As ‘Dil Se Desi’ as you are: ZEE5 launches its international launch with a campaign that will touch a chord with the South Asian diaspora

The traditional Mehndi is replaced by a funky henna tattoo; Payals (anklets) are paired with stilettos, and rap replaces classical as the new embraces the old - in its own inimitable style. Upping the cool quotient of ‘Desi’ by several notches and capturing the essence of ‘Desi’ pride; the strong sense of belonging and connect with one’s roots felt by every South Asian living abroad, ZEE5 today launched its global campaign ‘Dil Se Desi’, officially marking the digital platforms’ entry into the International market. 

An ode to Indians and South Asians around the world, ‘Dil Se Desi’ clearly announces the arrival of ZEE5, the largest, most comprehensive digital entertainment platform for language content, in APAC, Africa and MENA and very soon, in Europe, Canada and Caribbean. It is brought to life in a vibrant TVC that is a celebration of our ‘Desiness’, intricately weaving together our idiosyncrasies with what innately defines us and therefore binds us; our language, our culture and our entertainment.    

Commenting on the launch, Amit Goenka, CEO, ZEE International and Z5 Global said, “In the first leg of our international foray, we intend to capture the hearts of South Asians across the globe and I think our campaign, ‘Dil Se Desi’ does this beautifully.“

“Interestingly, both this campaign ‘Dil Se Desi’ and the ZEE5 India launch campaign we rolled out in February 2018, ‘Apni Bhasha Mein Feel Hai’ have their genesis in the same insight; that Indians and indeed South Asians today, irrespective of where they live or how globally connected they are, are fundamentally rooted in their culture and feel a strong sense of pride and belonging. Being ‘Desi’ today has moved from being just cool to being an intrinsic part of one’s identity; and that’s what ZEE5 taps into. The emotion that whoever or whatever I am on the outside, on the inside I am ‘Dil Se Desi’ and I not only embrace, but celebrate who I am”, said Archana Anand, Chief Business Officer, ZEE5 Global.

It is this celebration that is brought alive in the campaign that’s been painstakingly and jointly crafted by the teams at ZEE5 and Publicis Capital. And it is this same celebration that is further captured in the creative rendition #♥Desi. 

Says Archana Anand, “When living in a different country, it’s the language, festivals, food, movies and music that keeps you connected to home and gives you a sense of pride and belonging, and hence ‘Dil Se Desi’. ZEE5 also celebrates this sense of belonging with its all-encompassing focus on languages across both its content and user experience, and is ‘Dil Se Desi’ in itself. With over 1,00,00 hours of content across 12 languages, ZEE5 is sure to quickly become the only choice for South Asians in any country to access Indian content online, and immediately connect to home.” 

Bobby Pawar, Chief Creative Officer & Managing Director, Publicis Worldwide (India), said: “There is something that happens when people from South Asia move abroad. We become one vibrant community that is united by what we all have in common, and this community is known as ‘Desi’. The ‘Dil Se Desi’ idea celebrates what we love about being ‘desi’, the quirks, the attitude, the culture, the coolness, the togetherness and the content we can’t do without.”   

Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited’s digital entertainment platform ZEE5 has gone LIVE in over 190 countries, offering the largest width and depth of multi-genre content across English, Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Oriya, Bhojpuri, Gujarati and Punjabi. ZEE5 comes packed with 1,00,000 hours of On Demand content, including Indian Movies and TV Shows, Cine plays, Music, and Health and Lifestyle videos along with a slew of exclusive Originals, across 12 languages. It also has an extensive Live TV offering with 60+ popular Live TV channels.

The ZEE5 App can be downloaded from Google Play Store as well as the iOS App Store and can be accessed by visiting www.ZEE5.com. The app is also available on Samsung Smart TV, Apple TV and Android TV; and will be available soon on Amazon Fire TV. 

TEAM CREDITS:

Client: ZEE5 Global 

Team: Archana Anand, Krunal Desai, Tanisha Agrawal

Agency: Publicis Capital 

Creative: Bobby Pawar, Ashirwad Mhatre, Tejal Sawant, Purbali Mukherjee,

Account Management: Srija Chatterjee, Suraj Pombra, Sabina Singh, Shruti Patkar, Anchal Shah

Planning: Saloni Patil

Director: Kartik Ramnathkar 

Production House: Prodigious (Chahna Rupani, Bhavna Gupta, Shariq Velkar) 

YouGov BrandIndex reveals mada has achieved the biggest uplift in its Ad Awareness in Saudi Arabia in the month of October

National payment scheme, mada, has wooed viewers with its latest digital adverts showcasing mada Pay app benefits and has garnered millions of views on YouTube.

mada is the new identity of the Saudi Payment Network (SPAN) and the advanced generation of the electronic payments in Saudi Arabia. It connects all automated teller machines (ATMs) and point-of-sale (POS) terminals throughout the country to a central payment switch that in turn re-routes the financial transactions between a merchant’s bank and the card issuer bank.

In recent months the brand has partnered with Visa to bring mada Pay (an Android-based mobile application that enables cardholders to make fast, easy and secure contactless mobile payments at NFC-enabled merchants) to Saudi consumers. This development has been the focal point of current campaign efforts. A number of digital adverts have been released on social media showing various scenarios in which the mada Pay app benefits consumers, with each having over one million views on the brand’s YouTube channel, and one in particular featuring a younger consumer attracting over three million views.

