Communicate | Apr 2011 by MediaquestCorp.

The marketing and advertising resource • April 2011 • Issue N° 76 • www.communicate.ae Share play: BBDO’s Andrew Robertson on growing within existing Page 56 markets

MARKETING Jeddah George The man behind Next, Per Una, and George at Asda is taking on the Saudi market and the wider Middle East. We speak to George Davies to find out how he plans to drive his fashion brand in the region. (Page 46)

To Tweet or not to Tweet? Lighthouse’s Denh Dip on social media strategy Page 64

Elephant in the room: How a Cairo hot shop hit the paws button with its Page 60 Panda ad

JUST BROWSING

MARKETING Treated like loyalty In a special report, we look at loyalty programs in the region and beyond to see who’s clocking up their miles and piling on the points. We see how loyalty schemes work, ways they can be improved, and how they are evolving. (Page 48)

OPINION App to you For this month’s Communiquestion we asked the industry what smartphone app they would like to see developed. See who wants to tell lies, who wants to spot lies, and who’s been watching too much Star Trek. (Page 14)

CAMPAIGN Joint effort

The region has been slow to embrace online retail. We see what needs to change before consumers are mouse-trained. Plus: Group buying comes to town (Page 71) Registered in Dubai Media City

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

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

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

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

Letter from the editor | APRIL 2011

Click to buy O

ver the years, I’ve bought a number of things online. I’ve bought books, CDs, video games and movies from Amazon; I’ve bought t-shirts; I’ve bought toner cartridges. These have all been cheaper than I could find in the shops. I’ve also bought some fairly esoteric things. On my only eBay outing, I bought a Star Wars Beany Baby doll for a friend. I bought an antique map from a dealer in Colorado to give as a Christmas present. I’ve bought boy toys including torches, headphones, even lock picks, from online retailers. (The lock picks were inspired by one too many spy films. I now know that James Bond has considerably more manual dexterity than me, and your belongings are safe; opening a door isn’t as easy as it looks.) I bought these things online because I couldn’t find them in the shops. One of my former colleagues used to build valve amplifiers. Shipments of weird thingamajigs and odd doohickeys would arrive through the post, wrapped in local newspapers from strange, no-name American towns. And last month I discovered a company that will sell you an underground nuclear shelter. The bunker can accommodate 36 people for up to five years. If anyone wants to chip in, I need another 35 takers before I’ll add it to my cart. Bring a spade.

Online retail is the subject of our cover story (see page 22), and it’s great. You can buy anything over the Web, and it can be delivered to your door within weeks – sometimes within days. If you order from regional retailers, it can be there sooner. However, I have never ordered from a seller in the region. All my online shopping has been from abroad. There are several reasons for this. If something is for sale here, I can go to the shop and buy it; I don’t need to purchase it online. Doing so cuts out the touch-and-feel testing that an old-fashioned, in-store purchase provides. On top of that, regional e-tailers seldom give as much of a discount as their international counterparts. I buy things online because they are cheaper, or because I can’t get them in Dubai, where I live. And at the moment, the region’s online retailers offer neither of these advantages. Whatever products they sell – electronic goods, books, music – are on the shelves within five minutes’ drive, for much the same price. Or from another, overseas website, for cheaper. There are two ways to counter this. Neither of them is a restriction on importing goods. Amazon can’t ship electronic goods to the UAE, but that doesn’t stop people getting their mums – or third-

party services such as Shop and Ship (see page 24) – to send them Kindles from a deliverable address. One of the drivers that can boost online retail is scale. Build a big enough business and you can discount more. It’s what Amazon does, and rockstar Russian investor Yuri Milner told delegates at last month’s Abu Dhabi Media Summit that Amazon will be the world’s largest retailer within 20 years (see 8). (That seems like quite a long time from where I’m sitting, but since where I’m sitting wasn’t in the same room, there wasn’t a chance to raise that argument.) The other driver is specialism and niche marketing. If an online retailer in the region can offer stuff that no one else does, and get in on the long-tail action, then that retailer will grow a database of customers from around the world. Because, like me, those customers can’t get what they want at home. Now I’m looking for a website that will sell me a skeleton key for a fallout shelter.

Austyn Allison, managing editor editor@communicate.vg

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Contents | April 2011

Contents

COVER: Online retail

THE COMMUNIQUESTION

30 32 34 38 42

This month we bring you a special report on online retail and group buying Checkout changes: Why aren’t more regional retailers taking to the Web? Labeling it on: How do fashion brands overcome the lack of changing rooms to sell online? Easy decision: UK website tells shoppers to Justbuythisone All together now: Group buying arrives in the region Team players: How will Groupon stack up against Cobone and GoNabit? Same, but different: Can Groupon clones in Europe promise a better experience all round?

SPECIAL REPORT: Loyalty programs 48 52 54

High fidelity: Can a loyalty scheme keep consumers faithful to your brand? The virtues of virtual: Can mobile phones do away with loyalty cards? Back to basics: US stores are returning to a personal approach to drive repeat custom

SHORTS 8

NEWS 10 11

Digital. How Google reacted to the Japanese earthquake We ask the industry: What mobile app would you like to see developed?

FEATURES 44 46

Digital. Mob mentality: Clique Media launches regional mobile ad network Marketing. George’s marvelous medicine: Does the man behind Next have the formula to crack the Saudi market?

DEPARTMENTS 56 60 64

Room with a view: The Abu Dhabi Media Summit looks great from a distance

Television. Sky News Arabia announces branding Digital. Yahoo exec calls for creative unity

Q&A. Maximum Impact: BBDO president and CEO Andrew Robertson talks about business in the region and beyond Portfolio. Black-and-white movie: How Elephant took Panda cheese from the shelves of Cairo to screens around the world X-pert Files. Getting engaged: Lighthouse’s Denh Dip says a brand’s category should help define its social media strategy Work. Selections from the regional and international creative scenes Communicruitment. Turn to our new jobs section to see who’s hiring The Dish. Perfume, Photoshop and Paradise

APRIL 2011 Published by: Medialeader FZ/MediaquestCorp Medialeader, P O Box 72184, Dubai Media City, Al Thuraya Tower 2, Office 2402, Dubai, Tel: (971) 4 391 0760

CO-CEO Alexandre Hawari CO-CEO Julien Hawari Managing Director Ayman Haydar CFO Abdul Rahman Siddiqui creative DIRECTOR Aziz Kamel 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 Lebanon GM Nathalie Bontems, nathalie@ mediaquestcorp.com, Tel: +961 1 492801 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

Founder Yasser Hawari Managing Director Julien Hawari Group managing editor Siobhan Adams Managing editor Austyn Allison journalist Sidra Tariq senior sub editor Elizabeth McGlynn ART DIRECTOR Sheela Jeevan ART CONTRIBUTORS Alvin Cha, Aya Farhat External Affairs Manuel

Dias, Maguy Panagga, Catherine Dobarro, Randa Khoury, Lila Schoepf, Laurent Bernard PRINTERS Raidy Printing Group ADVERTISING The Gulf MEDIALEADER, PO Box 72184, Dubai Media City, Al Thuraya Tower 2, Office 2402, Dubai, Tel: (971) 4 391 0760, Fax: (971) 4 390 8737, sales@ mediaquestcorp.com Lebanon Peggy El-Zyr peggy@mediaquestcorp.com, Tel: (961) 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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APRIL 2010 | shorts

Summit’s up Communicate attends the Abu Dhabi Media Summit, and discovers it’s as easy to cover it – turtle analogies and all – via YouTube by Austyn Allison

or the assembled media, attendance at last month’s Abu Dhabi Media Summit was almost as good as being there. “This is the most media-unfriendly media summit,” one journalist said as we were herded into the press room. The press was not allowed into the plenary room, but had to watch the presentations on a projector screen. The delegates’ area was out-of-bounds too, making on-the-spot interviews tricky. There were mutterings about boycotting the event next year. Communicate attended the first day, when News Corp.’s Europe and Asia head man James Murdoch interviewed Avatar and Titanic producer James Cameron (pictured, bottom left). We also attended the final day, when media were allowed into the room to see Cameron and Carlos Saldanha (the director behind animated films including Ice Age 2 and Ice Age 3; pictured, third from bottom right) discuss 3D content under the moderation of chairman and CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment Jim Gianopulos (pictured, bottom right). (That was followed by a talk on cloud

computing from chipmaker AMD, but many saw it as a sales pitch, and left.) Since videos of all of Day Two’s sessions were posted on YouTube, we decided we could watch them in the office. It would save a drive to Abu Dhabi and we would get all the benefits of the press center. Plus a working coffee machine. So, like the hero of Cameron’s Avatar – about a man who controls a blue alien’s body to infiltrate that creature’s world – we worked the conference from afar. Even when we were in the same building. On day one, Cameron spoke at length about the future of 3D television (which we wrote about last month – see “Raise your glasses,” page 30, Communicate, March 2011), and said he expected it to become as standard as color TV is now, and as HD is becoming. Content and creativity were the focus of the event, although many of the attendees Communicate spoke to flagged a more business-related session as one of the standouts. It was an on-stage interview by Sky’s Jeff Ran-

dall (pictured, top right) of Russian investor Yuri Milner. We watched it on YouTube. It was interesting, but painful. Summing up, Randall called it, “Not the easiest interview I’ve ever done, but certainly one of the most interesting.” Randall’s difficulty was that Milner gave very short, vague answers throughout. For example, at one point, Randall asked: “Most investors – strategic investment companies, private equity providers, behave a bit like turtles on the beach. They lay lots of eggs, knowing that many of those little baby turtles aren’t going to make it, but one or two will get through to the sea, and once they get through to the sea, bingo, they’ve got a lovely big turtle. You don’t do that, do you?” Milner replied, “No.” Randall elaborated: “You’re betting that just one huge, enormous egg is going to hatch and it’s not going to be gobbled up. How did you get there?” Milner opened up a little: “Well, the ideal place is to be somewhere around the first wave hitting the shore – somewhere in this range.”

By now Randall was moving his hands to indicate a turtle on the sand, as he said, “So you can see the turtle. He’s already scrabbled down to the shore; he’s not in the sea yet, but he’s dodged a lot of the gulls already.” “I think so,” said Milner. “And this is what you mean by late stage investment?” asked Randall. Milner replied, “I think that’s a good definition.” The audience squirmed. Milner may have shared his information in dry snippets, but it was interesting. The next big thing in Internet media will be curation; Amazon will be the biggest retailer in the world in 20 years; he prefers to look at companies run by people under 35. Anyone can watch that discussion on YouTube, and see it as the press saw it. As they can with the summit’s other presentations. And Communicate recommends you do that. Check out some of the biggest names in media. It was an interesting, informative and enjoyable media summit. Just not for all the media who were there.

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APRIL 2011 | Regional news

Sky News unveils brand

Arabic News channel due to launch in spring 2012

 I media ADMC rebrands as Abu Dhabi Media Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi Media Company has unveiled its new corporate brand and visual identity, and has renamed itself Abu Dhabi Media. The rebranding initiative includes a new corporate brand identity, a television commercial, the redesign of the company’s corporate website, ADMedia.ae, and a range of communication materials and collateral. “Abu Dhabi Media is a modern media company driven by creativity and innovation, yet still deeply rooted in the heritage and values of our emirate,” says chairman Mohamed Mubarak Al Mazrouei. “Our new corporate brand elegantly communicates the bold direction we are taking as a company and our commitment to our local community and culture.” Abu Dhabi Media worked with the Office of the Brand of Abu Dhabi (OBAD) to develop the new identity. The new TVC is a celebration of some of Abu Dhabi Media’s main brands and content, and features employees from across the company. The TVC was shot on location in Abu Dhabi, Ras Al Khaimah and Los Angeles.  I AGENCIES

Abu Dhabi. Sky News Arabia, a 24hour Arabic news channel, scheduled to launch in spring 2012, revealed its brand identity at a press conference held on March 14 at Yas Hotel, Abu Dhabi. The station is a joint venture between pay-television provider British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB or Sky, which is 39 percent owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.) and Abu Dhabi Media Investment Corp (ADMIC), a private investment company owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan. “The Middle East and North Africa are going through rapid change and development: economic, social and political. What happens here shapes the news agenda, not just in this region but across the world,” says James Murdoch, chairman and non-executive director at BSkyB. “Sky News Arabia is an opportunity for us to participate in and contribute to the region’s future growth.” Sky News Arabia is a 50-50 venture between BSkyB and ADMIC, says

Nart Bouran, the recently appointed director of news. It aims to take an innovative approach to news coverage and delivery, and has balanced and credible news as an editorial focus, he tells Communicate. The channel will deliver news on different platforms. John Ryley, head of news for Sky News, says, “We are not just talking about a TV news channel; we are talking about a number of different platforms on which the content Nart and his team produce is consumed by the Arab World. So we plan to put it online and on mobile applications and tablets – not immediately, but in the months and years to come.” “We aim to offer a new voice to the Arab World, not just through TV, but through different outlets as well,” he says. The channel will be available in both high-definition and standarddefinition formats and is expected to be broadcast free-to-air to more than 50 million households across the MENA region and beyond.

on many fronts and managed to have a strong bonding with our clients, and he deserves such an award.” SMG’s Hamilton takes on global role

Dubai. Mark Hamilton, head of strategy and development for Starcom Mediavest Group (SMG) Middle East and North Africa, has been named deputy chairman of the group’s Global Product Committee (GPC). SMG’s GPC is an internal operating body of 24 members across the international network that aims to maintain and enhance the highest standard of work across SMG’s 110 global offices, says SMG in a statement. Australian CEO John Sintras has been named chairman of the GPC. Sintras will take on the role in addition to his CEO responsibilities in Australia. In addition to Sintras and Hamilton, the GPC includes 22 additional senior-level executives from SMG offices around the world including China, India, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Sweden, the UK and the US.  I TELEVISION

Mindshare declares Elie Haber MD of the Year Dubai. Elie Haber, managing director of Mindshare UAE, has been named Managing Director of the Year for 2010 by the regional media agency. Mindshare MENA launched the award in 2006 to reward managing directors across the region based on criteria such as business results, client satisfaction, and innovation. “Elie is praised for his strong leadership that led Mindshare UAE to grow despite the downturn that is hitting the market,” says Samir Ayoub, CEO of Mindshare MENA, in a statement. “He was very proactive

MBC Group experiences “deliberate disruption” in broadcast Dubai. Broadcaster MBC Group has announced that its channels recently experienced a “deliberate disruption” in their broadcast on Nilesat, by perpetrators unknown. In a statement, MBC says transmission of the channels was disrupted for several hours, leading to the absence of sound and video. MBC Group has condemned what it calls a “planned attack.” An unnamed source in MBC’s news channel Al Arabiya says the disruption amplified when viewership peaked during the channel’s coverage of political unrest in Libya. The news channel holds the perpetrators responsible for preventing viewers from watching its “bold and balanced coverage of the recent events in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya,” the statement says.

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Regional news | APRIL 2011

Arab Youth Survey reveals strong desire for democracy Dubai. The single greatest priority for young people in the Middle East remains living in a democratic country, according to the findings of the latest edition of PR agency Asda’a Burson-Marsteller’s Arab Youth Survey. The 10-country survey was conducted by polling firm Penn Schoen Berland, which carried out 2,000 face-to-face interviews with young Arab nationals and expats aged 18 to 24 between December 2010 and January 2011. Following (and during) the political unrest in the region, another 500 interviews were carried out in five countries in February and March. These interviews found that while the importance of democracy was more pronounced, it was balanced by a desire for stability. Support of protests was high, as was a belief in their positive impact.  I Advertising OgilvyAction Dubai wins Unilever homecare account Dubai. OgilvyAction Dubai has been awarded the account for Unilever Arabia’s Homecare category. Products such as Omo, Jif and Lux Sunlight will be added to OgilvyAction’s portfolio of Unilever brands, which include Pond’s, Dove and Sunsilk. “We are delighted to be given the opportunity to work with the Unilever Homecare category and are confident in our ability to deliver outstanding activation campaigns that will drive the consumer to purchase our brands,” says Richard Woodward, OgilvyAction’s business director for the UAE.

