponse has only ramped up Twitter: It will send ad messages to consumers when they check in or Tweet where they are.

In a recent campaign, for example, when people checked in to universities, LocalResponse sent them a back-to-school offer from Microsoft.

But the goal is a location-based ad network that’s inventory-agnostic. LocalResponse will shortly add to the Twitter check-in a geo-targeted mobile banner ad, a text message or a message on a digital billboard.

Although those channels aren’t yet off the ground, founder Nihal Mehta, a former adman who evolved his last startup Buzzd into LocalResponse, has managed to wrangle marketers such as General Motors, USA Networks, Aveda, Coca-Cola and Verizon to test the six-month-old product.

At Buzzd, a location-based mobile app that used check-in data to suss out where people were

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swarming, Mehta raised $4 million. Since then he’s raised $2 million more for LocalResponse.

Tapad Ads that follow you everywhere? By using device signatures instead of cookie tracking, it’s now possible to retarget across mobile

by Jason Del Rey Ad retargeting is no longer a new practice in online display advertising, though it is getting more and more popular. But retargeting across mobile browsers and mobile apps is much less common and much more difficult. Tapad, founded in New York City last year by former Thumbplay CEO Are Traasdahl, says it has figured out a way to do it and is making a bid to become a mobileretargeting force.

The company supplements cookie-tracking with other user information, such as device signatures, to track users as they travel from mobile browsers to apps and vice versa. Tapad also works with partnering publishers (2,500 to date) to acquire more information that can help track a single user.

Tapad launched its first campaigns with advertising clients about seven months ago, and the results have been encouraging.

“We originally thought advertisers would test into this with $15, $20, $25,000 monthly budgets and then we’d go back to building on the technology from what we learned,” says company founder and CEO Traasdahl. “But it’s been very different; we’re seeing campaigns that are $100,000, $200,000, $300,000.”

Traasdahl says he expects Tapad to bring in more than $20 million in revenue in its first year of campaigns.

Most advertisers buy in on a CPM basis, though cost-per-action campaigns are possible. “We’re able to deliver great results for advertisers,” Traasdahl claims, “but we’re also able to bring the CPM up for publishers.”

The next platform Tapad hopes to tackle? TV.

Zaarly Capitalism goes to its logical extreme with this social marketplace, which makes everything around become for sale by Irina Slutsky Zaarly co-founder Bo Fishback found the inspiration for his company waiting for a flight at an airport, frustrated that he had no way to offer a crowd of passengers money to switch seats with him. “The idea behind Zaarly is that everything around you is for sale and nothing is off limits,” Fishback says.

“At its core, Zaarly is the ultimate demand engine and anyone who sells stuff or services wants to be on the other end of that funnel.”

Zaarly is a social marketplace designed to get users what they’re looking for, whether that be goods, services or experiences. Users can also offer up their own services or goods into the local ether and wait for someone to bite – kind of a “reverse Groupon” or “reverse Craigslist.” And as Fishback says, anything goes – from a user offering money for restaurant reservations to another user selling interpretation services while traveling. Fishback says that one very motivated seller of services has earned $5,000 in five weeks.

Zaarly’s investors are impressive – they include TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington and actor Ashton Kutcher – and the company has been getting tons of press, but Fishback believes that this kind of two-way commerce site can outlast the hype.

“To brands and advertisers Zaarly means access to the local peer-to-peer marketplace,” he says, adding that he’s been approached by several big-box retailers to see how Zaarly technology can work for them. “For any company selling products [that] needs services for that product, we can bundle that for them,” Fishback says. “We’ve been approached by ticketing agencies and event organizers who want to get access to these local n economies and communities.”

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Seven things about social TV

No longer seen as passive consumers, viewers have the power to transform TV by Simon Dumenco 1. TV OWNS SOCIAL. For more than two years now, AdAge.com has had an editorial partnership with Trendrr, the social-media-monitoring company. Trendrr, which was born in 2006 as Infofilter, grew out of Wiredset, a Manhattan digital-marketing agency founded by Mark Ghuneim and Tom Donohue in 2004 (the same year Mark Zuckerberg was launching what was then TheFacebook.com out of his Harvard dorm room, and two years before Twitter fluttered to life).

Ad Age partnered with Trendrr to create weekly online charts of rising and falling Tweet volume surrounding memes that were dominating Twitter conversations. Back in the summer of 2009, we tracked everything from Sonia Sotomayor (then a nominee for the Supreme Court) to Glee to Major League Baseball to True Blood.

Over time it dawned on us that more than anything else TV was driving social. Sotomayor would trend on Twitter only when her confirmation hearings were being televised; a specific team would trend because it was doing great (or sucking) in the game being broadcast at that very moment on ESPN; during prime-time hours in the US and the UK, Twitter’s trending topics list would be all but taken over by TV-related chatter. You could get a real-time take on Glee viewers’ level of delight over the most deliciously nasty things uttered by Jane Lynch’s Sue Syl-

vester character because fans would dutifully thumb-type their favorite bits of dialogue right into their Twitter streams. (In fact, it started to seem like Glee writers were writing as much for Twitter as for TV.) Over the past couple of years, Trendrr has tightened its focus on TV – even launching Trendrr. tv specifically to serve the TV industry. Today, 14 of the top 25 TV networks are Trendrr.tv data customers, and as the social-TV business has exploded, Ad Age has also started editorial partnerships (to generate charticles for AdAge. com) with other emerging players in the space, including Bluefin Labs a Cambridge, Mass.based outgrowth of the MIT Media Lab that is building a broadcast-meets-social database it calls the TV Genome project, and Manhattanbased entertainment check-in service GetGlue.

