Often called as “On the go generation”, we are the busiest of all and hardly get time to sit for leisure. Even the old school bookworms now a days could not find peaceful time to escape into the wonderlands of literature.

Thankfully, the technology has changed our reading habits, giving a digital avatar even to the oldest forms of literature. Through varied digital platforms, we can read any book or piece of interest on our gadgets, whether we are stuck in traffic or doing our daily chores.

Here are the must have apps for literature enthusiasts to help them read anytime, anywhere.

1. Amazon Kindle

Amazon kindle enables people to buy, download, and read books, newspapers and magazines. We can also purchase our favourite books instantly without rushing to the markets stores.

2. Hubhopper

Being India’s largest platform for podcasts and publishers, Hubhopper is a must have app for the busy readers. It offers easy - passive content across popular genres like health, education, history, business, technology, sports, etc. A leading provider of podcast exclusive content from over 2000+ channels, it enables you to listen to your favorite books and topics of interest whilst you are busy with the daily chores. The Hubhopper app saves users time, effort and space on their devices by bringing together all the content they love from their favorite publishers under one unified experience. It's the daily dose user’s need today.

3. Goodreads

One of the most renowned platforms for book lovers, Goodreads can help you read and connect with your friends at the same time. While sharing your reviews, you can even see what your friends are reading. You can also make your friend group on the app to connect with each other.

4. SwipeSpeare

This is one of the most helpful apps for all the Shakespeare lovers, especially for the new readers and young students. This app can be very helpful if you find difficulty with language in terms of the different phases of English literature.

5. Wattpad

If you are confused about what to read and what not, Wattpad can help you with countless options. It has content from genres across fiction, horror, drama, suspense, thriller, romance, poetry and many more. You can also share your favorite reads with your friends through this app.

6. Grammarly

If you are polishing on your writing skills, Grammarly is the perfect app for you. It also has an AI based grammar checker to help you proofread your content. This app can be used to correct writing errors on all of the devices. The paid version of this app picks up advanced errors like subject-verb agreement and modifier placement.

The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), today, observed International Youth Day across its headquarters and all operating companies. During the celebrations, which were organized by the Group’s various youth committees, ADNOC’s young talent focused on the contributions they have made to the business to enable enhanced performance, profitability and efficiency, as well as their aspirations for the company and the UAE.

ADNOC’s younger employees also participated in a series of engagement events with the company’s senior management, including His Excellency Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, UAE Minister of State and ADNOC Group CEO.

“Our youth are the bedrock of ADNOC’s future. They play a pivotal role in unlocking our full potential and delivering on our 2030 smart growth strategy. We invest in our young people and enable them to think differently so we can seize the material growth and value creation opportunities across the company’s operations,” said H.E. Dr. Al Jabber.

“Given the importance of our young talent, we have established a focused approach to attracting and retaining the best and brightest minds and ensuring that we provide them with the space and opportunities to develop their full capabilities. ADNOC has a long history of investing in UAE youth and nurtures an exceptional talent pool that our company and our nation taps into,” stressed Dr. Al Jaber, when he met with participants at the various events.

ADNOC’s life-long learning strategy ensures that robust development and learning experiences are in place throughout an employee’s career, built on a competency-based and structured approach to capability building. This includes on-the-job learning and ensures the company’s youth can realize their potential and deliver business value.

This year alone, some 300 students from ADNOC Technical Academy (ATA) have embarked on structured on-the-job training programs at ADNOC facilities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This ensures that future technical talent is equipped with a wide range of mechanical, technical and instrumental skills needed to understand and lead processes in the oil and gas industry.

In recent years, the company has also reinvigorated its investment in leadership development of its young employees through the ADNOC Future Leaders (AFL) program. Participants have developed and introduced several new business opportunities, through innovative thinking, that have already been taken up by the business.

Out of the AFL program the ADNOC Youth Council (AYC) was born with the mandate to engage with youth within and beyond ADNOC. The AYC collaborates with the Abu Dhabi Youth Council and Emirates Youth Council. It has enabled the creation of Youth Committees across the ADNOC Group and champions youth interaction and engagement at major industry events.