Publishers and agencies must work together, says Yahoo exec

Very Briefs Takaful Emarat appoints Action UAE as regional PR partner Four Communications launches social media news release product LightBlue wins Games 11 pitch

Harper’s Bazaar Arabia rolls out second annual Best Dressed publication FP7’s Infinity for Batelco among TED World’s 10 Ads Worth Spreading in 2011

Dubai. Advertising online presents a number of opportunities for marketers. Apart from the measurement tools available online, digital presents an opportunity for users to have a visual and interactive experience. This experience can be enhanced with multimedia formats that take interactivity to the next level. “To increase interactivity and make great wow experiences in online ads we need to increase our proactive engagement and work on getting creatives, media agencies and advertisers at one table,” says Herbert Dazo, head of ad technology at Yahoo EMEA. Dazo spoke to Communicate after a Yahoo Maktoob seminar in Dubai, where he talked about the various online advertising formats Yahoo has on offer in the region. At the seminar, Yahoo Maktoob presented some of its latest advertising products in digital technology, creativity and measurement. “Bringing creative agencies to the table with the publishers up-front not

only enables us to inspire and push boundaries within the canvases we offer, but it also enables us to remove logistical issues upfront within a fastpaced environment and make great ideas real,” says Dazo. He adds that the normal procedure in ad development is that once a brief is in, creative agencies start to think of ideas. “What we are really seeking is that creative-agency engagement, where they start looking and pushing for their ideas and checking on the opportunities with Yahoo and how we can make them work together,” he says. “What we are looking for is how we take these ideas to the next level and actually bring them alive and think about the challenges that are there within the technology in the industry and how we overcome them in proactive form.” It takes bringing together all the minds and parties involved at an early stage to be able to produce advertising that is appealing to the audience.

 I Television

says Pete Gearing, head of marketing for th1ng in Dubai. The first commercial by th1ng aired in the first week of March. Sedar is one of the oldest brands in the Middle East. The new campaign is meant to give it a more contemporary feel. “The new commercials mark a step change in Sedar’s advertising,” says Dominic Buttimore, executive producer at th1ng. “We are introducing a bold, new style that better conveys the quality and range of Sedar’s innovative products for residential and commercial interiors.”

Sedar appoints th1ng to make new TV commercials Dubai. Animation and mixed media production company th1ng has been appointed by UAE-based Sedar to produce its television commercials. Sedar manufactures blinds, curtains, folding doors, false ceilings, and awnings, and has a significant retail presence across the Gulf, with showrooms in the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Oman. Th1ng will make 40 commercials for Sedar over the next 12 to 18 months,

Majid magazine celebrates 33rd birthday with new layout, editorial additions and characters Saneou Al Haddath reveals MENA region’s top cities McCollins Media to create “longest Facebook wall in the world” Euromonitor International unveils new look and website to mark 40th anniversary BPG Blue to become BPG Possible Alhurra’s Al Youm to go live from eight countries to mark second anniversary

National Geographic Al Arabiya magazine holds university tours The Adkitchen appointed as agency for Dubai Properties Group Fox Series to become women’s channel, Fox

Go to our Web site for the full stories: www.communicate.ae

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APRIL 2011 | International news

The largest earthquake in Japan’s recorded history hit the northeast coast of the country on the afternoon of March 11. The 8.9 magnitude quake pushed a massive tsunami through coastal towns, flushing away farmland and entire cities. Google responded to the event much like a traditional news organization, taking advantage of its software and data. It created a set of tools and pages with information about what’s happening on the ground, most of which can be found on its Google Crisis Response page, which includes emergency information about the quake and the resulting tsunami.  I research

Sports Illustrated tablet ads “more memorable than print”

Ads in the iPad edition of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue proved more memorable with readers than ads in the print edition, and generated more reader actions, according to marketing and media research firm Affinity’s syndicated Vista service. Ads in the iPad edition generated 21 percent higher recall than ads in the print edition, while reader-action scores – registering actions such as visiting the advertiser’s website, getting a more favorable opinion of the brand or, in the case of iPad editions, clicking on the iPad screen – were 34 percent higher than in print. “The average percentage of readers reporting that they visited an advertiser’s website as a direct result of an iPad ad was almost twice as high as ads in print,” Affinity said.

Google sets up People Finder after Japan Earthquake

The search giant also set up a People Finder page, where anyone could type in the name of people

they’re looking for who might have been affected by the disaster. Conversely, anyone who had informa-

Most, but not all ads appeared in both editions.

from multiple media sources daily, and only 1 percent of localists use digital media exclusively. The study found that 91 percent of localists watch local TV news at least once a week, followed by print newspapers, which get at least weekly perusal by 80 percent of 1,000 localists surveyed; local radio stations, which get 79 percent; local newspaper websites at 61 percent; and local TV station websites at 59 percent. The respondents had a median age of 44, 52 percent being female, 48 percent male. They were reportedly highly educated, with 71 percent having attended college.

“Localists” turn to TV most often for news Despite all the furious activity in hyperlocal media (community news sites), heavy consumers of local news still turn to TV the most, along with newspapers and radio, according to a new Nielsen study commissioned by the Newspaper National Network in the US. Local community news sites such as Patch, EveryBlock.com and Outside.in are gaining ground. They’re already used weekly by 38 percent of “localists,” which the study defined as people regularly consuming content in at least four areas of local news: community events, community news, local government, local business, shopping, finance, sports and real estate.

However, only 2 percent of localists cite community news sites as their primary source of local news and information, compared to 49 percent for local TV, 30 percent for newspapers in print and online, and 11 percent for local radio. Sixty-nine percent of localists get local content

 I Digital Amazon tops value perception rankings Amazon is the strongest brand globally and in the US, at least as measured by how consumers perceive value versus price paid. This is according to research agency Millward Brown’s Value-D ranking, released in March, based on surveys of 150,000 consumers in 24 countries. It’s the first time the unit of WPP’s Kantar Group – a market research, information and consultancy network – has released the value-based ranking of brand strength, says Peter Walshe, senior director of Millward Brown. Well-known iconic brands, such as Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, while among the global top 10, trailed more utilitarian brands such as Colgate (No. 2) and Procter & Gamble Co.’s

tion about a person could enter that data as well. By March 11, the database had already amassed 7,200 records. Google had set up similar databases in the aftermath of the Haiti and New Zealand earthquakes. The company’s Twitter handles, @google and @googlemaps, streamed information on the progress of the tsunami as well as links to Google Maps data, showing where it could hit. Google’s YouTube division also collected citizens’ video accounts of the disaster on its CitizenTube channel, which shows some vivid firsthand looks at the devastating effects of the earthquake. Pampers (No. 4). Digital and tech high-fliers Apple and Google didn’t make the cut, but Nokia did. Apple didn’t make the top-10 list, Walshe says, because while it ranks among the highest of any brand in perceived desirability, it also ranks very high in perceived price. Google didn’t make the list because most consumers use its services for free, “so we can’t measure it on the price angle,” he adds. On the pricing spectrum, while Starbucks and other premium coffee brands might be more desirable overall, Nescafe globally, and Folgers in the US, make the top 10 on price perception. And while Walmart bested all bricks-and-mortar rivals in the US, it still couldn’t best its online rival Amazon.

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The National celebrating 3 years and a very attractive readership

To advertise in The National, contact our sales team on 04 4444800 or email us at advertising@thenational.ae

here to stay

financially secure

cultured

highly motivated

74% of our readers have lived in the UAE for five years or more Over half of our readers (55%) earn more that the national average monthly household income of AED 18,200* 50% of our readers have investments products within and outside the UAE 64% of our readers enjoy the theatre and going to live music concerts Almost half of our readers (45%) visit cultural, heritage sites and museums Almost half of our readers (44%) have enrolled in an educational course or learned something in the last year A third of our readers (34%) have enrolled in self improvement courses over the last year Source: YouGov Siraj, December 2010: The National Reader Profiling Survey conducted amongst (sample size) of The Nationalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s readers *UAE Ministry of Economy, 2009

Time well spent

APRIL 2011 | OPINION

The Communiquestion

Whatever makes you appy We ask the industry: What mobile app would you like to see developed? HUBERT BOULOS Head of strategic planning, JWT I would like a GPS/geo-locator type of application that would provide me with the best ranked restaurant in my vicinity. Ranking would be an aggregate of rankings made by top recognized food expert publications (Michelin, Gault Millau, Zagat). Perhaps the app already exists, but I am not aware of it. TONY ORSTEN CEO, twofour54 An app that forwards incoming SMS messages to another phone, iPad or PC. JAIKUMAR MENON Vice-president, MCN Media I think there are too many already. I am a philosophy buff and I recently discovered that there is a philosophy app (AskPhil) that can take your philosophical questions and provide you with in-depth answers. Imagine having access to Socrates’ or Spinoza’s wisdom on love, business or ethics, on the move, straight out of your smart phone and right before that tricky meeting with a client or girlfriend.

YOUSEF TUQAN TUQAN CEO, Flip Media One that any brand in the Middle East was actually willing to pay decent money for. Flip’s invested its own energies in creating free and paid apps for the public both here and in India – such as Mumbaikar, Slide Reader and Naviflix, which have been rewarding endeavors in terms of our own innovation and education. There presently exists a genuine opportunity for innovation which is largely overlooked by brands and organizations. FADI CHAMAT General manager, PHD Abu Dhabi A lie detector mobile app would come in handy in this part of the world. KAMAL DIMACHKIE Managing director, UAE, Kuwait and Lower Gulf, Leo Burnett An app that translates communication from any spoken language to any other using one’s own voice in the playback. Culture, language and geographic location would never be an issue again; it would enable communication between all people. All races would be free and easy, and thereby it would bring people closer together.

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APRIL 2011 | OPINION

JAMES TIPPLE Vice-president of marketing, EMEA, Yahoo I want an application on my phone on which I can type “Dubai office,” press it, and I’d be in the Dubai office. “Sunnyvale,” press it, and I’d be in the Sunnyvale office. A lot of the feedback I get from my team is they would like more face time. Coming out here for a week every eight weeks is fantastic, and the amount of stuff we get through during that time is great. Video conferences bring that to life, and e-mail’s a good way of communication as well, but there’s nothing like having some face-to-face time. MARWAN QUTUB CEO and co-founder, 3Points Advertising One that helps with the work-life balance. We tend to forget ourselves at work at the expense of spending quality time with our kids. NASSIB BOUERI CEO, Y&R & Wunderman With the way technology is evolving, we will have less to wish for in the future. LianNe Rivett Senior designer, Rufus Leonard The intelligent excuse generator: An excuse generator that’s linked to real-time traffic and train timetables for why you are running late from work for your partner/ spouse/dinner date/best friend/dog. Delivers verbatims like “Arrhhhh sorry darling, the Wandsworth road was all snarled up again.” SAWSAN GHANEM Managing director, Active PR One that pre-warns you about negative, no good people, situations, etcetera, so you can avoid them.

HERMANN BEHRENS CEO, The Brand Union Middle East A lie detector. AZHAR SIDDIQUI General manager, Magna Global One that can give me a haircut, a shave and burn fat all at the same time, while I am watching TV. CHOUCRALLAH ABOU SAMRA Managing director, OMG KSA Given the recent changes in the kingdom’s weather, I would love to get my hands on a mobile app that gives the status of the roads. This should, for example, include traffic updates, weather conditions, road works and any other information that would assist commuters in their daily travels. The app’s functionality should also include the availability of civil defense and coastguard patrols in real time to enable commuters to navigate their amphibian vehicles with minimum risk of life. DAVID PORTER Media director, Unilever MENA One that turns the phone off if the user is travelling in the front seat at more than 5km/h, sings lullabies to kids who wake up before 6.30am, pays utility bills automatically, and substitutes for all of my UAE ID cards. SYLVIA SHOHDI Client leadership director, Mindshare Dubai I would like to have an application that would rewind/ forward and pause moments and people. Like that movie, Click, I think. I can make use of some time being paused, to cherish the happy moments for a longer time and quickly fast-forward ones that I do not want to remember. That would be a great option.

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DIMITRI METAXAS Executive regional director of digital, OMG Hmmmm… how about an app that allows me to remotely access my IT network to access files from wherever I go. It probably already exists.

on the media representative. The receiver can accept or reject calls based on the media representative’s details, and further connections can be made on other social platforms where information and insights can be shared via different digital platforms.

MOUNIR HARFOUCHE CEO, Lowe MENA A “Run away” app that allows you to upload yourself on your phone before it downloads you in your chosen destination.

JOHNNY KHAZZOUM Managing director, Mindshare Bahrain In this region you can’t find many productive applications that you can benefit from. I would like to have a media-related app, which is based on augmented reality and Google Goggles technology. The app would have a feature to take a snapshot of any ad, and offer you the details for the service/brand. So when you are on the road and are interested in an ad on a billboard, you can just take a snapshot.

Liza Medd Regional manager, Rufus Leonard A social table planner for weddings and parties: Using social media data of your friends and family, this places people next to others with similar interests, thus bypassing the heated debates of which member of the family sits next to the dodgy uncle. ZOYA SAKR Editor-in-chief, anaZahra.com As the customer experience evolves, so does application sophistication. It’s about time to drive social apps in the Arab world.

MICHEL BORT Client relationship director, Kassab Media There is a company called Layar already on track to do amazing work with augmented reality. Imagine yourself visualizing your world around you in a personalized manner, seeing the things you would like to see. And, on a commercial level, you get to imagine the levels of opportunities this would open up. So I guess I would like to see this movement gaining solid traction.

PASCAL KHAZZOUM Senior Exchange executive, digital, Mindshare Dubai I’d like to see an application that enhances interactivity between media professionals. The application is exclusively dedicated to connect professionals in the media community with up-to-date market analysis, media trends, valuable consumer insights and functional tools such as identification of incoming calls that provide caller details based

RAMZI RAAD Chairman & CEO, TBWA\Raad Easy. An app that tells me where to get the best Turkish coffee in Dubai, at any time of day. It’s my worst vice. But seriously, a portable brand dashboard that assimilates and summarizes all the brand conversations across our clients’ businesses would be really useful to have on a smart phone. But, come to think of it, our agencies would then never get any work done.

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YVES-MICHEL GABAY General manager, MEC MENA The one we are proposing to one of our biggest clients: An interactive map of the mall, with each store and the promotion you can currently have in each of them. It will ease the life of all consumers and tourists: Never getting lost, and having the opportunity to grab a good bargain. SUNIL JOHN CEO, Asda’a Burson-Marsteller Real-time updates about regional and international media consumption habits, linked to specific key words and broken down by a range of demographic indicators. This app would tell me instantly what kind of people are reading which news stories, when and for how long. It would be even better if the app extends to broadcast media. YOANN EL JAOUHARI Sales and marketing director, JC Decaux Middle East and Africa An app to control the lifts (especially at 9am and 1pm). People can enter an auction to get the lifts to their floor right away. ANDREW ROBERTSON President and CEO, BBDO Worldwide I keep getting the pitch from people who say it would be great if you land in Dubai, and you could hit this button that could tell you where to find the nearest Pizza Hut. Well, the number of people who fly to different places as a percentage of the total population is tiny. Of those, the number who go to places regularly is very high; they know where they are, and if they don’t, they have a colleague who will tell them.