The results of such efforts are clear to see, with the brand’s Ad Awareness score (whether someone has seen an advert for the brand) increasing by 11  percentage points, from 31% national Ad awareness on the 23rd September to 42%, a month later.

Not only are people noticing the ads, but they have also got people talking. The Word of Mouth score for mada (whether you have talked about a brand with friends of family) has improved from 29% at the end of September to 37% on October 24th.

mada can be confident that their campaign is being noticed by residents of KSA and in coming months our brand tracking data will be able to analyse what successes in brand perception have occurred as a result of the campaign.

There’s always been fascination with the tricks and tweaks that media moguls use to build and entrench their big kids’ brands and properties.

In the 1980s, US cable channel TBS scheduled its shows to start at :05 and :35 past the hour so they’d stand out in the TV Guide. Disney has long shown an incredible ability to build a ‘universe’ around its properties. More recently, Netflix has perfected the enticement to binge view, thereby dominating the viewer’s life, and the game Fortnite has managed to schedule its audience without ever needing a schedule.

Right now, in the middle of a transitional period for how audiences receive content, you have to wonder what the future of kids’ TV will look like and how current networks and brands can prepare for it.

Historically, the way to get ahead was to create, curate and schedule highly-appropriate content. Would Ted Turner’s 5-minute-shift hack work now? Probably not; in fact, there may no longer be hacks. Now, it’s all about spend (Netflix) and scale (YouTube).

The traditional media firms that used to be the glue holding generations together are now under threat from more generalist platforms, and even games like Minecraft and Fortnite.

Kids media, just like that for grown ups, has been going through a period of maturation, as it readies itself.

Globally more time is spent using a television than other screens

It’s often said that television is in decline. Indeed, there are aspects for which that’s true (to be covered in subsequent slides), but TV still accounts for nearly as much time as tablet and smartphone combined, every week. Kids’ time spent on tablets and smartphones is dominated by playing app games and watching video. As they get older, smartphone use shifts increasingly to social and messaging. On average, 8-10 year olds spend an average of 2 hours 8 minutes, and 11-15 year olds spend 4 hours 46 minutes, with social networks and messaging services.

The decline of kids’ linear TV…

Globally, since the Spring 2016 Trends survey, linear television’s share of time has fallen by a fifth. The biggest decline in linear viewing is among 2- 4 year olds, an audience that goes largely unmeasured by television ratings services. Audience measurement begins at different ages in different countries - in the UK it starts at age 4. Amongst these pre-schoolers there has been a 25% drop in the time spent watching linear TV. Given that these young consumers of content are not developing linear viewing habits, the question is, will they ever? In our latest data, 8-10 year olds are the biggest consumers of linear television, but with a move away from dedicated children’s channels in favour of more generalist channels.

…but total video is growing

Despite a 20% decline in linear viewing, kids are actually watching more video in total. This has been driven by the rapidly accelerating growth of streaming across screens. Because kids have more access points for video than ever before (i.e. smart TVs, streaming devices, games consoles, etc.), they can get the content they want, when they want it, on whatever screen they choose - but they prefer the television. In Spring 2016, kids spent on average 10 hours 49 minutes per week streaming video. Two years later that has increased to an average of 14 hours and 8 minutes per week (up 31%).37% of time spent streaming video is on a television. This means the average time spent watching video in total has increased by 29 minutes per week since Spring 2016 to 22 hours and 21 minutes – that’s over the 3 hours per day on average.

Kids are on all devices across the week

Across ages, globally, watching television is still very much a daily habit whilst use of other devices is more sporadic during the week. However, as smartphones age-down they are becoming more of a daily habit. Smartphone activities differ from what children do on tablets. Much smartphone time goes to playing app games and watching videos, followed by use of messaging services like WhatsApp and social Networks like Snapchat and Instagram. Content makers need to consider how video will be seen; growing smartphone viewing requires repurposing content for the best small-screen experience. In use across the week, the television is still the ‘king of devices’ (just about), but many kids are as likely to be using a tablet or smartphone for entertainment, or even a games console.

YouTube is everywhere, but Netflix dominates SVoD

Netflix has commissioned and acquired a large library of kids content. In English speaking markets it is the dominant SVoD player, generally ranking second in terms of weekly use behind YouTube. In non-English speaking areas, it’s somewhat less used by kids. Often, this is due to a lack of locally-commissioned content. Dubbing something from English into a local language is no substitute to something that originates in a country with strong social and cultural values.

Media owners are fighting back

Netflix and YouTube are now so far ahead of legacy media brands and channels; with their massive content libraries and, in the case of Netflix, budgets. They have become the dominant players for video on tablet and smartphone. Netflix announced just recently plans to borrow another $2bn to fund original content. It’s going to be hard for broadcasters to lure kids from Netflix to their own platforms.

Despite having access to massive amounts of content everywhere and anytime, children still complain they can’t readily find new things they love. They (and

their parents) want content curators, and this is where broadcasters have an advantage. They are skilled at curating and promoting scheduled. If Netflix showcased its children’s content in a free and curated unique app for under-13s, it would be a huge concern for broadcasters. With fewer TVs in households, children are coviewing shows with parents. This has the effect of ‘aging down’ generalist channels. Broadcasters need a new content strategy to keep kids in the driving seat on the big screen.