“Social TV could not be heating up more,” says Ghuneim, “because engagement is really starting to map to currency.” The networks that “get it,” he adds, “are using the social graph to measure the effectiveness of their marketing spend, for real-time audience research to understand the demographics of their viewers, to be smarter about how production dollars are spent and what content will resonate. And especially to demonstrate to advertisers the value of the network off the network.”

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concurrent users logging on to the system. It was really cool to watch.”

4. SOCIAL TV IS A FORM OF SELF-EXPRESSION – AND A FORM OF PEER-TO-PEER PEER-PRESSURE MARKETING. “What we’ve learned since launching GetGlue,” says CEO Alex Iskold, “is that entertainment is an incredibly emotional experience for people and the reason that people love checking in is because it’s a gesture of self expression. It’s people saying, ‘I’m a diehard True Blood fan, and that’s a really important thing to me, it really matters to me, and that show gets into my head and gets into my soul.’”

A network can drown you in endless promos for a new show it wants you to watch; maybe you’ll succumb, maybe you won’t. But the influence of social-media messaging about that show from a friend whose taste you trust can’t be underestimated. An enthusiastic Tweet about Ringer is not only an endorsement of the show, but an implicit call to action; it says, “This is what you’re missing out on.”

reshaping TV. People are more likely to Tweet about shows such as Psych when viewing 2. SOCIAL TV IS, AT ITS CORE, INCREDIBLY OLDFASHIONED. Social TV is about watching TV with other people – think of “’50s-era family and friends gathered around an old Magnavox console to catch I Love Lucy. Only now the living room has gone national. (Get your feet off the coffee table, Texas.)

3. TWITTER IS DEFINITELY NOT THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN WHEN IT COMES TO SOCIAL TV. Consider GetGlue, which launched in June of last year. This past August, it hit a high of 11.5 million checkins, driven by partnerships with big broadcast and cable networks from ABC and Fox to Showtime and HBO. (The summer’s most popular show on GetGlue was True Blood with 490,787 total check-ins.)

TVGuide.com, which built its own sitespecific check-in service and launched it last October, recently surpassed 4 million check-ins and is averaging 20,000 per day just from its user base. General Manager Christy Tanner says that to date TVGuide.com has sold 45 sponsorships to both network and non-network advertisers – from ABC to Starbucks – eager to engage with a deeply engaged audience.

And more and more networks are building their own social destinations. At USA Network, says vice-president of digital Jesse Redniss, more than 300,000 unique visitors came to its Character Chatter platform – at characterchatter.usanetwork. com – this summer to discuss USA shows including Burn Notice and Psych. When USA broadcast a Burn Notice marathon and ran Character Chatter posts on an on-screen crawl, “That was a big ‘a-ha’ moment for us because we saw 35,000

5. SOCIAL TV HAS SLOWED DOWN TIME-SHIFTING FOR SOME OF TV’S BIGGEST SHOWS. “We did a survey of our 10,000-person TV-fan panel last year,” says TVGuide.com’s Tanner, “and what we found is that 20 percent of them say they are watching more live TV specifically to avoid “social spoilers.’”

6. SOCIAL TV IS NOT PRIMARILY ABOUT PREDICTING HITS. Some of the big shows premiering this fall already have great social buzz; ABC’s Once Upon a Time, which wasn’t even due to air its first episode until October, had more than 100,000 likes on Facebook weeks in advance. What does that tell us? That ABC is doing a good job promoting it and that the fantasy-drama theme conveyed in the promos is resonating with potential viewers.

And that’s it.

“Merely tracking the volume of buzz,” says Bluefin Labs vice-president of marketing and business development, Tom Thai, “without a deeper analysis of other factors, is very rudimentary.”

What matters is context; once a show gets traction, what else can the viewers who are chattering about it tell us about their other preferences as consumers? “If you’re a CMO for an automaker versus wireless carrier versus laundry detergent,” says Thai, “your audiences and needs will be different. The key next step is marrying social-TV data about the shows with data about specific brands.”

7. THE COUCH POTATO IS A DYING BREED. Remember when TV viewers were seen as passive consumers? The minimal effort required to operate a remote control (and open a drink and a bag of Cheetos) meant that sitting on the couch and taking in a few of your favorite shows made you a “couch potato.” Funny how the addition of just another small device – the smartphone – to the mix has transformed the couch potato into a superfan/social-marketer/programmer with the power to transform TV.

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Watching the watchers

If this is targeting, marketers – not privacy hawks – should fret. Advertisers don’t know much about me by Matthew Creamer

A

OL and MSN thought I might like a Nissan Versa. Yahoo agreed, and, wondering if I might be suffering from Crohn’s disease, asked if I wanted some Humira. Maybe I could wash it down with some of the Sunkist being pushed

by YouTube. Amazon thought I needed either a new Discover or an American Express. And there was a general feeling trailing me around the Internet that I might have use for pills that will slim me down, shakes that will bulk me up and stocks that cost half a handful of pennies.

If the Internet advertising business understands me correctly, then I am a sugary-drink-swilling, spendthrift sucker with a yen for new wheels and a body-image problem or two.

Happily, it doesn’t.

After two days of paying close attention to what I was being sold as I wandered around the Internet, it’s my conclusion that, despite the loud cries of digital-privacy advocates, online advertisers don’t know nearly as much about us as we have been led to believe. Or, if they do, they have a funny way of showing it.