So the things that are really most interesting are where the same thing is repeated by an awful lot of people an awful lot of the time. That’s when an app really becomes useful. When I sit in my office in New York and look out of the window on 6th Avenue, people stand trying to get a cab uptown in the morning and downtown at night. Millions of people with tens of thousands of cabs, twice a day, every day. The app that would be great would be if you could stand outside, press the button, a cab would pick up the call, arrive at the corner of 51st and 6th, and there could be some mechanism where the driver could know that of the five people who are trying to get a cab, it was you – and you would know it was your cab. GEORGES BARSOUM Managing director, Saudi Arabia, Leo Burnett The Slap App: It will give you a slap in the face (offline and online) every time you become complacent. CHUCK BRYMER Worldwide president and CEO, DDB I would like to see an app that could transport me from one place to another, like Captain Kirk. That would be great. IAIN MILLAR Head of Innovation, Rufus Leonard Emotion activity application: An application that reads our emotions and then provides us with the information and tools to act, or not, as the case may be. So, if you have a headache, it automatically knows to divert calls and messages. If you are in a good mood, it will provide you with a list of things to match your feelings – the location of your friends and activities you may want to do, with instant messaging and geolocation information on how to get there.

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All-new FOX

dedicating every hour to women

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AND JUMP Communicate â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s special report into online retail in the region and beyond

Cart in the Web Page 24 Clicking their heels Page 30 Decision makers Page 32 Strength in numbers Page 34 Enter the Groupon Page 38 Shepherd, not sheep Page 42

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Cart in the Web

Could online retail alter the way we buy things in the region? by Sidra Tariq

-commerce has been in the region for a while now. But as years pass, new models of consumer spending emerge on the online stage. In this cover package, we look at two growing trends under the wide e-commerce umbrella: online retail and group-buying websites. Below, we look at the status of online retail in the region and the challenges it faces. And in later in the package, we look at group-buying sites and the opportunities they offer to subscribers and partners. People in this region love to shop. The city of Dubai is a testament to that. Just think of the number of malls that have been built over the past 30 years in this tiny emirate. And the number of stores that are opened every year in those malls. And the number of people flocking to those stores in those malls. The GCC is a region full of consumers with high disposable incomes who love to buy things. There are any number of opportunities to expand the retail base, but many ask whether or not shopping can – or should – expand online as well. Online shopping is moving at a slow pace in this region, and when we narrow it down to online retail – buying physical things, as opposed to services such as flights and hotel bookings – the pace is even slower.

Only three in 10 Internet users in the Middle East and North Africa purchase goods and services online, according to a survey of almost 7,000 Internet users across the Middle East and North Africa. The survey, conducted by online research company Effective Measure and Spot On Public Relations last September, also shows that the GCC is the most active part of the MENA region in online shopping, with around 43 percent of Internet users buying products and services on the Web. This is still lower than more developed markets such as the UK, where the figure is 62 percent. SLUGGISH START. “Right now, we are so unbelievably far behind, it’s not even funny,” says Alexander McNabb, group account director at Spot On. “We seriously lag behind markets like the UK and the US when it comes to online retail.” However, he adds that 2011 may be the year where we start seeing the Middle East “becoming a viable and exciting market [for online] – because we have already seen some movements in that direction, but also because of the innovation that is now in the region.” “In 2011 we will see a start of what will be an explosive growth and huge change in the way companies deal with consumers and the

way consumers deal with brands. We’re going to see some very big changes in consumer behavior,” he says. “People have started to wake up to the potential, and there is an enormous opportunity in the Middle East,” he adds. “When you combine that with the rise of digital entrepreneurialism, there is reason to be hopeful that we’ll get to see enormous expansion and activity in that area.” There has been online buying in the region for some years, with consumers purchasing airline tickets and making hotel reservations. A host of Web shoppers have also been buying from international websites, and having their products delivered to them by courier or shipping services. But only in recent years has the region seen the emergence of its own shopping websites. Souq.com was one of the first shopping websites in the region. Although it started off as an auction platform that allowed individual buyers and sellers to trade online, it slowly developed into a retail website, where individuals and businesses can now sell products. It no longer hosts auctions. BOOKWORMS REJOICE. Stores such as electronics retailer Sharaf DG and apparel brand

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Levis' have featured their products on Souq. com. Jashanmal Bookstores, a subsidiary of Jashanmal Group – one of the region’s oldest retail and distribution companies, also uses Souq. com as a platform to sell books online. In January 2010 the chain launched Jashanmalbooks. com, which lists titles, product information and prices, and then redirects users to Souq.com to make their purchases. Narain Jashanmal, general manager of Jashanmal Bookstores, says all his company’s online retail is conducted through Souq.com, rather than its own site. “After a fair amount of analysis, it seemed to be the easiest and fastest way to get our store online. Souq.com is robust, it has got a solid user base, and for people who are used to using it, the payment works fine and the delivery works fine.” “At this point in time we have around 5,000 titles listed,” he says. “The aim is to have at least what we have got in the store – about 15,000 to 17,000 titles – online.” Nahel.com is another business-to-consumer online retailer. It launched in 2009, and offers products including electronics, perfumes, books, video games, and watches. Most retailers in the region seem to be opting for hosted platforms such as Souq and Nahel to sell their products online, but others such as French supermarket chain Carrefour have set up their own shopping websites. Carrefour sells non-food items on ic4UAE.com, which was set up last year. Online shopping has great potential to attract customers due to the variety of products available online and the convenience that comes with shopping from the comfort of your own home. It also makes it easier for customers to compare prices online and fish for more product information. Meanwhile, apart from saving on costs associated with setting up and managing a physical store, marketers and brands can also take advantage of the measurement tools available online. BUGS IN THE SYSTEM. Regardless of the options available to brands and customers, there is a long way to go before online retail will be truly explored in this region. “It’s a combination of things,” says McNabb. “It’s the combination of a banking system that doesn’t allow for effective and efficient payment gateways. It’s retailers in the region who traditionally take a bricks-and-mortar approach and have been very slow to adopt online. And we lag. We have just started seeing retailers in the UAE bringing [secure payment gateways] to the online store environment. Most people transacting online until recently have had to do so on a cash-on-delivery basis. Now we are seeing sites like Cobone and GoNabit [online group-buying platforms – see “Strength in numbers,” page 34] allowing credit card transactions. This is just the start.”

Souq’s to be you. The pioneer website no longer hosts auctions There is an opportunity for online retail to grow in the region, but a few things have to be sorted out. Among them are adoption rates, payment gateways, logistics and broadband. ADOPTION RATES It’s a common complaint that consumers in the region are hesitant to shop online. Some attribute this hesitation to a fear of credit card fraud, while others attribute it to the affinity people have to the physical shopping experience. “There’s a learning curve that is involved,” says Saeid Hejazi, managing director and founder of Nahel.com. “The [market] is still trying to understand the benefits of online locally. Had these same people been living in the West, they would have been shopping online since the year 2000,” he adds. "It is just about showing them and educating them that they get the same benefits here, locally.” However, Hassan Mikail, regional manager for e-commerce services at Aramex (the shipping firm’s Shop and Ship service can deliver goods ordered online via a virtual postal address abroad) says that customer resistance is not the main issue. “Consumers have been prepared for it before businesses,” he says. The main resistance appears to be on the retailers’ side. “Legacy retailers here – the brick-and-mortars – still, unfortunately, view online shopping as a competitor as opposed to a sales channel with few overheads. So there is a mindset there that needs to evolve,” he says. “However, they will turn around,” he adds. “We had the same problem in the US 15 years

Saeid Hejazi. Managing director and founder of Nahel.com

Alexander McNabb. Group account director of Spot On PR

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Attractive offer. Online shopping has great potential – and there's no need to leave home ago. [Online bookstore and general retailer] Amazon took years to start making a profit, but they started early. And yes, they were treated as competitors, but they managed. It shifted. It changed.” Now, Amazon is one of the largest online retail businesses in the world. As far as the look-and-feel aspect of shopping in a store is concerned, the online experience doesn’t replace the offline experience, but enhances it, says McNabb. Some people browse brands at the store, but buy them online, he adds. First-timers may take a while to get used to online, but those who shop regularly often have an idea of what size they will need, or what product is going to be like, especially if it is ba eing bought from a trusted retailer. At the same time, there are websites that enable users to zoom in on goods or view them from different dimensions.

Hassan Mikail. Regional manager for e-commerce services at Aramex

PAYMENT GATEWAYS A true e-commerce model calls for payments made online – through credit or debit cards, and often through online wallet systems such as PayPal and other electronic means of payments such as CashU (which is owned by Jabbar Internet Group, the firm behind Souq.com). But the region has seen a tendency among shoppers to opt for cash on delivery. Jashanmal says the biggest hurdle to online retail is a “robust, embeddable, easy-to-use, cost-effective payment gateway.” Banks can play a great role in facilitating a secure and strong electronic payment system, but not a lot of that is happening in the region. “Right now the banks may not be concen-

trating on it; they are looking at it as just an after-sales product,” says Mikail. “But once they focus on it, and bring down the barriers to entry to a payment gateway, it is going to go crazy in this region.” According to Jashanmal, “other than being extremely expensive, the other big hurdle of the payment gateways that are around here is that they redirect the user from the website. For instance, once the checkout process is initiated, in order to do the payment process, you take the user away from your site to another site where the transaction happens and then sends them back.” “Every study will show you that this is one of the biggest areas around what we call shopping cart abandonment. If you’re already dealing with people who are shopping online for the first or second time and this happens to them, they’ll get nervous, they’ll close the window,” he says. “It is a learning curve, and people will learn. But at the same time, when you combine the small potential user base with an expensive payment gateway which, on top of all that, redirects users, and you have shopping cart abandonment, it’s not a recipe for online success.” “For us, a perfect online transaction is where a customer comes in, buys a product, checks out, and it is delivered to him without money being physically traded – everything happens on the website,” adds Nahel’s Hejazi. “The more we can get people to do that, the more we reduce our overheads, the more savings we pass to our consumers.” Nahel recently launched a secure credit card payment gateway. It initially offered payment

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methods such as cash on delivery and PayPal. Hejazi says that prior to the gateway launch, 78 percent of the payments were cash on delivery, while 22 percent were through PayPal accounts. But after the introduction of a credit card payment method, 16 per cent of the payments have been through credit card, while cash on delivery has dropped to 67 percent and PayPal to 17 percent. “As consumers realize the security and convenience behind credit card payments, we are confident they will opt-in for credit card payments,” says Hejazi. BROADBAND Internet penetration has grown in the region, and broadband speed has improved over the past few years, but still isn’t on par with international broadband rates. The cost of broadband in the region is “outrageous,” says McNabb. “Broadband in Japan costs 0.27 cents per megabyte per month. Here, it is $68.” “I believe there is a duty with the telcos to foster the adoption of online technologies and help consumers. If you look at a market such as Jordan, which is highly competitive, the access costs are much, much lower and the access speeds are pretty much higher on average. The other thing is mobility is going to become more and more important to us, and mobile broadband access likewise. But mobile

applications are going to be carving their way forward. Will they be the solution to online ecommerce? Not necessarily. But there will be a number of things you’ll be able to transact with your mobile,” he says. Nahrain Jashanmal, however, doesn’t think that broadband is an issue. “I think we all enjoy a reasonable quality of the Internet in the region’s countries. I wouldn’t say Saudi Arabia, but [countries such as] Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, have pretty good access to broadband Internet,” he says. “And even the mobile broadband infrastructure is very good. It’s not being used for much, other than some casual browsing and apps; but on the technical side, the data infrastructure is fine. It’s more than adequate,” he adds. LOGISTICS A strong delivery system is also important for the online shopping process. This is where courier companies and shipping services come in. Aramex, for instance, delivers products bought through websites such as Souq and Nahel. Its Shop and Ship delivery service brings in products bought through websites abroad. But while these services are available, the logistical infrastructure in the region appears to be a challenge. According to Hejazi, procuring products is

a step that has been difficult. “Distributors and suppliers don’t understand what e-commerce is,” he says. It is very different from the bricks-andmortar stores, “so there is the educational phase that we have to go through with the distributors to explain the benefits to them.” “Logistics and distribution are still problems for us because the infrastructure is not there,” he adds. “There are streets that have no names; delivery addresses use landmarks, so it delays the delivery and complicates it for us. We always have to confirm exactly where [the delivery has to be] – before or after the mosque, or which speed bump you go left at,” he adds. REGIONAL EXPANSION Once these issues have been addressed, we can see more brands going online and online retail flourishing in the region. Hejazi says that while the UAE has many shoppers buying online, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are the dominant countries when it comes to e-commerce. “Kuwait spends more than Saudi, and Saudi spends more than the UAE,” he says. “Kuwait has been shopping online from the West. Although their population is much smaller, they still shop and spend more online. Saudi has a much bigger population. E-commerce hasn’t penetrated as high, but their population makes up for it.”

Dealradar offers coupon-clutter fix

Site consolidates all those major discount deals into one daily message by Jack Neff As Google Offers prepares to do battle with Groupon and Amazon’s Living Social, one player could really clean up: Dealradar.com, a Chicago-based startup, aims to help frugal consumers clear the clutter from their e-mail boxes by consolidating ever-proliferating offers from major coupon sites plus dozens of lesser players in one daily message. Dealradar, launched last year and headed by Dan Hess, a veteran of ComScore, Information Resources Inc. (now SymphonyIRI) and Tribune Interactive, now operates in 70 US cities along with 17 more in Canada, the UK and Australia. “We aggregate close to 1,000 deals a day from close to 200 sites,” Hess says. His company gets what he calls “a modest commission” every time any of the sites acquires a new customer via DealRadar, but without his company having to field a sales force to call on local businesses. DealRadar still has a long way to go, with just under 12,000 unique visitors last month, according to Compete, compared with 15.6 million for Groupon and 7.1 million for LivingSocial. But traffic is only part of the story. A network assembled by its parent company, Local Offer Network, of Web

publishers with “tens of millions of visitors” also uses DealRadar’s offer feed, which in turn fuels the daily deal sites and DealRadar, Hess says. Dealradar is also working with traditionalmedia companies and their offspring, such as Metromix, owned primarily by Gannett Co., to

help them create their own daily-deal sites, Hess says. Even though DealRadar clearly stands to benefit from the low barrier to entry, Hess isn’t one of those betting Groupon is ultimately doomed by it. “The barrier to entry is low,” he says. “But the barrier to success is high.”

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Clicking their heels Selling fashion brands online presents its own challenges. Can regional retailers find a formula that fits?

by Sidra Tariq

Saygin Yalcin. Sukar.com’s CEO

onsumers are quick to buy electronics, books, and games online. But when it comes to fashion or luxury items, they often think twice. When you go shopping, you wear the shirt to see whether it fits you. You try on the shoes to see if you are comfortable walking in them. And you put on the shades to see whether or not they suit your face. This touch-and-feel aspect of shopping is absent in the online process, and discrepancies in sizing can become an issue. But fashion brands are being sold online, and there are people – in the region and abroad – buying them. Narain Jashanmal, general manager of Jashanmal Bookstores (which trades online through retail site Souq.com; see “Cart in the Web,” page 24), says, “If you look at how luxury has been successful online elsewhere in the world, the ready-to-wear stuff has been difficult unless there is huge price event, like an online shopping club. In the States, you’ve got Gilt Groupe, and here you have got Sukar.com. They’ve done very well. But then again, it is a lot about facilitating private sales, rather than pure e-commerce.” While accessories sell better than garments online, it takes a big price discount to push clothes

shoppers over the hurdle presented by the variability of sizing and style. Sukar.com is an “invitation-only” online shopping club that offers members a chance to buy fashion brands online. It was formed by the Jabbar Internet Group, which owns a number of e-commerce websites in the region including Souq.com, CashU, Tahadi, Ikoo and Cobone. Sukar hosts two- to three-day online sales events where members can get discounts of up to 90 percent on top brands in fashion and lifestyle products, says Saygin Yalcin, Sukar’s CEO. New members are invited to join by existing ones or advertising partners*. Some of the brands on sale include D&G, Ferrari, Georgio Armani and Gucci. The short duration of the sales allows Sukar to shift a high volume of discounted stock in a short timeframe. And online sales don’t take customers out of stores, says Yalkin. “We have seen that people do not replace their shopping behavior by shopping at shopping clubs,” he says. “On the contrary, we have seen that brands featured on shopping clubs have enjoyed an increase of up to 15 percent offline.” Yalcin says the Sukar model works because members can purchase top brands at large discounts, and brands feel comfortable offering the discounts because of the exclusivity of the club’s invitation-only policy. “We can sell their stock to an exclusive, controlled circle of friends. That is very important, especially if you are dealing with top brands. They value that you do not put their stock somewhere in an outlet so everyone sees it with big signs saying ‘70 to 90 percent off,’” he says. “They don’t want that.” When it comes to moving sales online, “We can definitely say that luxury and the affluent world has been very much slower than the contemporary and mass-market brands,” adds Yalcin. At the moment, Sukar is one of the few websites in the region selling fashion brands online. However, more are bound to follow. The company behind local retail website Nahel.com is preparing to launch VanityIs.com, where consumers can buy apparel, handbags, perfumes, shoes and accessories. (Nahel declined to elaborate on the project at this stage.) Retailers are still trying on different styles of site, to see what will suit them and the region. Online shopping might mean risking the wrong size from time to time, but that squeeze could be worth the risk if it lets consumers stretch their budgets enough. *Communicate was able to register on the site without any sort of invitation, so we suspect the site may not be “exclusive” in the literal sense of the word.