Humour is the genre most kids like

Across all ages, “funny” ranks as the most liked genre. Action/adventure is second most popular (driven by 8-15 year olds). Kids of all ages love animals and wildlife – at the younger end this is likely to be can be YouTube videos of kittens playing, while older kids watch content like Shark Week on Discovery. Music covers a host of content types, from nursery rhymes and sing-a-longs at a young age to music videos and concerts for teens. Amongst pre-teens and teens, sci-fi/fantasy and sport come to the fore, and teens move into mystery/thriller and scary/creepy stuff. As kids get older, they develop personal passions and interests, and this is reflected in their preferred entertainment genres, which begin to diversify.

Factors influencing kids content consumption

While we often talk about “quality content,” it appears that today’s young audiences don’t interpret quality the same way industry does. Kids focus less on production values and more on whether they relate to the content. A broadcaster will spend a number of years creating a new show. It will be developed with a strong narrative, defined characters and have brand consistencies. In contrast a YouTuber is sitting in a ‘cupboard’ producing, launching and getting feedback on a video within 24 hours. So every 24 hours they are learning more and more about their audience. One effect of this learning is that they iterate it back into their content. So in the one year that a kids’ channel brand takes to produce a series a YouTuber has produced 365 pieces of content and had 365 ‘conversations’ with their audience base. In contrast kids channels don’t have a single real data point. Ratings don’t help a broadcaster, as they aren’t received until several dozen episodes are in the can. Like a race between the tortoise and the hare. However, there is only 1 tortoise but millions of never resting hares.

The importance of accessible peers

Now that YouTube has overtaken TV for teens (and is heading that way for younger kids), it can be hard to understand why YouTubers have such a powerful hold over kids.

An individual with a webcam and internet connection doesn't have the same editorial guidelines and production constraints as TV companies. They can comment instantly on news or pop culture; they can even take their fans on holiday with them. Parents may not see the appeal, but for kids it’s all about being in the moment. Many offer some type of expertise that kids are interested in, such as style tips or video game strategy – knowledge that provides social currency with friends or on the playground.

Parent and children use videos to discover arts and crafts ideas, leading to quality time together, inspired by the screen. If a kid can pick up a tip from a YouTuber on how to complete a level in a game before a school-friend, then it was time well spent.

Concluding thoughts

1. Kids don’t flick through the channels

There was a time when kids would flick through the channels with a remote control, looking for something they wanted to watch and pausing when they saw something familiar or interesting. This was how they often found new shows/series. Now, with so many access points to video content they want to watch, they less often come across new shows or casual interests. It means new shows need more signposting at the times they are watching and on other media.

2. Generalist content aging down

Fewer televisions in households means families are coming together more often to watch a show. Often it’s reality TV or ‘shiny floor shows’ but not always. Natural history series like Planet Earth II are great examples of other generalist successes. Lifestyle series like the BBC’s Top Gear have successfully facilitated ‘dad and lad’ time. More recently we have kid extensions of reality series, e.g. The Voice Kids and Junior Bake-off. Thus, kids are spending more time with generalist shows on generalist channels. If these kid extensions were found on kids channels, perhaps families would come together to watch them there.

3. The importance of breadth and depth

One criticism of streaming services is they’re all ‘cartoons’ with no texture. Curated channels have the advantage not only to time content to the available audience, but also to blend genres and formats. They mix animation and live-action so as to ensure one format doesn’t dominate. Recently, linear channels have been behaving like SVoD services, with marathons and take-overs, but the result is that the channel no longer demonstrates the breadth and depth of content that kids love.

4. The importance of heritage

Not all the content kids engage with is new. A new property only proves its success if it can sustain for over time. Brands that have been around 10, 20, even 50 years are as loved by today’s kids as they were by their grandparents. In the past, heritage brands nearly always started in film, toy or TV. But as digital brands like Angry Birds mature, increasingly heritage brands will have a digital origin. Heritage brands are important because they have the ability to facilitate occasions when parent and child come together.

5. There’s much to learn from video games

Game franchises have the power to captivate audiences. Fortnite, like Pokemon Go and Minecraft before it, fast became a cultural phenomenon. There’s a lot legacy media can learn from this game that satisfies kids’ needs so readily. It’s ‘snackable’ (there’s another game starting in moments), it’s social (you can interact with friends), it’s familiar (it borrows the best elements of other games) and it balances scarcity and ubiquity (like streaming, you’re never more than moments from what you want).

Source: MIPTV-MIPCOM

Brandwatch, the world’s premier social intelligence group, today announced a major update to its audience intelligence platform.

The new features let marketers instantly uncover consumer insights based on machine learning and benchmark analysis of the conversations their target audiences are having online.

The upgraded Brandwatch Audiences uses complete, real-time data from the Twitter firehose allowing users to analyze everything their audiences are posting publicly and even click through on any topic or entity to see all the individual Tweets.

“We’re impressed by the speed at which Brandwatch Audiences can construct advanced audience segments based on vast amounts of public Twitter data. It’s exciting to see Brandwatch use our data and APIs to build a product that better enables busy marketers to quickly reach and relate to their audience on Twitter.” – Rob Johnson, Director of Product, Data & Enterprise Solutions at Twitter

As trust in traditional advertising continues to decline, marketers are increasingly investing in more ‘authentic’ channels such as influencer and content campaigns. But as consumers become more suspicious of paid influencers with bought followings and overwhelmed by an oversupply of branded content, these approaches are also wearing thin.