As the immersion-journalism schtick goes, spending two days examining every online ad that crossed my path may not sound particularly taxing. But have you ever done it? Unless you’re

afflicted by some rare and particularly insidious version of Asperger’s, all but the most garish, interruptive online ads probably fly right by you. Odds are that you don’t click on them or notice them or share them or talk about them around the water cooler. For most of us, Internet advertising is more an idea or a concept or a budget to be modeled than an experience. But there’s a big gulf between how online advertising is talked about and how it’s experienced.

FROM AD TO INFORMATION. Read the press around this multibillion-dollar industry and you’re led to believe that every marketer knows enough about your demographic profile and your behavior to anticipate your desire and serve up a marketing communication so hyper-relevant it transcends its status as an ad and becomes something like information. And how you feel about that probably depends on how you view privacy. Is personal information sacrosanct or is it something that can be given up in dribs and drabs to fund all the free activity going on online and to get pitches from brands less likely to waste your time and attention?

It may, indeed, be the case that we’re slouching toward some Minority Report-like reality,

but after 48 hours spent looking hard at online ads, stopping to track every impression I made for an advertiser and understand what relation, if any, it might bear to my personal information, I felt anything but paranoid. Quite the contrary – the experience was underwhelming.

I was served up course after course of ads that felt generally irrelevant and untargeted and not only did nothing to stoke consumer demand but possibly smothered it. For all the highly-touted targeted technologies, I didn’t feel the crosshairs on me any more than when I watch an average prime-time TV commercial break, and at least that’s trying to tell stories, forge relationships and spark demand. The general sense of the experience was a less bittersweet version of a common post-high-school realization: “They really didn’t know me, did they?”

LOOSE DEFINITION. I catalogued about 200 impressions, from small banner ads, to pre-roll video spots, to rich-media ads, to sponsored links, to search ads, to social ads. By my count, no more than 10 percent of them were relevant – and I use the term loosely. I counted as relevant anything that didn’t have me pegged in some clearly incorrect way and, of course, search ads.

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For example: Even though I’m not particularly in the market for a cellphone, car or credit card, I counted those as relevant. It’s not unreasonable to think that the right deal might get me in a buying mood. Going into the irrelevant column were ads useful to someone with a particular horrifying medical condition that I don’t have, or to a woman.

In looking at the relevant ads, I didn’t have the feeling that any of the come-ons were based on any particular knowledge of me. Regardless of what media you’re talking about, companies that market cellphones, credit cards and cars make a ton of ads. Spend enough time in any medium, targeted or not, and you’ll likely hit on some of them.

Only a handful of ads seemed clearly based on my interests or my browser or search history.

One was an ad from Airbnb.com that kept pace with me on a few sites, urging me to book a night or two in Paris, a trip I had actually been researching. This ad popped up in a few places, including as an overlay on a Beyonce video on YouTube. The second offered a heavy discount for language lessons based on the Pimsleur approach. This was indeed something I’d been Googling around for and, after spotting and clicking on the discreet little text ad, I scooped

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up some French lessons for just $9.99 – shipping included. That would be my only purchase and my only consideration of purchase. The other clearly “interest-based ads,” as the industry refers to behavioral targeting, were for distinctly unoutrageous sales-pitch things such as American Express business cards.

BODY OF PROOF. Ads that appeared on social networks weren’t any better. Among the ads shown to me on Facebook were those for TV series seemingly made for women, including one for Body of Proof, featuring this snippet: “Beauty. Brains. Bodies. Dany [sic] Delany has it all.” Yes, Dana Delany has it all, including a misspelled name in a Facebook ad. Other Facebook ads pimped a toenail-fungus study, the Bowflex, various musical and dance performances, and MBA programs for any number of business schools. None of these things seemed to reflect any knowledge derived from my Facebook profile and feed, which should provide any marketer with an abundance of information about me to really be able to muck around in my wants and needs.

Whether on Facebook or Yahoo, or some sports-dedicated content farm, the advertising I experienced was no more a mirror of my de-

sires than the usual spots on late-night TV, and a hell of a lot less interesting. If all of this is a wholesale invasion of privacy, then it is an invasion of the most banal sort.

And that feeling didn’t depend on whether I allowed advertisers to track me or if I clicked the do-not-track box on my Firefox browser and generally opted out of tracking where possible.

(I did this for about 100 of the impressions I kept track of – and yes, I know that these anti-tracking tools aren’t acknowledged by all websites.) The experiences in each context, whether tracked by behavioral targeting techniques or not, were overwhelmingly similar, leading me to doubt that we’re anywhere near the nightmare that many privacy advocates have imagined.

And if we are nearing some sort of dystopia where privacy has been eviscerated, then I don’t see hints in the quotidian business of going around the Web. I don’t doubt there are many investigative pieces waiting to be written on abuses of consumer data, a very real concern.

But one would assume that an outcome of all this stalking would be to sell stuff and I can tell you that, in my very subjective, short-term, samplesize-of-one experiment, that wasn’t the case.

Not only did Internet advertising not feel scary, it didn’t feel particularly effective, either.

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The right choice?

Is Google’s Larry Page already turning out to be a truly great CEO? by Simon Dumenco

F

acebook pretty much sucked all the air out of the Internet in September – at least the part of the Internet dominated by tech blogs that ran a zillion speculative posts in advance of Facebook’s F8 developers’ conference, and then another zillion or two post-game.