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Decision makers

UK site Justbuythisone from Reevoo picks the product that’s best for you by Emma Hall

he explosion of consumer choice makes the Internet a giant playground for some, but for the many people who find themselves paralyzed by too many options, Justbuythisone.com is coming. The UK site, in beta test since October, offers consumers the opportunity to “stop shopping and start enjoying life” by providing just one search result for each category of electrical goods, from toasters to TVs. So, if you’re looking for a TV for less than £650, for example, it will tell you which one to buy, and give you three concise reasons why. More product categories will be added next year. British company Reevoo.com, which specializes in compiling impartial online reviews for Sony, Tesco and other clients, as well as on its own branded site, decided to take the whole concept of reviews one step further and make the decisions for their customers. Kyle McGinn, chief technology officer of Reevoo, was part of the team that came up with the idea during an offline brainstorming week in the English countryside. He says, “We knew that 25 percent of people are overwhelmed by the choice on price comparison sites and – inspired by TED talks on the paradox of choice and the need to ‘sweat the small stuff’ – we decided to create something utterly simple and extremely useful. Online shopping used to be the simple solution, but it’s got too crowded.”

Justbuythisone.com is also built around principles of data visualization, displaying lots of complex data very simply. The site has a fresh, uncluttered look, and at the bottom of the screen you can play around by virtually recycling electrical goods. The first version of the site, however, was much more gloomy. “We wanted to reflect the oppressive darkness of the mountain of choice,” McGinn says. “The original site got lighter as you went deeper – but after consultation we decided to change it.” SKY-blue THINKING. Now, the site has a tranquil sky-blue background, with simple attractive products perched on individual clouds with labels such as “The Best Laptop” and “The Best Vacuum Cleaner” under the headline “Millions of products. Thousands of shops. Too much choice. Why not stop shopping and start enjoying life?” Reevoo have been tweaking a few things – particularly underlining the impartiality of their advice, and allowing nervous buyers to dig a little deeper than just a single choice if they want to. “For smaller items it’s easy to make the leap and buy something instantly, but for the bigger purchases it’s harder,” McGinn says. Justbuythisone relied on word-of-mouth in the beta phase, but the developers plan to offer it as an option to the one million people a month who visit Reevoo.com, promoting the new site

as a solution for people in a hurry who want to make a quick decision. They will also use Google AdWords, promotions on social-media networks and, if necessary, online ads. Justbuythisone will also expand beyond the initial category of all things electrical; fashion and financial services are under consideration. Justbuythisone is based on 1.6 million user reviews taken from Reevoo.com. The site makes its money through sales made via links to sites offering the best deals on recommended products. And Reevoo is so confident that customers will love what they buy, they offer their own independent satisfaction guarantee. FRANK AND HONEST. McGinn adds, “We love to help consumers make really good purchasing decisions, and bring together consumers and manufacturers in a good way.” As well as hosting its own site, Reevoo works with manufacturers to encourage them to include frank and honest Reevoo-branded reviews on their own sites. This includes facilitating discussions between, for example, Sony’s existing and potential customers. At the time of purchase, about 15 percent of people tick a box agreeing to help future shoppers, and when asked to do so, most respond within two hours. One manufacturer recently made changes to a whole line of TVs after following Reevoo online discussions.

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Strength in numbers Group buying is the next big thing in local advertising. Communicate examines how it’s creeping into the region by Sidra Tariq

Dana Adhami. Digital director at Mindshare

f you were in a tug-of-war contest with a giant, what are the chances you would win? What if 10 people joined you? 15? 50? 100? The chances of bringing the giant across the line would increase eventually, wouldn’t it? That is the concept behind online group-buying models: strength in numbers. However, in this case, the giant wins too. Or, so say group-buying entrepreneurs. Group-buying models have gained momentum over recent years, with US-based Groupon being the poster boy for the trend, as well as the largest example. Launched in November 2008, the dealof-the-day website took the e-commerce world by storm, and has expanded its base across the world. Recently it turned down an alleged $6 billion acquisition bid by Google. Since the unsuccessful bid, Google has launched a competitor product of its own, Google Deals. In the past 12 months, the Arab region has also seen a number of start-ups banking on the group-buying model and featuring the daily deals. The first to implement the model in the Middle East, GoNabit.com, set up shop in Dubai in May; Cobone.com launched in August; MadinaDeal.com in Amman in October; YallaBuyIt.com in Saudi Arabia in January; and a lot more before and after

that. This March also saw Groupon expanding its presence to the Middle East with the launch of Groupon.ae in the UAE. The idea behind the group-buying model is fairly simple. The group-buying company offers an incentive – guaranteed customers – for businesses to allow discounts of 50 to 90 percent on their products and services. The model is particularly popular among service businesses offering deals on restaurants and family experiences. Once a discount has been agreed upon, the deal is then featured on the group-buying website and subscribers receive a ‘deal of the day’ e-mail. TIPPING POINT. There is one hiccup, though: For a deal to “tip” and become active, a minimum number of people need to buy the product. If the minimum number of buyers is not reached by the end of the day, the deal is not on and nobody gets the discount voucher. This provides an incentive to interested buyers to spread the word through Twitter, Facebook and other media, and to encourage friends to buy the deal as well. Sohrab Jahanbani, co-founder and chief operating officer of GoNabit, explains: “If you go to a bakery and ask the baker for a loaf of bread and

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you say, ‘I want 50 percent off this loaf of bread,’ he is unlikely to give you a discount. But if you go outside and get 200 people, and go back and say, ‘We all want a loaf of bread,’ you are more likely to get a discount.” The concept gives a new angle to collective bargaining. The websites accept payment methods such as credit card, PayPal, and often cash on delivery – where the discount coupon or voucher is delivered to the buyer. Security is a key concern in terms of online credit card usage, so group-buying companies use secure encryption systems and don’t charge customers until the deal tips. When a subscriber purchases a deal, the card is only authorized. Once the deal has tipped, every subsequent buyer gets charged. Some websites also offer side deals to offer more options to subscribers and partners. In order to attract more buyers and to reach the required minimum, such websites provide incentives to subscribers through referral programs. When a friend referred by a subscriber registers and buys his first deal, the referrer gets a certain amount as credit (often around $10). As well as getting their discounts, customers can stock up on credits they can redeem against future deals. Paul Kenny, CEO of Cobone, says, “Some of our subscribers have had about 4,000 dirhams worth of referrals, so we have people who are living off Cobone for free because they are sharing with their friends.” MORE THAN ENOUGH. While deals need to have a minimum number of buyers, there is no cap on how many people can purchase a deal. This may pose a challenge for businesses. With most of the deals being related to an activity or experience, there is the danger of more customers buying the deal than the business can handle. A restaurant, for example, can only cater to a certain number of customers in a day or a week. Squeezing in 500 to 1,000 customers in a span of a few days would only be a recipe for disaster. For this reason, the vouchers have a validity period of a few months. “We work very closely with businesses to work on the validity of the voucher,” says Kenny. “We did a spa deal, where we asked, ‘What happens if we sell 1,000? How long will it take you to serve 1,000 customers?’ [The spa owner] said that with the current and new customers, it would take them at least six months. So we put a six-month validity on it. That way our customers are happy and businesses are happy that they don’t get killed in the first two weeks.” Customers may be getting a good deal, but entrepreneurs say businesses too reap the benefits of using the group-buying model. Cost-effectiveness and raised awareness appear to be the biggest advantages. With a group-buying model, businesses are not charged an upfront fee. Instead, a percentage of the sales that result from the deal is taken by the group-buying company if the deal tips. “We very much see ourselves complementing businesses’ existing marketing mix,” says Jahanbani. “We have this thing we call assured marketing. So

Cover Story | APRIL 2011

if you want a campaign in traditional media – a page in Gulf News, for instance – you can’t guarantee what your conversion rate is going to be. It’s very hard to measure your return on investment.” COST IN SPACE. In this model, businesses know what their cost of acquisition is and there is no wastage, says Jahanbani. “We are entirely performancebased, so you only spend money when a customer has spent money to come and enjoy your service. It really is the most effective way to market your business, from a cost perspective and in terms of time, because you don’t have to worry about campaign development.” Cobone’s CEO summarizes the benefits: “Businesses get guaranteed cash and guaranteed customers, and it doesn’t cost anything.” Cobone has a UAE database of more than 100,000 people, says Kenny. “If you were to go to a marketing agency and say ‘I want to broadcast my brand to more than 100,000 people in the region and get it in their inbox,’ there will be a fee. It’s going to cost anything from $10,000 to $20,000.” In a group-buying model, that comes for free, he says. “We recently did a Pizza Express deal,” he adds. “A 50 dirham deal for 20 dirhams. You could use it on pizza, pasta, soup – whatever you want to eat. On Day One, we sold one thousand and something coupons, and by the end it was about 1,400 to 1,500. What other pizza marketing that doesn’t cost you anything gives you 1,400 customers?” Because of effects like this, the group-buying model can be a useful marketing tool for businesses. Once the relationship between websites and partners has been built, they can move from being awareness-raising platforms to becoming a more regular marketing channel, especially tactically. Dana Adhami, director for digital at media agency Mindshare, says the region will see more growth in group-buying websites. Media buyers

will opt for such services for their clients too, she says, but adds, “It should be looked at as just another distribution channel.” MORE SOPHISTICATED. “The way I see it is that agencies will recommend it; they will push it from a services and products perspective, but as we move into more sophisticated software and more sophisticated platforms, clients will definitely see this as a distribution channel that they need to include,” she adds. Currently, the businesses in the region using group-buying websites for their marketing are generally service-based. “The segment that will start this move, I think, will be retailers,” says Adhami. “When we find the big retail stores coming in to it, that’s when it becomes very, very serious. And the usage will increase.” Adhami says that the group-buying model is helpful to a lot of small and medium businesses. It gives them a good kick-start to showcase their products and services. “Right now, the usage is limited to a small number of users, and that is why we are not seeing the big brands investing,” she says. “As these sites grow in scale, we’ll find bigger brands coming in.” Increase in Internet penetration, usage and consumer confidence will also encourage bigger brands to offer deals on such websites, adds Adhami. On the consumers’ part, brand trust can help drive usage, she says: “Today, no one questions eBay, but GoNabit and Cobone are two websites that the average consumer may not know about. So trust needs to be built with these websites first.” When it comes to the level of usage of online group-buying platforms, “The UAE is half way there,” says Adhami. However, in markets that have scale – such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt – it would take one to two years to see such websites growing in usage.

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APRIL 2011 | Cover Story

A DIFFERENT BUZZ – why dell’s swarm wouldn’t work with groupon Euan Wilcox, business director of The Upper Storey, worked on a project for computing and electronics brand Dell called Swarm. Communicate caught up with him in Dubai at OMG’s Media Innovations Forum. He told us that Swarm is a group-buying site for Dell in Australia. “It helps to promote for Dell that they sell a multitude of products beside just PCs,” he says. “It has two functions: One is

to sell as many products as possible, and the other is to help promote the overall concept that they have more than PCs online now.” Basically, once enough people show interest in a product, the price comes down. But Swarm differs from the likes of Groupon in that the deals it offers are on goods more than services. This means it can drop prices lower. “Dell doesn’t have the ability to offer very, very large discounts like that,” says Wilcox. “One of the reasons they’ve been a bit more success-

ful recently is that they’ve ploughed a bit of the promotional dollar into deeper discounts.” Dell couldn’t have used Groupon for its deals because people would have wanted too much. “The expectations are that if they use Groupon, they want a 50 percent to 90 precent discount, and that’s just not possible,” he says. This is due to the low mark-ups on Dell computers. “Dell could have got rid of a lot of PCs at a discounted price, but it doesn’t do anything for the brand, it doesn’t do anything to promote Dell.com.”

The Nissan link – car dealer taps Cobone to push Pathfinders Arabian Automobiles Company (AAC), part of business conglomerate AW Rostamani Group, and the sole distributor of Nissan vehicles in Dubai and the Northern Emirates, plans to launch a campaign on group-buying website Cobone.com to sell cars at a discounted price. The campaign was still in its planning stages when Communicate heard the news. The company was looking at offering seven Nissan Pathfinder SUVs (original cost: 111,000 dirhams) at a discount for a seven-day period, says Felix Welch, sales and marketing director at AAC (pictured). While Welch will not reveal the value of the discount, he does say it will not be close to the 50 to 90 percent group-buying websites typically offer. “We are looking at a very healthy discount, well beyond what you could normally achieve either in a showroom or in a strong campaign. Something at the level of 50 percent just wouldn’t be possible; sadly,

the margins in vehicles these days is not what people think.” “As a company, we are looking at increasingly doing more and more online,” he says. “When you look at the statistics for online, it’s very difficult not to want to be involved when you are involved in marketing a product – when you consider just how many people there are and how much exposure it gives you. We are very keen on being at the front with our efforts to market our products and our communications platforms, and keen to try something new. So we are looking to use Cobone as an experiment, to try the medium to see how it works … and see what level of purchase [can be achieved on these websites].” Girish Ahuja, client leadership director at Mindshare Dubai – Nissan Middle East’s media buyer – says, “The campaign is designed to stimulate the lower end of the sales funnel, by leveraging the strength of the online group-buying platform. People ‘in market’ will have a stronger reason to choose Nissan as opposed to another vehicle.”

Group-buying websites generally have a 24-hour time frame for a deal, but Welch says that is too short for a car purchase. “When you are talking about a 100,000 dirham vehicle, the view that has been taken collectively is that people will want to actually see the vehicle and talk to someone in more detail; and of course buying a car typically involves more complexity than buying something smaller. Our current plan is to have a seven-day window of opportunity, which gives people enough time to pick up the offer online, register their interest online, and then potentially come to the showrooms here.” The vehicles can be bought on a first-come-first-serve basis on Cobone, he says. “Since this is the first time it has been tried, we wanted to keep it very simple, to gauge the level of interest. If it works, and if we find that this portal is somewhere where we can do business, then maybe in the future we can change the way we do it.”

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APRIL 2011 | CoveR StoRy

Enter the groupon The brand that started the group buying trend has launched in the Middle East. We see how it’s looking, and what competition it will be up against by Sidra Tariq Haq says he cannot speak on behalf of “higher powers,” but adds that, “Generally speaking, we decided the strategy would be that we’re not making an acquisition in this area and we would just proceed by ourselves.” He declines to comment on future acquisition plans.