Brandwatch aims to help marketers deliver high-performing, authentic campaigns by building a better understanding of who their customers are. Audiences lets users explore a database of over 326 million Twitter users and open a window onto any group of people to study who and what they’re talking about.

These conversations are all benchmarked to surface insights about what’s unique to the audience, comparing up to a month of conversations to everything posted in that period. Each time searches and components load, they analyze the latest Tweets from Twitter’s hundreds of millions users to surface insights.

What’s more, Audiences can do this all in a matter of seconds.

The platform automatically identifies topics and entities to summarize:

Their topics of conversation broken down by up to 300 different machine learning-derived themes

The celebrities, organizations and micro-influencers that they’re most engaged with

The sites they share links to

The hashtags and emojis they use

And the content they are retweeting or replying to

Brandwatch’s flagship product, Analytics has been the solution of choice for marketers who want the best understanding of what consumers are saying about them online. Audiences reinforces their position as leaders in the market by adding a vast new source of intelligence.

“Our customers want to know more about who they’re selling to,” explains Emelie Swerre, Product Manager at Brandwatch, “they know who they are when they engage with their brand or campaigns, but who are they the other 99.9% of the time? Who influences them? What are they passionate about? How do they communicate online? Now, with Audiences, we can provide these consumer insights at scale almost instantly.”

UAE marketers address the importance of human insight to create competitive advantage and long-term value

The second edition of Digitalks, MENA’s first ever digitally-focused conference series, concluded on a high note with digital professionals embracing a monumental change in human centered design, big data and analytics. With the theme, ‘Unlocking Human Insights in a Data-Driven World’, the conference aims at bringing together a wide variety of industry experts from innovators, business leaders, and digital experts to address the next wave of the digital revolution.

This year’s conference was attended by some of the region’s most highly respected digital luminaries who delivered the most compelling content and insights on current trends to bridge the gap between human intelligence and data. Speakers included Arash Nourkeyhani, Head of Experience Strategy and Design at RBBi, Jad Khalil, Agency Development Manager at Google, Laura Chaibi, Head of Marketing Intelligence and Syndicate Digital at MBC, Louise Blake, Head of Data at Tajawal, Daniel Mendonça, Head of Data Intelligence at EY and Jennifer Hoffman - Director Marketing at Deepcrawl. 

Technology has led to the rise in popularity of big data. However, at the same time, it is important to remember that the core of these developments is people. Bridging the gap between human intelligence and data has become a critical aspect to all businesses. In the last two years alone, 90% of data in the world was generated, equating to 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created each day. Revenues for big data and analytics (BDA) in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) totaled $1.98 billion in 2016, according to the latest Worldwide Semiannual Big Data and Analytics Spending Guide from International Data Corporation (IDC). Yet, in a study by PWC, 57% of Middle East participants indicate that their companies have no significant data analytic functions embedded within the company.  Participants at Digitalks discussed various ways by which businesses in the Middle East could craft and weave a digital experience that would drive business goals while remaining aesthetic and functional. 

Arash Nourkeyhani, Head of UX at RBBi commented, “We should drive towards creating smart and impactful ecosystems through transformation of data, as opposed to addressing single products and services. Empowering these ecosystems to incrementally and perpetually learn, adapt and respond to human condition, will result in systems that can impact our day to day life in a positive way, and free us from being bound to and conditioned by our products and service and begin to influence them. Becoming Human should be the goal of our data transformation and experience design.”

“In a data-driven world, human insight is a revealing asset to understand ‘why’ things are the way they are – often driven by culture or heuristics. Signal data capture and data management (i.e. customer, actions, financials or metadata) is not new, what is new is the legalities around data management, the volume and the business implications if you leave your competitors to gain a USP through better consumer centric data management and application. In Digital, analytics provide evidence of customer action, while human insight provides a deeper understanding of the consumer mindset, experience and saliency. Those companies that focus on the latter tend to fair better with long term consumer engagement, brand love and positive bottom line ROI” added Laura Chaibi, Head of Marketing Intelligence and Syndicate Digital.

Companies across the globe are being pressured to reach high-performance targets, while justifying cross-channel spends. The overall connected ecosystem continues to grow beyond mobile, with 80% of people switching between screens to complete tasks and 38% of all customer journeys involving more than one channel of interaction. 

Addressing machine learning for digital marketing success, Jad Khalil, Agency Development Manager at Google MENA said there is no exchanging a human for a robot. They are not interchangeable, but rather, complementary to each other.

It is a well-known fact that all businesses go through ups and downs. Yet for new businesses, successfully riding out the lows is critical in the initial stages while the organisation is still finding its feet. A report published by Bloomberg stated that an astonishing eighty percent of all entrepreneurs who start companies actually fail within the first eight months. Although experiencing some issues along the way is a given, how can you maintain a positive trajectory and build upon success, even during the hard times? Starting a business or leading a company is no mean feat, yet through intelligent forward planning you can set your organisation up for stable growth in the long-run. As CEO and Founder of Forever Rose and Al Samadi Group, Ebraheem Al Samadi shares his expert advice on how to be prepared for issues that may arise and important steps every business should take to ensure success.