But I bet there’s one person who didn’t mind Facebook’s turn in the white-hot spotlight: Google CEO Larry Page. For one thing, much of the spin leading up to F8 was that Facebook is in defensive, throw-it-at-the-wall-and-see-if-it-sticks mode. As Mike Elgan put it in a widely-shared Sept. 15 Datamation column titled “Why Facebook is the new Yahoo,” Facebook’s current strategy “appears to be: Just copy Google+. …

This copying of Google+ and integration with third-party services smacks of desperation and lack of vision. All of these scattershot changes erode Facebook’s identity, and make the service even more complex and confusing.”

Meanwhile, over at Google, Page – who is coming up on his six-month anniversary as Eric Schmidt’s successor – has had laser-like focus on both reviving Google’s entrepreneurial culture and strengthening its core businesses. Early on in his tenure he made social-media integration (that’s the real value of fledgling Google+) a major priority (see also: Google’s announcement at Ad Age’s

Digital West conference that ads distributed on Google’s Display Ad Network will soon include +1 buttons) along with extending Google’s reach in mobile (see: Google’s gutsy, controversial acquisition of Motorola Mobility, not to mention its launch recently of Google Wallet).

But almost as striking is the extent to which Page has brought clarity to Google in announcing the shutdown of Google Labs, Aardvark, Slide, Fast Flip and other side projects that were offering little or no return on resource investment.

Meanwhile, Google has been rolling out subtle, smart user-interface streamlining of its remaining suite of products, from Google Docs to the publishing back-end for Blogger.

Since Page took Google’s reins in April, the pace of change and innovation at the company has been truly breathtaking. Think about it: Is there any tech company other than Apple that is firing on as many cylinders as Page’s Google?

Remember that Eric Schmidt was brought on board as CEO 10 years ago by Google co-founders Page and Sergey Brin to be the “adult” in the room (it’s hard to imagine, but Google was just a toddler – 3 years old – in 2001, and Page and Brin were both just 28). But in less than six months at the reins, Larry Page has shown a level of decisiveness and leadership that I don’t

think anybody saw coming from the famously nerdy introvert.

Showmanship doesn’t come naturally to him – he annoyed Wall Street by speaking just a few minutes on his very first earnings call as CEO – but he may have exactly the right sort of communication skills needed within Google, given the way it’s structured. As Ad Age digital editor Michael Learmonth put it to me recently, “It would be fascinating if what we learn from Google is an entirely new style of executive leadership that actually works for tech,” citing Page’s need to interact effectively with the power-geek “mini-Larry” types that loom large at the company, including YouTube boss Salar Kamangar and product-management/engineering chief Susan Wojcicki.

Google has huge challenges ahead of it: The long-term success of Google+ is by no means assured, it’s mired in an ongoing Android patent battle with Oracle and it’s facing rising antitrust scrutiny in the US, Europe and Asia. But when you look around at the tech-CEO landscape – especially in the wake of Carol Bartz’s ouster at Yahoo and Reed Hastings’ baffling moves at Netflix – who else could you imagine steering Google’s ship better than (surprise, surprise) Larry Page?

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NOVEMBER 2011 | DIGITAL

Reinventing Web measurement

Marketers, media commpanies and industry bodies come together to try and establish a workable currency by Jack Neff

O

nline measurement is broken. Few would dispute that. But how to fix it? Three of the biggest advertising trade organizations in the US are banding together with 40 marketers, agencies and publishers to give it another try.

They’re launching a new effort dubbed “3MS,” short for “Making Measurement Make Sense,” to create new standards for how digital advertising is measured, bought and sold – aiming to have digital ads measured in ways easily comparable to other media, and creating a level playing field that’s never existed through 16 years of online advertising.

Among changes to be tested: Redefining an online ad impression from any ad served to a screen to counting only impressions where at least half the ad is visible for at least a second.

Developing a third-party online audiencemeasurement system that can be used as a currency in media deals, akin to what TV, radio and print have long had.

Defining a common set of online display and video ad formats to give buyers a better idea of they types of inventory that exist and what value they should command.

“Making Measurement Make Sense” is a US-based project of the Association of National Advertisers, Interactive Advertising Bureau and 4As, along with an impressive list of backers, including Google, AT&T, Coca-Cola, CBS, Group M, ESPN, Omnicom, Microsoft, Starcom MediaVest Group, The New York Times and others.

The Newspaper Association of America and Online Publishers Association is also involved.

Audience-based deals have gone from almost half the US online ad market in 2006 to only a third last year. One reason is lack of confidence in audience measures. Most cost-per-thousand (CPM) deals have been done based on publishers’ server logs, not independent measurement systems such as ComScore or Nielsen, according to the IAB. (Source: Internet Advertising Bureau, PriceWaterhouseCoopers.)

“Digital, which we always thought was going to be the most measurable medium, turned out to be the least measurable,” says ANA CEO Bob Liodice. “It’s bad for the digital industry because marketers are gun shy from not understanding the rate of return.”

Arguably, digital media has always offered better data than others for some marketers and uses – such as click through and other performance metrics. But it hasn’t offered the precision in audience measurement that brand advertisers need to compare the effectiveness of digital ads to other media, Liodice says.

Helping with the 3MS project has been the Media Ratings Council, which accredits and oversees TV and radio ratings from Nielsen and Arbitron, and has accredited digital audience measurement by Quantcast (for overall audience numbers, but not demographic breakdowns) and Nielsen (for online “gross rating points”).

But another offshoot of the 3MS initiative is likely to be a new body independent from

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any industry stakeholders to oversee issues with digital media measurement, Liodice says.

Discussions about 3MS began among leaders of the three industry groups late last year, leading them to hire Bain & Co. and Medialink as consultants to develop a roadmap in February.

After announcing a set of principles to guide the effort in June, 3MS plans to launch the pilots during the first quarter of 2012.