FAISAL hAQ. Managing director of Groupon Middle East

fter many rumors, group-buying pioneer Groupon has finally opened its virtual doors in the UAE. The website featured its first deals in Dubai and Abu Dhabi on March 1, establishing its Middle East presence. The first Dubai deal offered a 50 percent discount on a meal at Greek restaurant Elia, while the Abu Dhabi deal offered 53.66 percent off a 90-minute color facial treatment and Indian head massage at Yengi Nails and Day Spa. Faisal Haq, managing director of Groupon Middle East, says the UAE launch was part of Groupon’s global expansion plans. “The Middle East obviously is a very attractive region,” he says. “There are a lot of people who will be interested in the group-buying model. We chose the UAE specifically as a starting point for a couple of reasons.” “First of all, there is a high population of locals and expatriates here, who have a high disposable income,” he says. “On top of that, the local industries for entertainment, food and beverage, leisure, and personal care, like spas and healthcare, are very well developed in this area. And those make up a large chunk of the businesses that feature on Groupon. And finally, there is very high Internet penetration in the country. So this appears to be an ideal place to have a Groupon business.” In setting up its Middle East arm, one would have thought Groupon might acquire local groupbuying companies as it did in Germany with CityDeal, in Malaysia with Groupsmore, and in India with SoSasta.com. But that is a step the brand decided not to take in this region.

not A one-oFF. Haq lists heritage among Groupon’s unique selling points in the region. “As opposed to some of the copycat websites over here, we actually invented the group-buying model, so we actually understand it better,” he says. “We’re not just a one-off, deal-of-the-day website, like so many people think we are,” he adds. “We are actually introducing what is a new, very fresh and very cost-effective marketing channel. If used correctly – which I’m afraid is not necessarily being done by some of the other businesses, who have not quite understood our model – it forms a very valid part of a long-term marketing strategy for our businesses.” In order to use the model “correctly,” Haq says the deal has to be structured in a way that meets each partner’s requirements. “We don’t just do a random deal,” he says. “We actually look at what our partners’ needs are… in terms of the areas of business that they need to boost. And on that basis, we can create a speciﬁc deal. Moreover, we partner in the long term. We design long-term strategic plans in terms of what kind of deals can be brought out in the future, and we design them accordingly, and according to the requirements of our partners.” He highlights the fact that Groupon is an international platform. “If there are any partners who want to be featured internationally, we can leverage on that. And, in terms of systems and procedures, the entire Groupon company is run centrally. In terms of its operations, we are all integrated and have a very strong IT network behind us.” The UAE is a rather crowded market when it comes to the group-buying model. But Haq says he has no concerns about group-buying models: “The fact is I know that a lot of the businesses were just waiting for the original to come over here; they were sort of just buying time. Now that we are here, we can provide pure expertise [through] our years of understanding and learning that we have gained throughout all of the different markets we have been operating in.” The Middle East arm follows the standard Groupon model, says Haq. It allows payment through credit or debit card and PayPal, but steers clear of cash-on-delivery. It has also hired an editorial team of young, experienced people to maintain the “funky, cool and exciting” copy the international websites are popular for, he adds.

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SIZING UP THE COMPETITION While Groupon Middle East has an international track record to bank on, it faces competition from regional group-buying companies that have local knowledge and have gained a good market share. We look at two strong players in the region, GoNabit and Cobone, and what they have to offer. Dan Stuart. Founder and CEO, GoNabit

Sohrab Jahanbani. Founder, COO, GoNabit

Paul Kenny. CEO, Cobone

Market entry. GoNabit.com launched in May 2010 and became the first venture to implement the group-buying model in the Middle East market. Cobone.com entered the market in August 2010. Financial backing. GoNabit was founded by entrepreneurs Dan Stuart and Sohrab Jahanbani, with start-up funding from Bayt.com, one of the largest job websites operating in the Middle East. Cobone, founded by CEO Paul Kenny, is a part of Jabbar Internet Group (previously known as Maktoob group, which sold Maktoob.com to Yahoo). The group has companies such as Souq.com, Sukar.com, CashU, Tahadi Games and Ikoo in its portfolio. Both Cobone and GoNabit have received financial backing from online giants that have tremendous regional experience and e-business knowledge.

Markets. GoNabit is currently running deals in four countries: the UAE, Lebanon, Jordan and Kuwait. Cobone is operating in six countries: the UAE, Lebanon, Jordan, and Bahrain, with recent launches in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Within the UAE – its home market – GoNabit is present in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and has a joint website for Sharjah, Ajman and Ras Al Khaimah. Cobone, on the other hand, is active in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Sharjah. Both group-buying companies have plans to expand to other countries in the region – with GoNabit soon launching in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain. However, Cobone seems to be expanding to other markets faster, even though it launched a few months after its competitor. Referral program. Both Cobone and GoNabit have referral programs where subscribers are incentivized to spread the word to their friends to buy the deal. When each referred friend buys his first deal, GoNabit offers the referrer 37 dirhams, while Cobone offers 30 dirhams. Payment methods. GoNabit tries to commit to an e-commerce model, says Jahanbani.

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Cover Story | APRIL 2011

It offers payment methods by credit/debit card and PayPal. Cobone, on the other hand, offers more payment options to subscribers. Apart from paying with credit/debit cards and through PayPal, subscribers can pay through CashU (an e-payment gateway that is owned by Cobone’s parent company) and give cash on delivery. Considering that the region’s buyers are still hesitant to use credit and debit cards online, Cobone seems to offer subscribers more flexibility in payment. GoNabit allows customers to pay cash at its office. Deals. Both group-buying websites primarily offer service-based deals. Cobone has managed to negotiate a number of deals in Dubai that attracted more than 2,000 buyers, and offers discounts of up to 70, and even 90 percent. The “Past Deals” featured on the website show these have been primarily restaurant meals, movie tickets and massages. Cobone has also featured deals for spas, yachts, dhow cruises and other family experiences such as parasailing, fishing trips and water parks. GoNabit has also had a good variety of options for customers in Dubai, with discounts (listed as “Past Nabits”) ranging between 50 and 80 percent. These, too, include experiences such as spa and massage treatments, dhow cruises, beauty treatments, and diving and desert driving courses. The group-buying company has also managed to offer 50 percent discounts on some products and services that originally cost 1,000 dirhams or more. Both the companies have had their share of large local clients. These include Jumeirah, Emaar, Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi, and Jashanmal Group. Savings. According to figures given by Jahanbani in January, GoNabit has saved its customers more than $1.25 million since its launch in May. Meanwhile, statistics from Cobone say the company generated 2 million dirhams (around $500,000) in savings in the last eight weeks of 2010. With saving becoming more important in these post-crisis years, these figures demonstrate the potential group-buying websites have in the region, especially when paired with the region’s slowly growing receptiveness to e-commerce models. And, with Groupon entering the market, the competition is going to get more exciting. As group-buying companies in the region offer more competitive deals, it will be a winwin situation for consumers. And hopefully those advertisers cashing in on the trend can benefit too.

What’s the big deal? Groupon joins Cobone and GoNabit in the regional group-buying market

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APRIL 2011 | Cover Story

Shepherd, not sheep European Groupon clones say they offer better deals and better treatment of merchants by Emma Hall

any European group buying sites have already fallen by the wayside in the rush to beat Groupon, but the survivors – and a plethora of new entries – are adopting new approaches to win over consumers and merchants, like charging less than Groupon and offering customers loyalty cards. In the UK alone, Scrumbuy, Dealmob, Groupola, Likebees and Snipper came and went in 2010. Groupon, which entered Europe in May with the purchase of German company City Deals, is adding 40,000 subscribers a day in the UK and about 1 million a month in France, says Rajen Ruparell, director of Groupon UK. Each country has about 4 million subscribers. UK collective-buying sites say they’re trying to build better relationships with merchants than Groupon has managed. At KGB Deals, operating in the US, France, Italy and the UK, communications director William Ostrom says KGB doesn’t insist on a two-year exclusive deal with merchants the way Groupon does. “We are more of a hub, part of a social community, and we tend to be more generous to the merchants,” he says. Nick Brummitt, founder and owner of Wowcher, says smaller players are better at customer

service and working with merchants, from whom they take 15 percent commission instead of the 50 percent demanded by Groupon. Plus, he says, “Lots of businesses don’t want 2,000 new customers. Groupon is killing the beauty business in London.” Since Groupon-like sites are often criticized for supplying one-time customers who never return after using their deeply discounted coupon, Wowcher is introducing loyalty cards offering smaller, long-term discounts to encourage people to return regularly to places where they spent their Wowcher vouchers. The site also tries to be entertaining. It introduced a dentist deal, by saying, “The Tooth Fairy is a burglarizing fetishist specializing in blackmarket ivory trade, and she must be stopped.” NOT BIG ENOUGH. Brummitt says he was invited to Groupon’s Chicago headquarters in February, but his startup was not big enough for Groupon’s ambitions. He says Wowcher is already making a “small profit” and plans to open right on Groupon’s doorstep in Chicago next year. “Just 1 percent of their business would be very nice,” he says.

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COVER STORY | APRIL 2011

Even Groupon itself – branded GrouponMyCityDeal – is less about numbers in Europe, and has gradually been abandoning thresholds for deals. A spokesman says, “We found that traders still wanted the 48 customers who had signed up, even if the threshold had been set at 50. So the model has evolved slightly and minimum tipping points are phasing out.” The group-buying model is developing somewhat differently in other ways in Europe, including paying more attention to the premium end of the market. Discount vouchers for local restaurants and services have been available for years in Europe, distributed via e-mail groups, specialist websites and location-based apps, so the arrival of daily deal sites hasn’t had quite the same impact in Europe as in the US. That ready availability of vouchers, combined with the youthful, upmarket profile of the early adopters of group buying, means that an element of discovery and “cool” is needed to attract people to Groupon alternatives. London-based Keynoir, for example, offers Michelin-starred restaurants. CEO Glen Drury says, “The idea is to ‘curate’ the member offers, keeping the feeling of serendipity every day.” At the extreme end of this market is Nuji.com, a new high-end shopping social network based on sharing stylish fashion, books, gadgets and design with like-minded hipsters. As the site grows, Nuji intends to start negotiating deals with retailers to create group buys on items that have been tagged and recommended by multiple Nuji members. FRENCH FANCIES. In France, Groupon’s arrival is spurring interest. A Groupon France spokeswoman says, “We did not have a big coupon culture here, but leisure, restaurants and beauty are such a big part of people’s lives in France that they embraced Groupon – not so much for the coupons, as for the adventure.” Groupon’s Ruparell says popular deals vary by country. Germans love motor racing and spending days in high-performance cars, while the French go for skiing deals and their favorite restaurants and spas. Brits aren’t afraid to splurge on big-ticket items such as $1,500 laser hair-removal treatments, and $3,000 wedding packages (26 were sold), reduced from $7,500. In 2011, Ruparell says Groupon plans to focus on more cross-border deals and “international synergy,” such as wine-tasting and foreign holiday packages. Elsewhere in Europe, Estonia’s Cherry.ee started small with just one deal a day for the entire country, but has expanded to different cities and boasts one of Estonia’s biggest Facebook groups. Turkey has a Groupon clone called Grupanya, and the Czech Republic has so many group-buying sites that a code of ethics is being developed. German-based DailyDeal, which also has a presence in Austria and Switzerland, claims to be the biggest owner-run couponing portal in

follow the leADER? Groupon may have been an inspiration, but clones are keen to stand out Europe, carrying exclusive deals with iTunes and Hilton hotels, among others. A survey in July showed that 54 percent of DailyDeal members are college graduates and 74 percent earn more than $55,000 a year, underlining the more upmarket profile of group buyers in Europe. Germany is the hub of group buying in Europe, and was also the home of CityDeal, sold to Groupon in May. That company was started in December 2009 by the three Samwer brothers, Oliver, Alexander and Marc, serial Internet entrepreneurs who made their first fortune selling their own eBay clone to eBay in 1999 for $50 million. They subsequently became known as the “ringtone Mafiosi” for making millions out of their company, Jamba, creator of the Crazy Frog ringtone that drove Europe mad in 2005. They sold Jamba to NewsCorp soon after. The Samwer brothers’ latest success and the speed at which group buying is taking off in Europe suggest further mergers and acquisitions are still to come. Keynote’s Drury, who is looking at expanding from London into other European cities, says, “We’ve seen the money that’s around for Groupon and Living Social. It’s set the standard for what the market will pay. There is consolidation left to do, and we have set out our stall as different, which is a reason for the big guys to invest in us.” At Crowdity, founder Rob Berrisford says, “Sign-ups are doubling every week. Everyone at a high level in marketing has heard of Groupon and wants to get involved in group buying.”

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APRIL 2011 | DIGITAL

Clique goes mobile

Digital agency to launch regional ad network for mobile Web by Austyn Allison

Ashwin Salian. Clique Media

toby ruddock. Clique Media

sagar shetty. Clique Media

roy barghout. Mindshare

his month, UAE-based digital shop Clique Media plans to launch its mobile ad network, Plus7 (so named because mobile phones are the seventh mass media after print, recording, cinema, radio, television and Internet, says Sagar Shetty, one of Clique’s three directors). Clique is currently aggregating offers from other international networks such as AdMob, Quattro Wireless (which has now become iAd, part of Apple), and AdsMobi. They represent these networks in the region, and put local advertisers’ campaigns on websites designed for mobile phones. The mobile ad market is an undervalued one at the moment, as although the technology is there, it is not yet fully understood. Plus7 will represent publishers, dealing with their mobile-specific Internet sites. Eurosport Arabia has one. So does AME Info. One advantage of serving ads to mobile sites, says Shetty, is that you know more about who is viewing the site. This makes targeting easier than on the regular Web. The international players are making “a massive land grab of their own,” says director Toby Ruddock. It’s time for Plus7 to cash in, and “grow the ecosystem.” Clique is currently doing this by persuading publishers in the region to develop their mobile websites to cater to the millions of smart-phone users who are accessing the Net from their handsets. Clique either charges for developing the site, takes a commission on advertising revenue, or bills a combination of the two models. “We’ve got quite a few clients from Egypt,” says Shetty. “We had a couple of campaigns we ran

for Vodafone in Egypt. We get a few from Saudi Arabia, of course. Qatar as well. From the North Africa region, we’ve got campaigns. For example, Nokia targets North Africa from here as well.” They work with both publishers and advertisers – with publishers to develop mobile sites that the clients can monetize with advertising, and with clients to develop landing sites a consumer will be taken to when they click on ads. This is important, says Roy Barghout, senior manager of media agency Mindshare’s Exchange division. “Advertisers need a destination page on mobile,” he says. “Currently advertisers are more focused on SMS, rather than click-to-call or click-to register.” With mobile ads, consumers can click a banner to make a phone call, send a text, or even register for a test-drive. “We’ve run a leads-driven campaign on mobile (a first for our [automotive] client), which performed considerably above expectation,” says Barghout. “Given the balance between a conservative budget, delivery, and mobile being in its infancy, it scored one of the lowest costs per lead [CPL].” Shetty says CPLs for mobile sites are significantly smaller than on the traditional Web. “You can say it’s easily 50 percent of the cost on the Internet.” For now, “Education about mobile and its benefits is the primary challenge,” says Barghout. And Clique agrees. “The basic expected problem is education, obviously,” says Shetty. “Trying to tell people what mobile advertising is.” “A common perception here is mobile advertising equals SMS,” says Ashwin Salian, a director at Clique. “Everyone thinks mobile advertising is SMS.” Hopefully Plus7 will show them otherwise.

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APRIL 2011 | MARKETING

By George, it’s the Next big thing

We speak to the man behind labels such as Next, Per Una, and George at Asda, to see how he plans to take on Saudi and the Middle East with his new clothing brand, FG4 by Sidra Tariq

GEORGE DAVIES. Founder of FG4

eorge Davies, the man famous for apparel brands Next, Per Una, and George at Asda, has launched a childrenswear brand in the Middle East in partnership with Saudi Arabian retail conglomerate, Fawaz Alhokair Group. FG4 (the name comes from the “F” in Fawaz, the “G” in George, and “for”) currently caters to babies and children up to 14 years old. Davies has at least 120 FG4 childrenswear stores in the pipeline for 2011; target markets include Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Kazakhstan. In May, Davies plans to add women’s clothing to the line, and around 40 more stores to the FG4 portfolio. FG4 Women will include young fashion outfits, as well as lingerie and abayas, says the 69-year-old English designer and retailer. The first FG4 kids’ clothing store was opened on Feb. 15, 2011, in the Riyadh Gallery in Saudi Arabia, and more stores have opened in the country since. Two stores are slated for launch in Dubai malls this year, adds Davies; the first could open as early as this month. “I’d open more in Dubai, but that is after the property becomes available,” he says. Plans to open three stores in Egypt have been delayed because of the unrest in the country.