Create a solid foundation

Building a solid foundation for your organisation is essential for many reasons, one in particular being that any small cracks that could cause big issues down the track have been identified and addressed during the initial stages. It is all about crossing your t's and dotting your i's, no matter how unnecessary it may seem. It's often the little things you choose to brush over that come back to haunt you! Solid building blocks will not only help create a clear understanding and appreciation among staff of the company culture and standard way of operating, but will also help you keep control of the ship and minimise the internal chaos if things do go wrong.

Communicate

Keep your doors open and allow your employees and colleagues to provide feedback about the work environment. This will not only ease tensions between staff, but will also help you to stay "in the know" about the office happenings and allow you to detect any issues that may be bubbling under the surface. Anticipating any potential problems will give you time to devise possible resolutions and handle the situation in a calm and collected manner, rather than putting everyone on edge and jumping to conclusions.

Consider hypothetical scenarios

Although many unforeseen issues will rise out of the blue, pre-empting what could happen and having thought-through responses is ideal for any business. Make a list of ‘what ifs’ and identify how they can be resolved. This way if something does happen, you won’t be caught off guard and will have a plan already in place to guide you.

Stop. Think. Go

Many times the automatic reaction for anyone having to deal with a problematic situation is to rush to a solution and move forward. A quick fix often leads to further small issues in the future and will make work life more stressful for everyone in the office. When faced with any issue, try to stay calm and take your time to think of a long-term resolution. Don’t hesitate to reach out to colleagues for suggestions, they might have ideas that you hadn’t thought of previously.

Learn from past mistakes

It is essential to keep records of your company’s past. With these records, it is easy to track back to see what went wrong before and prevent those situations from happening again. Take some time to review the history and analyse how the situations could have been handled differently. This will also help when it comes to preparing resolutions to hypothetical scenarios. The more you know about your company, the easier it will be to make the right next move.

Written by Ebraheem Al Samadi, CEO of Al Samadi Group and Forever Rose London

In a world that can be sometimes cynical, it is easy to fall into the habit of thinking that if something is talked about often, especially in business, that it is a ‘Buzz Word’.   In some cases this may be true, but the topic of data visualization is not one of these instances.  David McCandless, founder of Information is Beautiful has said, “By visualizing information, we turn it into a landscape that you can explore with your eyes.  A sort of information map.  And when you’re lost in information, an information map is kind of useful.”   This has never been more the case in the world of research than it is right now.

Today, there are numerous data sources required to tell the full story around how a brand or a product is performing and bringing those data sources together in a way which clearly communicates the underlying story as clearly and concisely as possible, is one of the primary goals around data visualization.  Some may believe this can be achieved by adding some icons or other treatments like shadows and boxes to try and highlight key data points, however this becomes clutter and will end up distracting the viewer from the key insights.  Think of a museum exhibit, each item displayed is curated and specifically chosen as it will add value to the overall story.  If a museum displayed every artifact it had, it would be information overload and the visitors would be confused.  Data visualization should help tell the story, not distract from it.  This is especially the case when we are developing data visualizations using online interactive BI tools and dashboards.

Interactive tools need to be developed with intuitive navigation that can be hidden as not to interfere with the story.  Data should be displayed in a clean and intuitive way which can often be accomplished with the strategic use of font, color and whitespace.  Properly utilizing font size and a balanced color scheme of neutrals and a spot color will establish a hierarchy which will guide the end user to intuitively understand the different levels of importance that exist within the visualization.  Icons or logos should only be used if they are meaningful, effectively describe the data being shown and most importantly aid the user in comprehension.

The reality is that the more compelling the design, the deeper the response.  According to Google, humans are 30 times more likely to digest high quality visualization and Infographics than they are text.  This is a very powerful and important thought and puts a lot of responsibility on our shoulders as designers, analysts and story tellers to effectively visualize data.  There isn’t necessarily a right or wrong way to visualize data, but the importance of the basic principles discussed above should serve as a road map to high quality data delivery, especially as our datasets continue to grow even larger.  Data visualization is not a buzz word, it is here to stay, and it is our data’s opportunity to make a powerful first impression. 

Source: Kantar Millward Brown

Key findings:

Dubai Economy Tracker falls to 52.5 in October, from 54.4 in September

Employment levels contract again

Business confidence surges to record high, despite weaker new order growth

This report contains the latest release of data collected from a monthly survey of business conditions in the Dubai non-oil private sector. Sponsored by Emirates NBD and produced by IHS Markit, the survey provides an early indication of operating conditions in Dubai. The headline Emirates NBD Dubai Economy Tracker Index is derived from individual diffusion indices which measure changes in output, new orders, employment, suppliers’ delivery times and stocks of purchased goods.

The survey covers the Dubai non-oil private sector economy, with additional sector data published for travel & tourism, wholesale & retail and construction.

Summary

Whilst the latest data signalled an improvement in the health of Dubai’s non-oil private sector, the rate of growth weakened to a 31-month low. Slower improvements in activity, new work and another contraction in employment contributed to the slowdown. Contrary to the general trend, the construction sector saw a stronger expansion in the latest survey.

The seasonally adjusted Emirates NBD Dubai Economy Tracker Index – a composite indicator designed to give an accurate overview of operating conditions in the non-oil private sector economy – posted at 52.5, down from 54.4 in September, and the weakest figure since March 2016. Nonetheless, it remained above the critical 50.0 mark in October, thereby stretching the current phase of expansion to 32 months.