The plan is to wrap up the pilots by the second quarter and, assuming they go as planned, move to an industry-wide “soft launch” of the new standards before the end of next year, says Sherrill Mane, senior vice-president of industry services for the IAB. In that soft launch, the new standards would operate alongside existing ones for an indefinite period to find and work out any other kinks.

Mane compares the soft-launch process to the adoption of people meters to replace written diaries for measuring TV and radio audiences.

While the new standards have considerable potential for creating winners and losers among research vendors and media, each pilot will be open to all parties willing and able to participate. “We can’t be in the business of creating a monopoly,” says one person familiar with the process.

But industry standards and certifications have ultimately helped produce monopolies in media audience currencies – Nielsen in TV, Arbitron in radio, and the industry’s Audit Bureau of Circulations for print.

Nielsen recently became the first researcher to get MRC certification for its new TV-style online gross ratings points (GRP) system, including demographic ratings.

Mane, however, pointed out that MRCcertified systems from Quantcast and Nielsen were based on the existing impression standard of the ad being served, and would need to

be re-evaluated should the industry shift to the new, stricter impression standard to be piloted.

One key issue in testing the new impression standard is whether available technology can effectively measure viewership of 50 percent of an ad for one second on a computer screen, she says.

Liodice compared the new online-impression standard to Nielsen C3 TV ratings, which count commercial audiences only for programs viewed live or on DVR within three days. As with C3, Liodice says, “We may not get all the way to perfect, but we may come up with something that is reasonably close.”

Mobile and social-media measurement are also on the 3MS agenda longer term, Liodice says. “My sense is that mobile will be less difficult than social.”

While better audience measurement could lead to more ad dollars coming into digital, Liodice says, he adds “there are no guarantees.” Ultimately, analysis based on better audience data could lead to digital proving less effective than other media, or only certain formats on certain sites performing well, driving revenue up for some but down for others.

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NOVEMBER 2011 | DEPARTMENTS

Why fans unfriend you on Facebook

Examining a DDB/OpinionWay survey of why users in six countries “like” brands by Ann Marie Kerwin

T

he top reason worldwide Facebook users stop following a brand is because it is “no longer of interest to me” or “the information available was not interesting.” Those are the kind of break-up statements that sting. After all, what brand wants to be boring on the world’s most-engaging platform?

A new survey from DDB Paris – part of DDB Worldwide – and OpinionWay titled “Who Are the Brand Likers?” explores consumer motivations in becoming fans of brands. This is the second study of its kind, following a similar DDB Paris/OpinionWay study last fall, offering an indepth look at the changing attitudes and habits of Facebook fans in the US, UK and France, and shedding new light on fans in Germany, Turkey and Malaysia. The survey is also the basis of the latest white paper from Ad Age Insights, “The Evolution of Facebook Brand Fans.”

Based on a new survey by DDB and OpinionWay, this white paper looks at the changing attitudes and habits of Facebook fans in six countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Turkey and Malaysia.

Attitudes toward privacy concerns as well as features such as games, Facebook Places, messaging and shopping are also explored.

First, the bad news: Fans in the US, the UK and France are following fewer brands; are less likely to press Like, post on a brand’s wall or recommend it to friends; less inclined to participate in brand pages’ games, events and competitions; and, truth be told, would like to hear less from marketers altogether. (This goes double for France.) Facebook fatigue may be a myth, but Facebook brand fatigue is looking all too real.

“Engagement on Facebook brands’ walls is down 22 percent,” says Michael Scissons, CEO of social-media software and services firm Syncapse. “But declining engagement has less to do with brand fatigue in general than with marketers doing a bad job and shoving boring [content] at consumers.”

LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR. Marketers may have only themselves to blame. To boost the number of fans, many “went for the lowest common denominator, which was free stuff,” says Sarah Hofstetter, senior vice-president for emerging media and brand strategy at 360i. “And so consumers began expecting the freebies. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

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T N E D I S S I D GMR

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THE ARAB SPRING IS A DEFINING MOMENT THAT IS CHANGING THE RULES FOR CONSUMER MARKETING IN THE MIDDLE EAST.

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They are dissident consumers, and learning to live with this new reality is key to brand survival in the Arab World.

In a one-day workshop Gulf Marketing Review (GMR) offers insight, strategy and crisis planning expertise for when it all goes wrong. It looks at those brands that are successfully riding the wave of popular consumer opinion and those that aren’t. Packed with case studies, live campaigns, exclusive research and expert analysis, make this workshop your day of action.

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NOVEMBER 2011 | DIGITAL

© http://www.quickdraw.me/973

– while Americans and Malaysians are almost evenly split, and nearly half of Turks just can’t get enough (45 percent say they want more).

The good news is that newer users in Turkey and Malaysia are demonstrably more receptive to brands on Facebook, which suggests the greatest opportunities may lie overseas in markets such as Brazil, where the number of users has doubled to almost 24 million in just the past six months. And Americans’ growing willingness to pass a brand’s content along to Facebook friends suggests that brands able to engage fans on their own terms will reap the benefits of its massively mature social graph.

“Although our study tends to show that consumers create a bond with some of the brands they follow on Facebook, there is no intrinsic value to a fan,” says Catherine Lautier, business intelligence director at DDB Paris, and lead author of the survey. “It all depends on how you manage to expose him to your brand’s message, make him your advocate and activate him through CRM or e-commerce.”