ONE’S LOSS, ANOTHER’S GAIN. Next franchises are already in the MENA region, and the Per Una collection is carried by Marks & Spencer stores here too, but FG4 is the first brand that Davies has launched entirely overseas. Saudi Arabia is a challenging market. Davies says he has had a good relationship with Fawaz Al Hokair, the head of the Alhokair Group, which owns around 11 shopping malls in Saudi Arabia. About a year ago he was approached by Alhokair to introduce a childrenswear brand after Adams – A UK kids’ brand that had stores in the group’s malls – went into liquidation. “Around 70 stores became available to me,” he says. “I told Fawaz, ‘I can help you, but I’ll have to come out and understand the country.’ So I came out and met with him.” “I liked the challenge,” he adds. “I think my life is full of challenges, and I’m lucky to be able to keep on having challenges. I never stand still. That was the reason I did it.” “And I love starting new brands. Part of my education is the studying front,” he says. It is important to study a market before launching a brand. “Say I went to Pakistan; I would study it for a long time and travel around, because you cannot just go to the

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MARKETING | APRIL 2011

capital [to have an idea]. You have got to go to different places, and you have to understand how big the market is.” In FG4’s case, Davies made sure he studied the market. He also held discussions with women in Saudi to gauge their preferences and to find out what their children are interested in, he says. Saudi Arabia is an attractive market for any brand as it boasts a population of more than 27 million. For Davies, there were certain other factors that were attractive too. “Sixty percent of the population in Saudi Arabia is under 35,” he says. “Moreover, the average family has around six children. That is a big market.” CULTURAL CLIMATE. Davies has designed children’s clothing for Next and George, but FG4 is different from what he has done before. He says he has taken the region’s climate into consideration, for example: “I think very often the European brands send out products which suit the European temperatures. FG4 is a range of European-designed garments, but it is in fabrics that are suitable for the climates of hotter countries like Saudi Arabia. Instead of using a 12-ounce denim, I will use an eightounce denim.” FG4 stores’ interior design has been tailored to suit children’s age groups, which include 0-3 years, 3-9 years and 10-14 years. For older boys and girls the stores walls are open brickwork, he says, “whereas when you go to the baby section, it is like a nursery, with lots of whites.” THE DESIGNER IN YOU. Davies says that during discussions with women in Saudi, he discovered that “children in [the kingdom] are very similar in many ways to children all over the world: They are all mad about computers.” That led him to introduce a concept called “Design it Yourself,” which allows children to design their own t-shirts and trousers. Children can create designs on a computer at the store, and add badges and accessories to existing designs. These can be printed on garments within a few minutes. Davies also designs merchandise for Premiership football clubs, including Liverpool and Arsenal, and says the idea of ‘Design it Yourself’ came from the technology and concept he uses for the clubs’ merchandise, where people want names of footballers printed on the back of their shirts. “One of the things I think is important when you are designing stores is to create theater,” he says. “In my Liverpool stores, I have moving rails. Once the shirt is printed, it goes through and you can see it being sprayed in the air and then [it gets] delivered to what we call ‘the dug out,’ which is where [shoppers] can see the shirt coming out. It stops people from having to queue. Once they’ve given [the shirt] in, they know it is on the way. Moreover, you can move people around [in the store]. If you

dressed to impress. Even stores get the designer look have an area that is very popular, it can block your store. I’m always thinking of how I move people through space.” Davies often describes his brands as “affordable collectables” and says FG4 is no different. Affordability, however, doesn’t mean cheap, he adds. “It is easy to have cheap clothing, but it is not easy to have great value. Because value is about design, presentation, service, quality or cloth. I always pitch myself against the highest brands in those areas – whether it is Diesel or Prada – but then I make it affordable by the distribution method.” Proud to wear. “I can’t guarantee cheap products; it’s not my style,” he says. “I ensure that people are proud to wear FG4, so I put the brand mark on the garments.” “If you think of Nike, for instance, people who buy it will think of the swoosh,” he adds. “You occupy it through brain cells in the majority of people’s heads. And that is what I’m trying to do. That is why Next is still really well known and people will describe Next and the look of Next, and of George, and Per Una. It has a handwriting, which, if you get right, becomes a brand.” As far as the collectables aspect is concerned, he says, “When I [bring] brands together, I never buy individual items. I always buy them in collections. In other words, there will be 10 or 12

pieces the consumers can mix around, be quite safe with and make a variety of looks.” “That is my trademark,” he says. Davies and his team have used different ways to market the FG4 brand in Saudi Arabia. They distributed about half a million product guides to raise awareness about the brand, in addition to hosting a press conference for the launch, and decorating Alhokair Groupowned malls. In order to create a buzz around the opening, a “Cute Child Contest” was also launched on Facebook. “Marketing is a continual operation,” says Davies. “It’s not something you do just once off. You are always coming up with ideas and have to keep putting the brand forward.” He maintains, though, that the best advertising is through word-of-mouth. So far, the response to the FG4 stores has been good, says Davies. “We’re delighted because we’ve only been trading [for a few weeks], but we’re actually competing with – and doing better than – lots of the [other shops],” he tells Communicate. Davies foresees challenges when it comes to launching his women’s clothing line in Saudi. “It is not a problem in Dubai, but in Saudi, at the moment most stores have only men serving, unless you have a top floor that is women-only. Obviously it’s a problem for women to buy lingerie from a man. Those are the challenges you try to work through,” he says.

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APRIL 2011 | MARKETING

Yours faithfully

We see how loyalty schemes can stop consumers two-timing brands. We ask who’s doing it right by Sidra Tariq

VIPEN SETHI. CEO of Landmark Group

t a time when people’s wallets are bulging with cards – credit, debit, ID, Nol, and more – organizations in the region are trying to offer an incentive to consumers to add another to their stock: a loyalty card. Seeking ways to “build stronger relationships with customers,” as marketers are keen to say, brands are setting up loyalty programs while others are enhancing the privileges they already offer their regular customers. Loyalty programs, a large subsector of customer relationship management, are a way of rewarding customers for purchasing a product or service, and are often used as a platform to encourage repeat purchases. By presenting their loyalty cards at the till, customers are entitled to a discount or a number of points, miles, or other incentives, which can be redeemed at a later date. “Loyalty programs are a key indicator for enhancing the relationship between customers and the organization,” says Vipen Sethi, CEO of Landmark Group, which has one of the largest retail loyalty programs in the region, Shukran. The Shukran card, previously known as the Centrepoint Privilege Club Card, was rebranded in October 2010. The card allows customers to

collect and redeem points at Landmark Group’s stores such as Splash, Shoe Mart, New Look, and Home Centre. Such programs can be developed in-house but may be affiliated to a group of partner brands. Emirates airline’s frequent flyer program, Skywards, for instance, has a number of airlines, hotels and other service providers as partners. Miles collected by customers through Skywards can be redeemed against products and services from partner brands as well. Different brands within third-party loyalty programs such as Air Miles can also allow customers to collect and redeem points across the stores of program partners. TAKING FLIGHT. While loyalty programs around the world have advanced, they are only a stage beyond infancy in this region, says Mark Mortimer-Davies, CEO of Air Miles Middle East, the regional arm of one of the largest coalition (where more than one business is involved) loyalty programs in the world. “From 2003 to early 2009, people couldn’t run fast enough in Dubai, and you couldn’t keep

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up with the growth. Loyalty was not a main topic of discussion,” he says. “In the last six to eight months, however, we have found a lot of companies that took the time to seriously look at the changes in their business are looking at improving their businesses with loyalty.” Apart from allowing customers to collect rewards during their everyday shopping trips, a loyalty program serves as a way for customers to be recognized by brands, says Ralph Browning, regional director at Carlson Marketing, a marketing services company specializing in designing and managing relationship building programs. If you spend a lot of money with a brand that has a loyalty program, you know you will be recognized. For example, if you write to the CEO and say, ‘I’m a gold member,’ you will be listened to, whereas if there isn’t a loyalty program, the brand will never know who you are.” Members of frequent-flyer programs can also earn travel benefits, says Brian LaBelle, senior vice-president at Skywards. “Gold and Silver members, for instance, get into those tiers by traveling more,” he says. “When they travel enough, they get benefits like lounge access, preferred check-in and extra baggage allowance. This makes their journey a little easier.” In some programs, such as Air Miles, rewards never expire, so a customer can keep collecting points and redeem them in the long run. In others, the points have a limited lifespan. Skywards miles last for three years. WHO’S WHO. While customers can reap the benefits of loyalty programs, organizations also get more than a happy customer. They can put a face to transactions and have access to information that will help them plan their marketing and sales strategies better. “We have an adage around the company that data is the new oil,” says Mortimer-Davies. The data provides a route to business efficiency and better availability of stock, he adds. “When organizations get to know their shopper patterns better, and when they get to know their customer behavior better, it allows them to be more efficient. They can plan their promotions more effectively. As a result, there is less waste in their company in terms of stock control and less waste in money spent on promotions that don’t really work.” “Moreover, customer understanding allows organizations to lay out stores better,” he says. If people who buy product A always buy product B, the company could be advised to put the two products together in a store. One opportunity that organizations may have is being able to cross-sell through loyalty programs, especially large corporate businesses that have a broad product offering. For instance, people who purchase a shirt from an apparel brand can be offered a discount on a pair of boots from a shoe store that is part of the loyalty program, which can eventually lead to a prospective customer for the shoe store. This applies for coalition loyalty programs as well, where various partners can take

MARKETING | APRIL 2011

right incentive. Loyalty programs reward customers for purchasing a product or service advantage of the customer data available. In this case, “different brands work together by ensuring customers accrue and save in a currency which can only be redeemed within the network,” says Sethi. While there are opportunities for brands, loyalty programs are not free of challenges. One hurdle comes up when a brand succeeds in raising customers’ expectations but fails to deliver, says Browning. Another can arise when a program fails to motivate customers. “If you don’t make [the program] exciting, interesting and engaging, and change customer behavior, then it essentially becomes just a waste of money. You could be giving money away for customers doing exactly what they do normally,” he says. CROWDED HOUSE. When several brands partner in loyalty programs, there is scope for a conflict of interests. This makes it important for brands and external loyalty program providers alike to choose partners wisely and look for areas of cooperation. “We choose partners where we can help each other,” says LaBelle. “We do not partner with head-to-head competitors. We partner with airlines in other parts of the world where one of the benefits of frequent-flyer programs is that it facilitates our members to fly on partner airlines, and the partner airlines’ members to fly on Emirates. And that works quite well.” Air Miles’ Mortimer-Davies agrees that brands can work together. “Last year, we started a series of CEO breakfasts, and are trying to get the CEOs and general managers of these companies in,” he says. “We talk to them about loyalty, and show them new examples from around the world, because we are a worldwide group. Then we let them have breakfast and talk to each other about how they can cooperate.” He says there are two indicators of a successful loyalty program: sales increase and cost decrease. The way these are measured changes, though, depending on what brands a loyalty program covers.

Ralph browning. Regional director, Carlson Marketing

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“A very simple cost decrease could be from direct marketing,” he says. “You could target your marketing, and we would segment that database and be very specific.” Market segmentation can reduce costs, he adds, and also increase sales. “There is an argument that says if you join a program because you have a natural affinity and liking for the brand, you are going to spend more and be less likely to turn,” adds Browning. “So within a program, you are bound to end up with people who have higher return rates and spend more money.” TELL ME WHY. Apart from measuring customers’ spending, the results of loyalty programs can also be gauged by conducting research to determine how engaged customers are with a brand. Skywards uses two measurements, says LaBelle. “We are always comparing and building our trends and looking at KPIs [key performance indicators] to make sure they are all moving in the right direction,” he says. “The second thing we do is use control groups, which is very powerful.

Say you want to put an offer out to a few thousand people: You hold back about 5 percent and then you compare what that 5 percent did without the promotion compared to the 95 percent that got the promotion. Then you can tell almost exactly whether you had a success or not. You then measure your cost and calculate your return on investment and you are very clear on how you are doing.” “Next year will see some major growth in penetration of loyalty programs within the various sectors that we operate in,” says Mortimer-Davies. LaBelle expects to see an expansion of loyalty programs in the banking and retail sectors, while Browning predicts an increase in use by airlines, hotels, telecoms and credit card providers. “As far as the challenges are concerned, I think the customers are getting more and more discerning, so the programs have to be that much more transparent and provide real value,” says LaBelle. Meanwhile, Browning forecasts that “some of the weaker programs will fade away or join consortium programs.” He says technology will make programs easier and lead to more mobile applications.

Five characteristics of a successful loyalty program Brian LaBelle. Senior vice-president at Skywards

Simplicity. Simple to join. Simple to collect. Simple to redeem. The simpler a program, the better it is. Once it becomes too complicated, it becomes another bothersome experience. Data-driven. Use the program to collect data that is measurable, analyze the data, and eventually translate it into actions. Customer-centric. The message should be personalized. The offers and communications should be relevant to the customer’s age, gender, lifestyle, and other attributes. Cost-effective. Make sure the reward or program is cost effective.

Mark Mortimer-Davies. CEO of Air Miles Middle East

Global experience. In terms of coalitions, learning from experience in other markets can help organizations improve their program. As told to Communicate by Mark Mortimer-Davies

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APRIL 2011 | MARKETING

Card bored

Why loyalty schemes may be lured away from plastic by the virtues of virtual by Sidra Tariq

ow many loyalty cards does an average customer have in their wallet? Numerous pieces of research suggests the number can be as high as five in the US, but it is unlikely to be more in this region. (A straw poll of the Communicate office found the average for men was 1.1 while women had 1.2 loyalty cards in their wallet. No one had more than three.) In an attempt to give consumers a plasticfree experience, a number of brands in the US and Europe have developed mobile phone-based loyalty programs. While the concept is common abroad, it is relatively new in this region, with businesses sticking to traditional, literal, plastic loyalty cards. A recent entrant in the mobile-based loyalty program arena is Apparel Group, a large UAE-based retailer that represents international brands such as Aldo, Nine West, and Cold Stone Creamery in the Middle East. The group launched Club Apparel in May last year, making it the first mobile-based loyalty program in the Emirates. As with any card-based program, customers can collect points during a purchase and redeem them at any participating store. The difference is that the points are allocated to a member’s cell phone and, in the case of Club Apparel, can be redeemed by calling a toll-free number, receiving a text, and presenting your phone at the till. But why use your phone when you can use a card?

Because of convenience, says Poornima Couto, marketing manager at Apparel Group. “People are sick and tired of getting more cards.” There are only so many a person can keep in his or her wallet. “As a customer, if you get another card, you may not remember to carry it because you have way too many cards already: credit, debit, health insurance, driving license, labor card,” she adds. “And then you realize that you’ve gone and shopped at those brands and you’re not able to earn points, simply because you haven’t carried the card.” A mobile phone, on the other hand, is something everyone carries, she says. “So why not make our customers’ lives a lot more simple, convenient and easier? In this way, their phone becomes their mobile wallet, because they earn and redeem points through it.” However, Brian LaBelle, senior vice-president at Skywards, Emirates airlines’ loyalty program, points out that not all programs require members to carry their loyalty card with them – including many frequent-flyer programs. Skywards is an electronic program and functions completely independent of the card. Members do not need to carry the card when they travel, as they are recognized (through indicators such as their names, passport numbers, or phone numbers) as cardholders during their booking, whether it is done online or through an agent, he says.