Travel & tourism was the weakest performing sector in October at 49.6, followed by wholesale & retail (53.7) and construction (55.5).

Business activity and employment

Output across the non-oil private sector increased at the slowest rate since December 2017. The expansion was below the historical average. The travel & tourism sector saw the weakest improvement during the latest survey period.

October data signalled a modest fall in employment in Dubai’s non-oil private sector. The rate of contraction matched the record pace recorded in the preceding survey. Some firms cited cost cutting as a reason behind job shedding.

Incoming new work and business activity expectations

Businesses reported a further increase in incoming new work during October, thereby extending the current phase of growth to 32 months. That said, the latest expansion was the weakest in two-and-a-half years. Whilst the increase was solid overall, it scored well below the historical average amid reports of slowing client demand growth in the non-oil private sector.

Despite the slowdown in output and new business, future growth prospects rose to a record high since this index began in 2012. Firms expressed optimism towards new project wins and developments surrounding Expo 2020.

Input costs and average prices charged

Average cost burdens in Dubai’s non-oil private sector increased for the seventh month running in October. Furthermore, the rate of inflation accelerated to a three-month high.

Output charges fell once again in the latest survey. Some firms linked lower selling prices to promotional activity. The rate of decline was modest overall, however.

Travel & Tourism | Business Activity and Employment

Business activity growth continues to soften

At 52.4 in October, down from 53.6 in September, the seasonally adjusted Business Activity Index for the travel & tourism sector fell to a ten-month low. The pace of expansion has slowed for five successive months.

Adjusted for seasonal factors, the Employment Index reached a record low during the latest survey period. The deterioration in employment levels was modest overall, however.

Travel & Tourism | Incoming New Work and Business Activity Expectations

Incoming new work declines for first time since February 2016

Travel & tourism companies across Dubai reported a fall in incoming new work during October. The fall was only the second in the survey history. Around 29% of firms noted a decline, compared with 24% that reported an increase in new business.

Despite contracting new work, firms continued to express optimism towards future business activity. The overall degree of positive sentiment reached a four-month high in the latest survey period.

Travel & Tourism | Input Costs and Average Prices Charged

Input price inflation sharpens

At 54.0 in October, the seasonally adjusted Input Costs Index accelerated to a three-month high. The figure was indicative of a marked increase in average cost burdens faced by businesses in Dubai’s non-oil private sector.

Output charges fell once again in the latest survey period. The finding thereby streched the current phase of price discounting to four months.

Wholesale & Retail | Business Activity and Employment

Job creation returns to wholesale & retail sector

October data signalled another slowdown in the rate of business activity growth across the wholesale & retail sector. Nonetheless, the figure remained well above the neutral 50.0 threshold and signalled a solid overall expansion.

At 50.4 in October, the seasonally adjusted Employment Index indicated a return to job creation in the latest survey period. The rate of growth was marginal, however.

Wholesale & Retail | Incoming New Work and Business Activity Expectations

Business confidence hits record-high

Adjusted for seasonal influences, the Incoming New Work Index registered above the 50.0 no-change mark at 56.2 in October, thereby indicating a solid expansion in new order books. That said, the expansion was weaker than the long-run average.

Business confidence towards future growth prospects hit its highest level since the series began in March 2015. According to anecdotal evidence, marketing efforts are anticipated to lead to stronger inflows of new business over the upcoming year.

Wholesale & Retail | Input Costs and Average Prices Charged

Selling prices fall at sharp pace during October

Continuing the sequence of input price inflation seen since April, businesses in the wholesale & retail sector noted another increase in average cost burdens during the latest survey period. The rate of inflation eased to a seven-month low, however.

At 43.8, the seasonally adjusted Prices Charged Index registered a sharp decline in selling prices across the wholesale & retail sector. Some firms linked falling charges to increasing competition.

Construction | Business Activity and Employment

Business activity growth hits four month high amid new project wins

October survey data signalled a sharp upturn in business activity growth. The latest expansion was steep overall and the strongest recorded since June. Anecdotal evidence linked the improvement to government projects.

At 51.6 in October, the seasonally adjusted Employment Index scored above the critical 50.0 mark once again. The figure was indicative of a modest level of job creation in Dubai’s construction sector.

Construction | Incoming New Work and Business Activity Expectations

Degree of positive sentiment matches September’s record high

The seasonally adjusted Incoming New Work Index hit a three-month high during October. The rate of growth was sharp overall and above the series’ long-run average. Some firms linked higher inflows of new business to government contracts.

Future growth prospects in Dubai’s construction sector matched September’s survey-record high in the most recent survey period. Anecdotal evidence suggested that developments surrounding Expo 2020 are forecast to lead to higher output over the next 12 months.

Construction | Input Costs and Average Prices Charged

Input cost inflation eases to three-month low

Input cost inflation faced by firms in Dubai’s construction sector eased to a three-month low in the latest survey period. The rate of inflation was only slight overall. 

At 48.6 in October, the seasonally adjusted Prices Charged Index remained below the neutral 50.0 threshold for the second month running. The rate of price discounting was modest overall and broadly in line with that registered in September. 

In today’s world, we have pressures on us to show the results of content marketing. If we only look at our owned media efforts as a replacement for advertising, and measure it under a content consumption model, we will ultimately fail at providing a positive return on investment.