Signs of brand fatigue appear when fans are asked about the frequency of information they receive from brands. While most consumers (61 percent) are content overall, more fans report receiving too much (21 percent) than too little (18 percent). This is especially true in three countries – France, Germany and the UK

TREADING A THIN LINE. This poses an especially tricky issue for marketers, who must tread a thin line between inundating fans with content and risking disappearance from their news feeds completely. That has to do with Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm, which quietly controls what users see in their news feeds. Every piece of content – every post, every comment, every like, every tag – is weighted according to your relationship with its creator and how much time has passed since its creation. Your ability to see a post in your feed depends on it having enough “edges” derived from past interactions. As a result, if fans aren’t constantly interacting with a brand’s content, its edges begin to disappear, making it harder to drive engagement.

One question remains, however: What is the value of a fan? It’s getting harder to tell when nearly half of respondents (and more in France, America and Germany) nonchalantly report they’re just as inclined to buy a brand’s products now as they were before they became a fan – and when all three returning countries report declines in the percentage of fans willing to recommend a brand. (To be fair, the number is still 84 percent overall, and 92 percent in the US) French users, meanwhile, appear to be over Facebook brands completely, posting large and consistent declines at almost every level of engagement.

The Turks and Malaysians retain the most enthusiasm for brands, with a higher propensity than the other four countries’ users to click on a like button, pass on information from a brand to a friend, or recommend that a friend follow a brand on Facebook.

Forty percent of fans polled have already unsubscribed from at least one brand, although the results vary widely by country: Nearly two thirds of Turks have, three quarters of Malaysians haven’t, and more than half of all French have, soaring 17 percent in nine months.

LOSING INTEREST. The most common reason was the most obvious one – “the brand was no longer of interest to me” – but the others suggest Syncapse’s Scissons was right about too much “boring” content being aimed at consumers.

“At DDB, [founder Bill] Bernbach taught us to behave with respect for the consumer, recognizing that brands are in the hands of consumers, not marketers. Facebook is making it more relevant than ever today. Brands got blinded by the technology, forgetting about the basics of relationships in the way they interacted with consumers,” says Sebastian Genty, DDB’s planning director. “They need to learn to behave like any human being, with respect and transparency. Rhythm is key, as in any new relationship.”

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Style

Why do leading brands work with the BBC?

BBC Global Audience Estimate 2010.

BBC.com unique users, Omniture Q2 2010.

EMS + CEMS Summer 2010 (12 months) Universe/Base, Target Group is all respondents (46,371,000/26,778). EMS is a survey based on the top 13% of income earning households in Europe.

Competitive set is all weekly news and business print publications.

1 2 3

BBC World News is a trademark of the British Broadcasting Corporation © 1996

SUBSTANCE Access to the influential

It would take a queue of 71,000,000 people to connect New York, London, Paris and Tokyo.

That’s the number of viewers watching BBC World News1 every week.

And that’s before we add in the 49,600,000 2 online visitors to BBC.com.

We also reach at least 3 times more business decision-makers and influential opinion leaders weekly than any print title3 , meaning you can always find your target audience – wherever they are.

To find out more, contact Hani Soubra on +971 4 3678090 or hani.soubra@bbcworld.ae

Substance to complement your style

.com

Style

Why do leading brands work with the BBC?

BBC Global Audience Estimate 2010.

BBC.com unique users, Omniture Q2 2010.

EMS + CEMS Summer 2010 (12 months) Universe/Base, Target Group is all respondents (46,371,000/26,778). EMS is a survey based on the top 13% of income earning households in Europe.

Competitive set is all weekly news and business print publications.

1 2 3

BBC World News is a trademark of the British Broadcasting Corporation © 1996

SUBSTANCE Access to the influential

It would take a queue of 71,000,000 people to connect New York, London, Paris and Tokyo.

That’s the number of viewers watching BBC World News1 every week.

And that’s before we add in the 49,600,000 2 online visitors to BBC.com.

We also reach at least 3 times more business decision-makers and influential opinion leaders weekly than any print title3 , meaning you can always find your target audience – wherever they are.

To find out more, contact Hani Soubra on +971 4 3678090 or hani.soubra@bbcworld.ae

Substance to complement your style

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SEPTEMBER2011 NOVEMBER 2011| |departments departments

Regional Work

Salaam by Mashreq 路

Agency: Zaman Branding

You will be missed Steve Advertising Agency: DDB Dubai Copywriter: Shehzad Yunus Art Director: Dinesh Gore Executive Creative Director: Shehzad Yunus

Better take control over your television Advertising Agency: Leo Burnett, Saudi Arabia Chief Creative Officer: Bechara Mouzannar Art Director: Feras Shoujah Copywriter: Faraz Khan Art Director: Jonathan Horner Illustrator: Anton Petrov

Islamic Banking. Swiss Standards Advertising Agency: Kobeso, Dubai, UAE Executive Creative Director / Art Director: Komal Bedi Sohal Copywriter: K.S. Gopal

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

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SEPTEMBER2011 NOVEMBER 2011| |departments departments

Regional Work

I Am Iconic Client: Iconic Agency: Brag, Dubai Creative Director: Ramzi Nakad

Cramped? Free yourself Harvey Nichols after sale items Advertising Agency: BLU/GREY Worldwide, Kuwait Creative Director: Gilbert Sabarez Advertising Agency: Y&R Dubai Semillano Managing Director: Sami Hanah Client Service: Salam Alghoul Creative directors: Shahir Zag, Kalpesh Designers: Thamer Ashour, Ibrahim Madi Media: Yasmien Minassian Patankar Copywriter: Shahir Zag Art director: Kalpesh Patankar These ads (and more) can be found at adsoftheworld.com

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NOVEMBER 2011 | departments

Regional Work

Jooooy Finally Has Meaning Advertising Agency: Tonic International, Dubai, UAE

Keep it hot for hours Advertising Agency: FP7/RUH, Saudi Arabia Executive Creative Director / Art Director / Copywriter: Ahmad Beck Art Director: Ramero Firmeza Photographer: Steve Kozman Retoucher: Amin Daw Account manager: Mohammad Abdel Kader

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

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get your country’s latest sports news anywhere, anytime

only on eurosport.anayou.com

Visit the site and select your country to get direct access to the top stories making national news back home.