“Nevertheless, Gold members do have a benefit [from carrying the card] if it has the e-gate chip in it,” he adds. “So they only carry one card, as they will have the UAE eGate function built into it. But that’s the only case where a person really should carry it.” Most retail outlets, though, require a card for the redemption of points. While a virtual program may bring convenience with it, there are certain values attached to the plastic card. Ralph Browning, from Carlson Marketing, which specializes in loyalty programs, says some businesses prefer a card system because the card serves as a constant reminder of the program and brand. As far as customers are concerned, it can also be a matter of status, he adds, especially if it is for being a privileged member. Mobile-based loyalty programs may be plasticfree, but they can still play the eco-friendly card. Couto says that the program largely cuts out paperwork. “We don’t have lots of paper statements, so we are saving on that. Everything is on e-mail, phone and SMS.” This way, the program can also save on printing and paper costs. An environmental conscience and desire for convenience may be pulling away from traditional loyalty cards. But, in a region where status carries, well, a lot of status, it seems cards are here to stay. It’s a long road to virtual loyalty.

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APRIL 2011 | DEPARTMENTS

The personal touch

Macy’s, Sears, PetSmart and Food Lion tap technology to better tailor experiences and entice the most fervent shoppers by Natalie Zmuda allows customers to create a profile personalized with relevant specials and recipes. Worth noting: My Macy’s and My Food Lion are separate from those retailers’ loyalty programs, Macy’s Star Rewards and Food Lion’s MVP Card. The former focuses on understanding the customer and delivering desirable products and information, Reardon says. The latter is meant to reward customers for frequent shopping. Retailers are also getting savvier about how they use customer information. Pet shop chain PetSmart uses its database of e-mail addresses to send targeted mail with editorial content, as well as coupons. A recent note to reptile owners who typically buy crickets extolled the virtues of worms, included a link to information on reptiles, and provided a $2 coupon for any live worm purchase. “Crickets are an important part of a reptile’s diet – but did you know that worms are an even better source of energy?” the e-mail read. “Come on in and ask a store associate to help you design a diet that’s just right for your reptile.” Likewise, Sears Holdings has overhauled its loyalty program in the past two years, morphing it into Shop Your Way. The program, which rolled out nationwide in November 2009, now counts more than 50 million members. Shoppers earn 10 points for every $1 spent in store or online and get access to bonus offers and prizes, as well as perks, such as the ability to return items without receipts. The program is cost-effective and gives Kmart and Sears the opportunity to build a robust database of consumers.

n days of yore, retailers knew their customers. Sales clerks sent invitations to store events, called when items of interest arrived, and had Rolodexes crammed with notes about shoppers’ favorite brands and styles. That style of shopping – an intimate experience, not an anonymous one – has long been thought dead, driven to extinction by the invasion of the big-box retailer. But now store owners are hoping to recapture some of the old magic. They are updating and expanding loyalty programs, which once rewarded shoppers only for frequent purchasing, and offering locally relevant marketing and merchandising. “We’ve got a highly educated consumer who is probably more demanding than she’s been in the past,” says Martine Reardon, vicepresident of marketing at US department store Macy’s. “She wants to go to a retailer that understands her, is really relevant to the lifestyle she’s living, and really does pay attention.” My Macy’s, now in its third year, seeks to be more relevant to consumers by stocking shelves with items popular in local markets – Elvis Christmas ornaments in Memphis, Tennessee, and electric

pizzelle presses used to make the Italian cookie in Parma, Ohio, for example. The program also extends to marketing. Events celebrating the Kentucky Derby have been held in advance of the race at Louisville-area stores. And big wins for local sports teams are recognized with ads in the hometown newspaper. Earlier this year, Macy’s Star Beach Party program was due to launch in Chicago, targeting college students from 10 area campuses including Columbia College, Northwestern and Loyola. The program pairs texting and pop-up events to lure students shopping for spring break fashions and, eventually, interview suits, the retailer hopes. The program was conceived by a regional executive who saw an untapped audience of 65,000 college students, a Macy’s spokeswoman says. LION CLONE. Meanwhile, grocery store chain Food Lion has launched My Food Lion, inspired, in part, by My Macy’s, says Cathy Green, president of the Food Lion family of banners, during a recent National Retail Federation conference. The program

SHOP AND CHANGE. “The spectacular growth of Sears’ Shop Your Way program is testimony to the ongoing power of a very simple, classic idea: rewarding loyalty based on customer behavior,” says Lawrence Kimmel, CEO of the Direct Marketing Association. More robust databases and better targeted communications will go a long way toward helping retailers recapture the magic of retailing days past. But it’s not easy or simple. In the fall, Macy’s sent out a mailing with upward of 30,000 different versions. Using information gleaned from databases, the retailer varied the page count and the items promoted. The catalogs varied in size from 32 pages to 76 pages, featuring additional pages of shoes for footwear fanatics or children’s clothing for moms. “What we tried to do was really customize [catalogs] to what the customer is really looking for and her past behavior shows she might want,” Reardon says. “I still have circles under my eyes from it; it was pretty resource-intensive. But we learned a lot, and we are going to do similar things in the future.” n

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APRIL 2011 | DEPARTMENTS

Q&A

Sweet dreams

Andrew Robertson, president and CEO of BBDO, tells Communicate how his agency is taking digital to heart, making moves in market share, and turning television back on by Austyn Allison

Dani Richa. CEO of Impact BBDO

t the start of February, against a backdrop of riots in Egypt, regional advertising network Impact BBDO celebrated its 40th birthday. At a dinner for staff and guests in Dubai, where Impact BBDO is headquartered, founder and CEO Alain Khouri handed over his title and the running of the business to its president, Dani Richa, and took a step back to become chairman emeritus. The transition had been two years in the making. As part of Khouri’s meticulous succession plan, Global holding company Omnicom Group has taken majority ownership of Impact BBDO – which also holds interests in buying network Omnicom Media Group. One year ago, New York-based Omnicom raised its ownership of Impact BBDO to 85 percent. One of the speakers at the birthday/hand-over dinner was the president and CEO of BBDO Worldwide, Andrew Robertson (pictured, above), who has been at the company’s helm since 2004. Communicate caught up with him before dinner to find out how business looks abroad and at home, how his network would tackle a volatile Middle East, and why he’s tipping TV for a comeback.

How’s BBDO’s business? Strong. We had a very good 2010. In terms of our product, we maintained the standard we set for ourselves, which is to win at Cannes, to win the Gunn Report, and to win the One Report. We won the One Report for the third year in a row, the Gunn Report for the fifth year in a row, and Cannes for the fourth year in a row. So, in a year when we could have been forgiven for taking the foot off the gas a little bit, we didn’t. I’m very proud of that. We had 22 agencies around the world that won their local agency of the year award, which is a very, very good number. We were the most awarded agency at effectiveness awards in more than 20 countries, which is a very good thing. We have won every single global pitch that we’ve done in the past 12 months, and we grew with a lot of our existing clients, so I feel good about 2010, and I feel that we laid the foundations in 2010 for a strong 2011 as well. We’ve got some very solid foundations from 2010 that will help us in 2011.

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You measure a lot by awards. We set out our stall based on the quality of our work; we believe that is the most significant way we can add value to our clients’ businesses and differentiate ourselves from our competitors. We add value to our clients’ businesses because these days – and every single day this becomes more true – the only way of dealing with the attention economy is with creativity, the magical ability to attract and hold the attention of an audience while you give them an experience that changes what they do. That’s the business we’re in, and it gets more valuable every single day because it gets harder every single day, and it is much more about the attention rather than what you buy. So that, we believe, is terribly important. One of the things you have to do is benchmark the quality of your work against all of your competitors. And no matter how imperfect they are (and I don’t for one minute suggest that they are perfect), the major creative awards shows are a pretty good way of doing that. When you have, as they did here, a film for Mercedes that goes into Cannes, it’s competing with every other agency on the planet for a Lion. So if you win one, you’ve done a pretty good job. The institute of practitioners of advertising in the UK, which has by far the best and most rigorous effectiveness award scheme on the planet, has done an analysis going back over, I think, 20 years, of IPA effectiveness awards. It has shown that of all the campaigns that won effectiveness awards, those that won creative awards were, on average, 11 times more effective than the ones that didn’t. So they’ve actually been able to quantify what I believed to be true: Exceptional work generates exceptional returns and tends to get awards. Where do you see growth coming from? I have always taken the view that even when you’re the size of BBDO, your growth is driven more by your market share than it is by the market. This is a tremendously fragmented business, and the leverage is far more in our ability to develop the clients that we have and win clients that we don’t than it is on floating in on a tide or sinking on an ebbing tide. Throughout the recession we had very strong performances in places such as France and the UK, which were very depressed markets; we had a fantastically strong performance in the US in 2010. In Asia we’ve been growing. Australia and New Zealand are very strong, and Brazil has been spectacular. We’re seeing growth where we have good companies doing good work; it’s as simple as that. Where does this part of the world fit in? Impact BBDO had a good 2010, and is also, I believe, looking strong for 2011. The business did a good job of keeping clients where there were a couple of sticky reviews. But we kept the business. There’s been quite a lot of new business added, and the pipeline is strong across the region. The development of business with existing clients is very, very good, and frankly that’s the

Take off. Impact won a Cannes Lion for its work with Mercedes most satisfying thing to see, because that doesn’t happen unless you are doing a decent job on them day in, day out. So that looks good. And the work is good. Impact BBDO Dubai won the first film Lion at Cannes that has ever been won by a Dubai agency [a Silver for “Emirates Take Off” for Mercedes-Benz]. We had our best ever Lynx, even though we weren’t the agency of the year. Nobody beat us in the GEMAS Effies effectiveness awards. The quality of the work being done here is very good, so I’m pretty optimistic. How much of the work that you’re doing now is digital? We try not to think of it in terms of digital, but everybody always asks the question, so I have to know the answer. If you look around the world, about 23 or 24 percent of our business, measured by revenue, is digital. It’s lower here. It varies by country a lot in the Middle East, just because the penetration of Internet – and in particular the penetration of broadband, which is what really drives it – varies dramatically. One of our goals for 2011 is to learn to dream in digital. Dream in digital? We don’t see digital as a medium or a platform or a technology. We see it as a language, a language you use to communicate ideas and create experiences that change what people do. But it has its own syntax and grammar that’s different from some of the other languages we work in.

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winners. Impact BBDO client Doritos picks up the Gemas Effie award for the Best Youth Marketing Campaign When you’re learning a new language, there are three levels you work through. The first one is: I can understand you, but I can’t speak. The second one is: I can understand you and I can speak. But you know you’ve mastered a language when you wake up in the morning and think, oh, I was dreaming in Spanish, or I was dreaming in French, or I was dreaming in Arabic. And the challenge for us is to get to a point where we are dreaming in digital all of the time – that level of mastery of the language, across all of our companies, in all disciplines. That’s what we’re working towards.

Alain Khouri. Chairman emeritus of Impact BBDO

What other big trends do you see? In parallel with that, I’ve got to tell you, I’m also encouraging everybody to rediscover the magic of television. In the last quarter it suddenly became acceptable again to say “TV is great.” For five years, at least, you’ve sounded like you were advocating creationism, or something like that, by saying television had a role to play in life, because it’s been so not fashionable. But two things have happened: One is that the recession has caused an awful lot of agencies and clients to be a little bit more rigorous when they examine what is driving business and what isn’t. Lo and behold, television is still one of the most powerful forms of communication there is for driving business. Secondly, in the last quarter, Nielsen kind of made a big deal out of data that showed that television viewing among all age groups is on the up. So the conventional wisdom, that the

Internet is eating television alive, is just not true. And it hasn’t been true for the past five years; it’s just been impossible to say. As a consequence of that, one of the things that happened is if you look at the quality of television advertising, I don’t think it is quite as strong as it was a few years ago. It’s not because the ability isn’t there; it’s that I think a little bit of the focus was taken off it. So we’re putting that back on. Will political upheavals in the Middle East affect you? There are things that are way outside our control, so the question is: How do you mitigate the damage and how do you create some kind of opportunity out of it? As weird as that may sound, it’s not crazy. The first thing you do is make sure your people are all right. The second thing is to help your clients. For a lot of clients, this is a difficult time. Some of them, if they’ve got retail outlets or ATM machines, are having a rough time at the moment. But, importantly, you plan for what you are going to do the day it gets better. And it’s very interesting when you talk to the guys from Lebanon who say, “We’re used to this.” They say, “We’ve seen this movie; it changes, but we know what happens.” You go into it, everything shuts down for a period of time, then everything opens up, and when it opens up, if you are prepared, if you’ve got good programs in place and ready to hit the ground running, then you can gain share and do all sorts of things. You can gain share for your clients and with your clients, if you play your cards right. That’s what we’re going to be doing.

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Portfolio

Pandamonium

Two-man team Elephant Cairo tells Communicate about an angry bear that went viral – and sold a lot of cheese by Austyn Allison

man lies in a hospital bed. He’s not seriously ill, though. We can tell this by the fact he’s sitting up and being offered food. On the tray is some Panda cheese, made by a Cairo dairy. The man declines the food. There is an awkward silence. A panda stands beside the man’s bed. Its brow is furrowed in a sort of concerned disappointment. The panda is obviously very pissed off. Slowly, deliberately and aggressively, it knocks over the patient’s television and unplugs one of his drips. Buddy Holly’s “True Love Ways” plays in the background. “Never say no to Panda,” appears on the screen. You may have seen this TVC on television, or on YouTube, you may have seen it in Egypt, where it was produced, or on ABC in the US, or translated into other languages. It’s gone viral. It’s been around a bit. The ad, along with several others, is from Elephant Cairo, a two-man creative shop that came out of Egypt to storm the Dubai Lynx

Advertising Festival last year. Communicate caught up with the two men behind the partnership – Ali Ali (pictured, above, left) and Maged Nassar – in Ali’s apartment next to the agency’s Zamalek office in Cairo to talk about the success of the Panda ads. They have been a hit on the Internet with consumers around the world, and also won a Silver Lion at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. It turns out that was part of the plan. “The brief said, ‘We want to win at Cannes,’” says Ali. “And I remember Maged and I laughed our asses off because we thought, ‘Oh, these fools, they don’t know what it’s like to win at Cannes.’” Bold bear. But Panda was serious. “They said it so casually,” says Ali. “We’ve been dying for 10 years to win Cannes, and they are just like, ‘Hey, we want to win Cannes,’ but if we come back with the kind of ideas that win Cannes, they would probably shoot them down.”