A successful, long-term, Content Marketing approach is more expensive than advertising. It just is. The goal of content marketing must be to provide multiple lines of integrated value across the business. Thus, our true investment is not in content. It’s in the result of the content – a subscribed audience.

As mentioned earlier, Audiences as an output of media companies are not new. They have long been noted by scholars as being one of the two outputs from media companies. However, they have also been a much less analyzed source of value for businesses. Professor Philip M. Napoli, the author of Audience Economics: Media Institutions And The Audience Marketplace concluded: “Unfortunately, [audiences], the second major product of media firms has not been subjected to a comparable degree of analysis, although its production is inextricably intertwined with the production of the first.”

Today’s media company, works extraordinarily hard to create multiple lines of value through the production of content, and measurement of its consumption. But, today, because of the democratization of content distribution and production technology, the audience is the key asset. It doesn’t matter whether the company is selling access to content, the adjacent space to the content, or the merchandising made available by the content, or all of the above. The first output, the content, was only valuable to the extent that it was scarce, hard to produce and difficult to distribute to the masses.

Today content matters not nearly as much as the second output – the audience. As one television executive stated “I can’t think of another business that makes one product but sells a different product. We make programs and put them on the air. We are not selling the programs, we are selling the people that watch the programs.” In short: today, content only has value to the extent that it builds and keeps the audience.

So, what is different about that?

For the last 80 years, from the time that Robert Elder made his speech on that cold New York day about his Audimeter, the marketplace for the value of both content and the audiences that consume it has been determined by the third party measurement of content consumption.

As Nielsen, themselves have said:

“Our primary goal is to measure content and advertising no matter when it’s watched or on which devices.”

The challenge of course is that the value of measurement of content consumption also depends on those same two foundational elements: scarcity and difficulty in distribution. In today’s world – we as consumers have tools that filter through the noise for just exactly what we want, when we want it and where we want it. It is no longer tenable to make a mark on a piece of paper every time the dial is turned.

In turn, media companies are turning away from content measurement as a sole indicator of value. As Ad Age reported three years ago, the company is “once again in jeopardy, and this time its reigning dominance isn’t a sure thing. For the methodical research company, the accelerating pace of change in media may finally be getting out of hand.”

And, this year, marks a time when major television networks like NBCUniversal will offer advertisers something more than content consumption measurement. As was reported just this year: “the use of new and more fine-tuned audience data reflects the TV industry’s attempt to emulate the precise targeting abilities of digital.”

Now, of course the only way that NBCUniversal can even go beyond this is that they have access, through their parent company Comcast to the audience directly. It is their owned media audience.

Today, value is being created where media companies have a direct, and proprietary relationship with their audiences in order to sell them access to content, merchandise them to advertisers, or sell merchandise directly to them.

You can see this trend happening across the media landscape:

✼ HBO’s over-the-top service, HBO Now, is still only a small portion of their approximately 50 million subscribers in traditional cable. However, it has added 2 million subscribers in less than two years, and is accelerating. In 2017, HBO plans to add more than 600 hours of original programming.

✼ Netflix, which started as a DVD rental service, has now gone from approximately 27 million subscribers in 2012, to more than 60 million subscribers in five years. Consider that within the next few years more than 50% of Netflix’s content will be original productions.

Disney, whose content used to run on Netflix has recently decided to remove their content in lieu of starting their own streaming service.

✼ In a transformed news media environment, complete with “fake news” and mistrusted outlets – brands such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic and others are seeing exponential increase in subscription rates.

And subscription is the primary means of driving their business.

✼ Amazon, the world’s largest retailer, has launched Amazon Studios, and will spend more than $2.6 billion on original content for its Amazon Prime service in 2017.

In short: media companies are doing exactly what was promised with the democratization of technology and distribution. They are routing around third parties who control access to audiences and the third-party measurement platforms that create markets. They are setting NEW values by establishing direct relationships with audiences that are proprietary. They are doing what marketers have done for 100 years. They are making their own markets.

But one of the above examples stands out even more than the others: Amazon. This is a company that less than 20 years ago was simply an online book store. Amazon’s move into becoming a player as a media company is the signal that this isn’t just a phenomenon among media companies. Amazon no longer just sells the content – it makes the content.

Source:The Content Advisory

Analysts to Explore Digital Disruption at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2019, March 4-6 in Dubai

Gartner, Inc. revealed seven digital disruptions that organizations may not be prepared for. These include several categories of disruption, each of which represents a significant potential for new disruptive companies and business models to emerge.

“The single largest challenge facing enterprises and technology providers today is digital disruption,”  said   Daryl Plummer  , vice president and Gartner Fellow . “The virtual nature of digital disruptions makes them much more difficult to deal with than past technology-triggered disruptions. CIOs must work with their business peers to pre-empt digital disruption by becoming experts at recognizing, prioritizing and responding to early indicators. ”

The seven key digital disruptions CIOs may not seeing coming are : 

Quantum Computing

Quantum computing   (QC) is a type of nonclassical computing that is based on the quantum state of subatomic particles. Classic computers operate using binary bits where the bit is either 0 or 1, true or false, positive or negative. However, in   QC  , the bit is referred to as a quantum bit or qubit. Unlike the strictly binary bits of classic computing, qubits can represent 1 or 0 or a superposition of both partly 0 and partly 1 at the same time.