Be it in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco or Tunisia, anayou Eurosport brings you the best of national and international sports.

With live coverage in Arabic and French, anayou Eurosport is the premium online and mobile sports destination across the Middle East and North Africa.

To advertise and reach 25-45 year old males with available income, contact us at +971 4 390 1161 or email sales@mediaquestcorp.com

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NOVEMBER 2011 | departments

International Work

Sleep like it used to be Advertising Agency: Grey, Indonesia Executive Creative Director: Randy Rinaldi Art Directors: Ogi Prayoga, Berry Dawanas Copywriters: Andika Pandjaitan, Dodi Triaviandi Creative Group Head: Nicholas Kosasih

When you can’t see what harms you, it’s more dangerous Advertising Agency: Simple, Chile Photographer: Gancho Retoucher: Astro IC

Only with Stihl Advertising Agency: Giacometti, São Paulo, Brazil Chief Creative Officers: Daniel Rasello, Julio Isnard Art Director: Felipe Previtali Copywriter: Patrizia Scala

Red Cross: Donation Advertising Agency: ONIRIA / TBWA, Paraguay. Creative Director: Camilo Guanes. Art Director: Daniel Achaval.

Copywriters: Arturo Valiente, Rene Lopez.

Illustrator: Lucas We

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

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NOVEMBER 2011 | departments

International Work

Maltín Polar. More of you Advertising Agency: DraftFCB, Caracas, Venezuela Creative Directors: Exequiel Rodriguez, Daniela Zalzman Art Director: Maik Gassán Copywriters: Sydney Reyes, Alexia Fernandez Photographer: Marcel Boldú

Making Road Advertising Agency: Kastner & Partners, Mexico Creative Directors: Omar Berlanga, Gibrán Sotelo Art Directors: Pablo Medina, Diego González Copywriter: Gibrán Sotelo Photographer: Manuel Santos / Gravity Cam

Feel like you’re in the band : Sony Headphones MDR-Z1000: Backstreet Advertising Agency: PKP BBDO, Vienna, Austria Creative Director: Christian Gosch Art Director: Robert Dassel These ads (and more) can be found at adsoftheworld.com

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UAE

SAUDI ARABIA

OTHERS

GRAPHIC DESIGNER

SENIOR CAD OPERATOR

PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHER

Qualification: Degree in a relevant discipline Experience: 0-2 years Experience Skills: Strong knowledge of Photoshop Creative Design Skills Good knowledge of 3D Max & In-design

Qualification: Degree in architecure or engineering Experience: 7+ years Experience Skills: Experience in similar fields Good command of English Good command of 3D drawing & Photoshop

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CREATIVE COPYWRITER

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Qualification: Degree in web designing Experience: 4+ years Experience Skills: Ability to work under pressure Strong team player Strong presentation skills

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Good team player

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PRODUCTION MANAGER

Qualification: Degree in interior design Experience: 5+ years Experience Skills: Strong leadership skills Good communication skills Strong desicion making skills

Qualification: Degree in a relevant discipline Experience: 2+ years Experience Skills: Command of AutoCAD & computer skills Knowledge of Photoshop Good communication skills

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Junior Production Designer

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Qualification:Degree in Interior/ Graphics Design Experience: 3+ years Experience Skills: Ability to work independently High sense of creativity Experience in the field of interior design

Qualification: Degree in a relevant discipline Experience: 3+ years Experience Skills: Good art and design skills Excellent communication skills Good Knowledge of Photoshop

Qualification: Degree in Com. / Arts/ Advertising Experience: 5+ years Experience Skills: Good Knowledge in Adobe Product Good Design Skills Strong team player

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Filmmaster Events FZ. LLC

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Visit our website at www.bayt.com If you are a new visitor, click on ‘Post a CV’ to create your Bayt.com CV Enter the job reference in the Search box on the homepage. Example, enter JB123456 When you view the job posting, click on “Apply to this job” and attach your Bayt.com CV. Your CV will go directly to the employer and they will contact you if you fit their job requirements

NOVEMBER 2011 | departments

International Work

The first time I did it, I had to ask for a fork Advertising Agency: Extreme Group, Halifax, Canada Creative Directors: Shawn King, Anthony Taaffe Art Director: Jeff Simpson Copywriter: Jeff MacKay Illustrator: Steve Pinter

Stampeding 5 people in the train doesn’t represent a time gain.

Let’s stay human on public transport Advertising Agency: Publicis Conseil, France Chief Creative Officer: Olivier Altmann Creative Director: Hervé Riffault Copywriter: Olivier Dermaux Art Director: Mathieu Vinciguerra Assistant Art Director: Mélanie Pennec Managing Director: Jean-Patrick Chiquiar

Business and travel at the same place Advertising Agency: Paz Comunicação Estratégica, Brazil Executive Creative Director: Haroldo Cardoso Creative Director: Leonardo Parnes Art Director: Rafael Ricci, Rafael Gomes Copywriter: Alexandre Henrique, Leonardo Parnes

For a new animal protection law Advertising Agency: Frese & Wolff, Oldenburg, Germany Creative Director / Copywriter: Ingo Steuber Creative Director / Art Director: Uwe Linthe

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

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Looking for

Mr. Right?