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Panda – like most cheese brands – was not known for its adventurous advertising. “We looked at their show reel,” says Ali. “The work they’ve done in the past is very ‘Mmm... taste this cheese,’ and ‘Mom, can I get some cheese on the way to school?’ It would be a huge leap for Panda. It’s not like they were doing creative work and now they wanted to do this crazy campaign. [Panda’s previous campaign] was very much a cheese ad and looked like any other cheese ad.” It had become time for Panda to produce another ad, though, and they decided this one should be something different. The dairy’s incumbent agency, Advantage, called Elephant in November 2009. Although Elephant produced the ads, Advantage dealt with the client-handling side. “We got a call from Advantage saying, ‘Panda are interested in working with you guys’” says Ali. “’We know you guys don’t have account handling, and this is how we usually work: with clients who need account-handling.’” Elephant is a “freelance creative hub.” It hands over its account handling to others. Both Ali and Nassar used to work for FP7 in Dubai, and then split off and set up Elephant in October 2009. Ask why they left FP7, Ali answers, “Have you worked in an agency before?” Scare bear. A traditional agency structure would have killed the Panda ads. “The client servicing guys would be very afraid of the panda eating people,” says Ali. “And the managing director would be, ‘No, guys, don’t lose the business; we want this client. We don’t want very aggressive ideas; we don’t want to go crazy.’ And after the client sees the idea, maybe he’ll give us one or two comments. The client handlers receive it and they will transmit it to us. … Without a lot of client-servicing people, you have the freedom to do all that, whatever goes on in your mind, whatever you see is right.” Ali and Nassar don’t work as a traditional copywriter-art director pairing. They give Communicate a double-sided card. On one side is Ali’s title, director, and on the other side is Nassar’s, writer. “We both do the work,” says Ali. “We both do both things. We have another business card that has them the other way around.” Elephant brainstorms its ideas. Ali and Nassar are the core of the agency’s ideas, but they are not alone. “There’s also Sammy, the office boy,” says Ali. “He’s really cool; he brainstorms with us. And we also have open sessions at night. When we have a brief we call some of our friends from places to come in and give us ideas if they want, or talk about their stuff. It’s an open-door policy, where people can come in. But as far as Maged and I work, we do the ads from start to finish, including directing.” “We came back with around four or five ideas,” says Ali. “The first thing we said in our

you Lika? Elephant’s work for Lika Gum has also won awards presentation is, ‘Where the fuck is the panda?’ I mean, you are called Panda; it’s in your face, and there’s a panda on the box. And no one has ever mentioned the panda before.” Bear with me. Communicate asks why the brand is called Panda. Ali says, “We have no idea why it’s called Panda. They have no idea why it’s called Panda.” But the panda kept coming back. “Every time we’d sit and brainstorm, the panda would come up. ‘What if the panda walks in and does this?’ One of the ideas we really liked was that you open the fridge, and a panda arm comes out with the cheese.” Another idea had the panda as a motivational coach, driving on a herd of cattle to get the most out of the cows. Or the panda would be dancing behind a man playing on a PlayStation, knitting with a grandmother, throwing stuff at a fighting couple, or “getting kinky” with lesbians – “A panda for every taste” was the tagline for that. The animal wouldn’t go away, says Ali. “We’d say, ‘Let’s meet Friday, but no one mentions bears at all. Let’s just think of something else; imagine it’s called Kiwi or something.’” That didn’t work, though, he continues. “We’d come back on Friday and the panda would come back and we’d get really excited and start throwing ideas about the panda.” Perhaps it was because the panda wouldn’t go away that Elephant came up with the idea that you can’t ignore it.

So they had three panda suits made by a costume maker in Prague. “We wanted something that looked real, but looked huggable as well,” says Ali. “We wanted a real teddy bear; that was our brief. We wanted the gorilla from [Fallon’s ads for] Cadbury, but we wanted it to be adorable. Which is really hard to achieve, because if you do a real panda with real fur and leaves, then it becomes less adorable.” Little bear. The panda suits have now been retired to a cheese factory. The man inside the panda is Ahmed “Fizo” Hafiz, an art director who worked with the Elephant duo when they were at FP7. “He’s the first person we thought of, because we didn’t want the panda to be too tall,” says Ali. He’s not as short as people think, though. “People were calling him a midget online, and he got really offended. People say he’s ‘this fucking crazy midget wearing a panda costume,’ and he isn’t a midget.” Egyptian advertising is known for its humor, but not for its subtlety. “The Egyptian client wants what we call ‘the punchline,’” says Ali. They are always looking for ‘Aaand… the fat lady falls from the chair.’ They are always looking for very in-your-face comedy.” Elephant wanted something more subtle, something darker. The dry humor of the final campaign came later, though. “The version we sold was: If you don’t eat the cheese, that panda really beats the shit out of you. … It was really bloody, and that was the joke – that it would get really bloody, that

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the panda would take a guy’s head and smash it through a windshield. We were really excited about that for a while, and then we had the idea of completely changing it, and made it more subtle. Have the panda take his time, and then maybe do something as simple as [a single gesture] to give its emotion.” The ads were generally well received. “Egyptians, as a public, they get that kind of humor,” says Ali. “It’s just that they haven’t been exposed to it that much.”

Maged Nassar. Partner in Elephant Cairo

The real thing. Elephant has won awards with its work for Coca-Cola

Mother bear. But the violence has brought detractors with it, as well as fans. “Maged’s mother, for example, hated it,” says Ali. “Anything that has got a bit of aggression in it will polarize.” It’s grown on her, though. The ads went viral last summer. A look at the YouTube stats for the campaign’s Supermarket execution (the panda knocks over a shopping trolley) show that between May and the start of August, the video had received around 2,500 hits. By the end of September, that number had reached more than 1.5 million. And that’s just one posting of the ad. “The campaign has been dubbed into maybe eight languages,” says Ali. “We got an e-mail from Google. … They said we got 2 million views in five days, which is a record for the MENA region.” He has no idea why the ads suddenly took off, though. “We had already had a million hits, and then it just jumped,” he says. “It’s the viral effect. It just happens.” Panda is just one campaign in a line of successes for Elephant. Ali and Nassar have scored award wins with their work for Lika gum and Coca-Cola, and have been working on ads for Google and Aujan. It’s no surprise, then, that other companies have come calling. Within a year of opening,

Elephant had received overtures from agencies wanting to buy it. When Communicate spoke to Ali and Nassar last year, Ali told us, “We are in a lot of talks with people who want to buy us now, turning us into a big agency.” He says he and Nassar may rise to the bait. “We are indecisive,” he says. “It’s tempting, but we know its not going to be as fun as it is now. We are very flexible; working hours are flexible.” Broke bear. On the other hand, they are not getting rich. “In Egypt, unfortunately, the money is in the media,” says Ali. “That’s where people make big money in advertising. Every agency, like FP7, JWT, and Leo Burnett, has a media arm where they make their money. The formula is normally: You lose money in the creative, but make it in the media. So when you are just a creative entity, people do not want to pay a lot of money. Like Panda will pay $15,000 for the campaign, but they will go and spend $1 million on the media. So it is almost unfair how much money people spend.” If Ali and Nassar sell, they will keep the name, though. Communicate asks why the agency is called Elephant. Nassar says, “I don’t know. We just love the name.” Ali adds, “It’s a strange name. A lot of people ask us about it, and that’s the reason I think it is a nice name. People have no idea why it’s called Elephant; we don’t know why it’s called Elephant.” He says he and Nassar didn’t want to tie themselves to the world of agencies. “We wanted a name that obviously has nothing to do with advertising or creative, like ‘The Think Tank,’ or ‘The Creative Factory,’” he says. “We wanted something that would still work if we did anything other than advertising.” Like the agency’s work, its name is a little bit leftfield and a little bit fun. And, like the agency’s ads, it just works.

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APRIL 2011 | DEPARTMENTS

X-pert Files

Windows of opportunity

Denh Dip, director of media agency UM’s research arm Lighthouse, says the chances of a successful social media strategy depend on the brand’s category

Denh DIP. Director of UM’s Lighthouse

t comes as no shock that more active Internet users in the Middle East have recently joined online communities on social media platforms. It is now essential and clearly expected that brands – be they in the government or private sector – should engage with online communities by following a proper understanding of how specific platforms meet these users’ differing needs. However, for brands to successfully engage with regular Internet users, it’s crucial to understand how and where different groups get active and, most importantly, what motivates them to join a community. A UM survey found that brand communities in the Middle East attract those who want to be connected with like-minded individuals. About 26 percent of active Internet users joined brand communities; a large number wanted to get advanced news about certain products or industries, and others wanted to access and influence decision making. Clearly, information is a very valuable commodity. Consumers who joined brand communities thought about brands more positively and became more loyal to them. So there is an opportunity to build brand equity, drive sales, increase loyalty and create brand endorsement – which is what marketing communications is all about. Of course, things are not so simple or easy. In order to create a social media experience that will benefit the brand, it’s important to meet users’ needs to feel a part of a community where they share a common appreciation or cause with their peers. At the same time, different categories have different social media needs. Analysis of the movie category, for example, shows that access to fun content is key,

whereas learning is the dominant need in the health category. The level of social activity most suitable for each category of brand is determined by mapping involvement across a spectrum of social engagement – from those who should actively create content and collaborate with users to those who simply need to provide information. UM research also showed that certain categories have a very broad appeal. Music and movies, for example, tend to engage though collaboration, co-creation, sharing and seeking input. However, all brands must be aware of the strongest link on social media platforms: the social amplifiers who, in a nutshell, are the creators of the social media scene. UM has identified more than 500,000 active Internet users in the MENA region who have the potential to drive brands and other communities in the directions they deem best. They are highly influential across all categories, and their expectations from online communities are much higher than regular users. During the FIFA World Cup 2010, Coca-Cola launched its regional anthem, “Waving the flag,” which was performed by K’naan and featured Coke’s regional icon, Lebanese singer Nancy Ajram. UM launched the song online through a number of amplifiers who went on to upload it, recommend it and share it with other users on various social media platforms. It was also aired on major TV music channels and on radio. The video became a phenomenon, receiving 11.5 million views on YouTube, ranking as the fifth mostwatched video on Facebook in EMEA, and one of the most viewed Arab music videos of all time.

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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

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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Style

Why do leading brands work with the BBC?

SUBSTANCE Access to the influential

Substance to complement your style

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APRIL 2011 | DEPARTMENTS

Regional Work

The Economist brand campaign Agency: Memac Ogilvy Copywriters: Dylan Kidson, Steve Hough, Sascha Kuntze Art Directors: Mel Harvey, James Purdie Designer: Leonardo Borges Creative Director: Ramzi Moutran Executive Creative Director: Steve Hough Senior Account Manager: Adriano Konialidis

Goes fast, stops faster Client: Kawasaki Advertising Agency: Impact BBDO, Beirut, Lebanon Executive Creative Director: Walid Kanaan Senior Art Director: Hovsep Guerboyan Copywriter: Marie-Noelle De Chadarevian Illustrator: Ruben Furio Photographer: Astrid Challita

Ensure germs donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t shadow you Advertising Agency: Euro RSCG, Dubai, UAE Creative/Art Director: Neeraj Sabharwal Copywriter: Wayne Fernandes Illustrator: Garry Walton / Meiklejohn Illustration Agency Group Account Director: Jamie McAinsh Account Director: Youmna Boustani

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

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Regional Work

With your power, the world is yours Agency: Spirit Client: Ahli International Bank Production House: Né à Beyrouth Creative Director: Maya Saab Director: Thierry Vergnes DOP: Yves Sehnaoui Senior Art Director: Olga Salman Communication Manager: Georges Kallab

You owe it to your great killed ideas Advertising Agency: Leap Studios, Saudi Arabia Creative Directors: Tamer Samy, Amr El Massri Art Director: Amr El Massri Copywriters: Amr El massri, Fahd Shamsheer

You can’t see them but the scars from verbal Bring your message to life abuse are real and can last for years. Advertising Agency: FP7/BAH, Bahrain Don’t suffer in silence Creative Director: Fadi Yaish Art Directors: Muhammad Mustafa, Tamim Younis Advertising Agency: Y&R, Dubai, UAE Copywriter: Yahya Esmaele Illustrator: Muhammad Mustafa Creative: Shahir Zag, Kalpesh Patankar Photographer: James Day These ads (and more) can be found at adsoftheworld.com

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Regional Work

Flexible wrappable tripod Client: Joby Advertising Agency: FP7/BAH, Bahrain Creative Director: Fadi Yaish Art Director: Supparat Thepparat Agency Integrated Producer: Mar Wai May Photography: Remix Studio Bangkok Photographer: Anuchai Secharunputong Producer: Prapapun Naiyawat

Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be an alien Client: Berlitz Advertising Agency: FP7/BAH, Bahrain Creative Director: Fadi Yaish Art Director: Gautam Wadher Copywriter: Aunido Sen Agency Integrated producer: Mar Wai May Photoduction House: Remix Studio Bangkok Photographers: Anuchai Secharunputong, Nok Pipattungkul Producer: Chanon Tungkamani These ads (and more) can be found at adsoftheworld.com

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International Work

It works. Fingerprint security system Advertising Agency: Spicy H, Bangkok, Thailand Production company: MasterScene Executive Creative Director: Woon Hoh Siew Creative Director: Gaek Bee Lee Art Directors: Apiwat Pattalarungkhan, Adam Pamungkas Copywriter: Irvine Prisilia Photographer: Clarissa Peddy Photography Retoucher: OIC!

Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t let food stay too long. Pepsodent Torsion Advertising Agency: Lowe, Jakarta, Indonesia Executive Creative Director: Din Sumedi Art Director: Adam Pamungkas Copywriter: Bondan Esp

Sammy-400 Osteoarthritis Treatment. When they rub each other the wrong way Advertising Agency: Sorento Healthcare Communications, Mumbai, India Creative Director: Olivier Altmann Art Director: Dinesh Ghosalkar Copywriter: Sarvesh Raikar Illustrator: Pritesh Rane Post Production: Sachin Bugade These ads (and more) can be found at adsoftheworld.com

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Communicate I 13

APRIL 2011 | Off the record

The Dish Literally watch I think when you start layering serious graphic 3D in with gaming, people’s minds will literally just go through that screen. Avatar director James Cameron suggests to the Abu Dhabi Media Summit that it might be possible to have too much of an immersive video game experience. Paradise lost “Beautiful women found in Paradise” was the subject line of an e-mail we received last month from Paradise is Mine, a “Global Real Estate Marketer” (their capitals). Apparently PIM is “reinitiating its international swimsuit model search for campaigns to market its properties in the Bahamas, Dominican Republic and other Caribbean locations.” Needless to say, the search isn’t all about looks. “We are looking for women who are not only very beautiful but have an inner beauty and wholesomeness to them,” says Anthony Liggins in the statement. Apparently he’s a “renowned artist” and creative director for PIM. “In some ways this is a true Rocky Balboa story,” says the release. Height is also no object. “Keep in mind, Halle Berry is 5’6” and Shakira is about 5’1”. We are looking for women who possess a wholesome natural beauty with great energy and international flair for our ad campaigns who can be the face of a global brand,” says Liggins. PIM has already picked two models for its swimsuit issue. One is “A professional swimsuit model from Columbia whose name has not been made available to the company.” Communicate is dusting down its Speedos in anticipation. Mixed metaphor Our spotter found this gem in India’s Economic Times. “Oh dear” is all he could say. We can think of several companies in the region whose core values might be symbolized by golden showers. But we’d rather not.

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Poet’s corner

Cut-out and weep The designers at UAE news website Emirates 24-7 have evidently discovered Photoshop. And spent all of five minutes learning to use it. A well-trained observer, with the right tools, might just be able to see where these images have been altered.

The newly launched Opus V of Amouage’s Library Collection explores the transformative journey of conventional media of communication and knowledge through the coalescing power of the internet; navigating a world that has changed radically and forever. A self-professed fanatic, Amouage Creative Director Christopher Chong explains, “Social media have liberated and empowered us to disclose and share thoughts and information instantaneously, bridging cultures and allowing knowledge to spread across all boarders. It is a powerful communications tool that today has become the norm for self expression.” In keeping with the Collection’s spirit, Chong defied all rules and followed pure intuition to create a truly profound fragrance that provides a different interpretation of the popular by deconstructing traditional perceptions. This floral and woody neoclassical masterpiece is arresting, paying tribute to haute parfumerie while still remaining germane to modern day living. The raw and classical beauty of Orris and the seductive resonance of Agarwood strike a perfect balance that allows each to manifest symphonically in a trancelike aura while the juxtaposition of Rum and Rose in the top and heart notes expresses many nuances; fragmented yet unremitting in an ingenious composition. The fragrance is rounded off with an opulent leathery and woody base. … In defining the art of living in today’s digital age, Chong refers to the inspiring words of Jacques Derrida, the father of postmodernism, “If this work seems so threatening, this is because it isn’t simply eccentric or strange, but competent, rigorously argued, and carrying conviction.” – Amouage announces its new perfume

City state The same website seems to have got a little confused about countries, emirates, cities, and all that sort of thing, judging by this headline last month: “Professionals pick UAE among top 10 cities to live and work in.”

Tradesman’s entrance Last month, R&B singer Usher performed in Dubai, outside Communicate’s HQ. We always expected he would have some sort of posh entrance to his own gig, but this sign, left over from the Jazz festival a couple of weeks before, might have confused the musician a little. There wasn’t a red carpet in sight.

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3/28/11 11:33 AM

Communicate Thick Pg Butterflies 330x240-E.indd 1

2/15/11 7:32 PM