Superposition is what gives quantum computers speed and parallelism, meaning that these computers could theoretically work on millions of computations at once. Further, qubits can be linked with other qubits in a process called entanglement. When combined with superposition, quantum computers could process a massive number of possible outcomes at the same time.

“Today’s data scientists, focused on   machine learning   (ML),   artificial intelligence   (AI) and   data and analytics  , simply cannot address some difficult and complex problems because of the compute limitations of classic computer architectures. Some of these problems could take today’s fastest supercomputers months or even years to run through a series of permutations, making it impractical to attempt,” said Mr. Plummer. “Quantum computers have the potential to run massive amounts of calculations in parallel in seconds. This potential for compute acceleration, as well as the ability to address difficult and complex problems, is what is driving so much interest from CEOs and CIOs in a variety of industries. But we must always be conscious of the hype surrounding the quantum computing model. QC is good for a specific set of problem solutions, not all general-purpose computing.”

Real-Time Language Translation

Real-time language translation could, in effect,  fundamentally change communication across the globe. Devices such as translation earbuds and voice and text translation services can perform translation in real-time,  breaking down language barriers with friends, family, clients and colleagues. This technology could not only disrupt intercultural language barriers, but also language translators as this role may no longer be needed.

“To prepare for this disruption, CIOs should equip employees in international jobs with experimental real-time translators to pilot streamlined communication,” said Mr. Plummer. “This will help establish multilingual disciplines to help employees work more effectively across languages.”

Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is science, engineering and technology conducted at the nanoscale — 1 to 100 nanometers. The implications of this technology is that the creation of solutions involve individual atoms and molecules. Nanotech is used to create new effects in materials science, such as self-healing materials. Applications in medicine, electronics, security and manufacturing herald a world of small solutions that fill in the gaps in the macroverse in which we live.

“Nanotechnology is rapidly becoming as common a concept as many others, and yet still remains sparsely understood in its impact to the world at large,” said Mr. Plummer. “When we consider applications that begin to allow things like 3D printing at nanoscale, then it becomes possible to advance the cause of printed organic materials and even human tissue that is generated from individual stem cells. 3D bioprinting has shown promise and nanotech is helping deliver on it.”

Swarm Intelligence

Digital business will stretch conventional management methods past the breaking point. The enterprise will need to make decisions in real time about unpredictable events, based on information from many different sources (such as Internet of Things [IoT] devices) beyond the organization’s control. Humans move too slowly, stand-alone smart machines cost too much, and hyperscale architectures cannot deal with the variability. Swarm intelligence could tackle the mission at a low cost.

Swarm intelligence is the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial.  A swarm consists of small computing elements (either physical entities or software agents) that follow simple rules for coordinating their activities. Such elements can be replicated quickly and inexpensively. Thus, a swarm can be scaled up and down easily as needs change. CIOs should start exploring the concept to scale management, especially in digital business scenarios.

Human-Machine Interfaces

Human-machine interface (HMI) offers solutions providers the opportunity to differentiate with innovative, multimodal experiences.  In addition, people living with disabilities benefit from HMIs that are being adapted to their needs, including some already in use within organizations of all types. Technology will give some of these people “superabilities,” spurring people without disabilities to also employ the technology to keep up.

For example, electromyography (EMG) wearables  allow current users who would be unable to do so otherwise to use smartphones and computers through the use of sensors that measure muscle activity. Muscular contraction generates electrical signals that can be measured from the skin surface. Sensors may be placed on a single part or multiple parts of the body, as appropriate to the individual. The gestures are in turn interpreted by a HMI linked to another device, such as a PC or smartphone. Wearable devices using myoelectric signals have already hit the consumer market and will continue migrating to devices intended for people with disabilities.

Software Distribution Revolution

Software procurement and acquisition is undergoing a fundamental shift. The way in which software is located, bought and updated is now in the province of the   software distribution marketplace  . With the continued growth of cloud platforms from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Google, IBM and others, as well as the ever-increasing introduction of cloud-oriented products and services, the role of marketplaces for selling and buying is gathering steam. The   cloud platform   providers realize (to varying degrees) that they must remove as much friction as possible in the buying and owning processes for both their own offerings and the offerings of their independent software vendors (ISVs) (i.e., partners). ISVs or cloud technology service providers (TSPs) recognize the need to reach large and increasingly diverse buying audiences.

“Establishing one’s own marketplace or participating as a provider in a third-party marketplace is a route to market that is becoming increasingly popular. Distributors and other third parties also see the opportunity to create strong ecosystems (and customer bases) while driving efficiencies for partners and technology service providers,” said Mr. Plummer.

Smartphone Disintermediation

The use of other devices, such as virtual personal assistants (VPAs), smartwatches and other wearables, may mean a shift in how people continue to use the   smartphone  .

“Smartphones are, today, critical for connections and media consumption. However, over time they will become less visible as they stay in pockets and backpacks. Instead, consumers will use a combination of voice-input and VPA technologies and other wearable devices to navigate a store or public space such as an airport or stadium without walking down the street with their eyes glued to a smartphone screen,” said Mr. Plummer.

CIOs and IT leaders should use wearability of a technology as a guiding principle and investigate and pilot wearable solutions to improve worker effectiveness, increase safety, enhance customer experiences and improve employee satisfaction.