Try some Communicruitment

and start putting together your company’s dream team To advertise on these pages email grace@mediaquestcorp.com

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november 2011 | Off the record

The Dish Cheers, big ears

getting drunk or blacking out were more likely to be at risk of drinking problems, based on a screening test.”

We suspect further research may reveal: Students who blog about their cars are more likely to drive regularly; Students who post in both English and Arabic are more likely to speak more than one language; Students without access to computers are less likely to post anything.

Wrong recipe

Congratulations to local fashion brand Iconic, which won two awards – Most Admired Store Design and Most Admired Departmental Store – at the RetailME awards show.

As a fashion leader, CEO of Iconic, and of sister Landmark Group fashion brand Splash, Raza Beig must be a man to watch. So we turned to the accompanying photograph to see if there were any hints of what’s to come in the world of haute couture. Cardigans and a paper bag on the head seems to be the answer, if Beig’s companion is anything to judge by.

And as for Beig? Mickey Mouse ears, apparently. Now that’s something Communicate can admire.

Mappy days Remember when CNN carried a report about Libyan rebels reaching Tripoli and not finding Colonel Gadhafi? The report was notable because CNN managed to label the wrong Tripoli – the Tripoli in Lebanon, not the one in Libya – on its map. Perhaps that’s why he wasn’t found.

Blogger Jad Aoun’s Under Rug Swept blog points out that Gulf News has also “pulled a CNN.” This time, the UAE newspaper managed to carry a story on its website with the headline, “Tensions rise as Tripoli residents urge fighters out.” And the dateline?

Lebanon.

Oops.

Writing’s on the wall News website Emirates 24-7 brings the following scientific breakthrough to our attention: “Researchers led by Megan Moreno from the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that students who had pictures or posts about

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“Dear Communicate, We LOVE you guys,” reads an e-mail from Custard Communications. That’s nice.

We like fanmail.

It continues: “Otherwise we wouldn’t have invited you to our launch celebration where you walked up the purple carpet, sipped Custard Cosmos and munched Custard canapés, while admiring our purple logo as it decorated the warehouse we transformed in an elaborate demonstration of our event management and production skills.”

This reminder of the agency’s previous hospitality is getting a little worrying now. What do they want?

“We try to be proactive and regularly send you emails about events we’re working on and information on clients we’re working with for PR – every single one of which features our logo in the signature.” That’s the second time they’ve mentioned their logo.

Which is purple.

“We don’t expect for much for ourselves, and were delighted you invited us to be a part of the ‘What’s in an agency name?’ feature in October’s issue.”

We did that. And we carried their logo. Which was… yellow. Oh. “So WHY-OH-WHY, dear Communicate, did you include the wrong logo in the feature? Do you not like Custard anymore?” We do. And we’re sorry. Here’s the correct logo. It’s purple.

Shake it up Not that journalists are ones to use clichés, but if you search Google for “curvy Kim Kardashian” and “Dubai” you get more than 20,000 results from

Poet’s corner ““I never part from my notebook. I take notes, I draw, and I scribble.

It doesn’t matter if the journey is long or short, between Sardinia and Paris or Paris and Japan.

What is essential is to save, note, and capture every sensation in my travel journal. I have so many and my favourite remains the one that I filled during the journey which moved me the most.

I found myself on a small island between Hiroshima and Miyajima, I visited the castle at Himeji, I was at the summit of Mount Fuji and I crossed the red bridge at Nikko.

It was here that my travel journals got filled up with notes and sketches.

Three themes for colours but a single vision.

Blues in shades of navy, Klein and sky, mixed with beige and a touch of vibrant red.

Nuances of taupe, tobacco, twine and ecru mixed with intense greens.

All this topped off with mousy grey, asphalt and anthracite worn with pink.

The materials are natural, sometimes involving mixtures of innovative fibres.

Leather mixed with jersey; chintz and hand-dyed cotton, linen and denim.

Prince of Wales and Chinese printed cotton, broad and narrow stripes and spots.

Patchworks involving a mixture of washed, wadded materials and oilskin.

Jacquard knits, hand made crochets and cable stitching with painted prints and plaids.

Shirts with floral prints, watercolours and micro patterns as well as large prints of tigers and landscapes.”

– From Kenzo’s introduction to its spring-summer collection 2011.

Pound-for-pound As part of the United Kingdom, Scotland’s currency is pounds Sterling.

So this sign at the Media Rotana in Dubai made the Scottish half of Communicate’s editorial team a little unsure about how to feel.

When we go home we can get more pounds for our money – but is the Rotana saying our notes are worth less than our English, Irish and Welsh neighbors’? when the famous-for-being-famous star stopped by to open a fast food joint.

So kudos to website Emirates 24/7 for not alluding to the celebrity retailer’s body in its photo essay on her arrival. Their intro: “Kim Kardashian markets her milkshakes in Dubai prior to the official launch of Millions of Milkshakes on Friday.”

Communicate cannot guarantee the accuracy of the rumors, innuendo and idle gossip that appear on this page.

Send your anonymous Dish tips to editor@communicate.vg

11/3/11 12:25 PM

Jobert Garcia Graphic and Web designer

I am into Graphic Design and I wanted to apply my design skills into the on-line and digital world. SAE made that happen for me.

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Next intake November 6, 2011 SAE Institute Dubai, Knowledge Village, Building 16, Level 2, 800-SAE (723), hello@saedubai.com, www.saedubai.com

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