Saud Al Shamsi, Chairman of the ADNOC Youth Council, said: “We are fortunate and proud to be part of an organization that, following the vision of our founding father and our Leadership, is fully committed the development and engagement of its youth. ADNOC’s ongoing investment in its young talent will help secure the company’s leadership position for the long-run and ensure we maximize value in the service to our nation.”

One of ADNOC’s Youth Committees initiatives was the signing of a pledge to give back to the nation in the spirit of the late Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan. In addition, young talents presented their hobbies within the XHub initiative, which focuses on encouraging, motivating and optimizing individual talents.

Recently, a group of 20 UAE Nationals have also become the first group of trainees to start a two-year professional development program, aimed at developing a world-class workforce with enhanced advanced technology and innovation capabilities, at the Schlumberger Middle East and Asia Learning Center. This is part of a joint initiative between ADNOC and Schlumberger, one of the world’s leading oil and gas industry technology and service providers.

ADNOC’s participations in the International Youth Day reaffirms its commitment to talent and leadership development of its young employees.

Almost half of UAE CEOs in the retail industry intend to start using artificial intelligence (AI) in the next two years, as they are increasingly influenced by technology to enhance the retail store experience for customers. This is according to the 2018 Global Consumer Executive Top of Mind survey, ‘No Normal is the New Normal’ jointly conducted by KPMG International and The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF). 

Global CEOs however were less optimistic about the adoption of AI, with only 24 per cent expressing intent to start using AI over the next few years. They were also less confident about the prospects of technology in retail, with 48 per cent saying that brands would use technology to enhance the retail store experience. This is in stark contrast with UAE CEOs, who were confident of harnessing technology to transform the customer experience in-store.

Even when it comes to the overarching theme of business transformation, 80 percent of UAE CEOs said they planned to prioritize it over the next two years versus 57.5 per cent of CEOs globally.

As changing customer behaviors and shifting demographics contribute to sustained margin pressures, shorter strategy cycles and increased expectations from customers, companies are ramping up to embrace digital and AI technologies underpinned by data and analytics.

This shift is helping boost margins, customer centricity, agility and efficiency by replacing or augmenting some human activities with technology, and by shifting technology to the cloud. 

Anurag Bajpai, Head of Retail, KPMG Lower Gulf, said: “We are envisaging a major push towards embracing technology to enhance the retail experience. The next few years in the UAE may see more brands adopt AI, VR and connected technology to transform the in-store experience and integrate online and offline experiences. The 2018 Top of Mind Survey finds an industry aggressively navigating a sea of change, where retailers and manufacturers appear to be radically rethinking their strategy, culture and processes and becoming more agile as they focus on growth.”

Globally, the Top of Mind survey found that some of the most significant variables that manufacturers and retailers may have to consider include how they reach the consumer, what technology they need, whether they want to do everything themselves and how they react to disruptive new competitors. The decline in brand loyalty was also identified by 29 percent of companies and was deemed to be driven by psychological, sociological and technological factors.

The survey also found that there is a direct correlation between how customer centric a company is and how fast it grows profits and revenues. In fact, 46 percent of customer-centric companies ranked connecting with consumers round-the-clock as a top priority. 

“Today’s consumer and retail market is beyond disruption – we are disrupted – and CEOs need to listen to the market, look outward and focus on changing their business,” said Willy Kruh, KPMG Global Chair, Consumer & Retail. “It’s an increasingly difficult tightrope to walk between dealing with both internal and external continuous disruption, but both are key to creating customer centric organizations. Those companies that cannot authentically connect to customers will get left behind.”

The internet has been billed as the great equalizer, breaking down barriers and giving voice to millions. At the same time, it has allowed for abuse online – whether in the form of hate, harassment or offensive content. The freedom to express is an essential democratic principle, but should it persist unfettered? How and where should we draw the line, and who – or what – should play a role in moderating online debate?

Facebook’s Hard Questions, a series that explores the most challenging issues Facebook confronts, hosted a discussion about the line between hate and debate, featuring a diverse range of views. Moderated by Andrew McLaughlin, the co-founder of Higher Ground Labs and Former Deputy CTO at The White House, the panel includes: Monika Bickert, Facebook’s Head of Global Policy Management; Malkia Cyril, executive director of the Media Justice Network; Daniella Greenbaum, formerly a reporter at Business Insider; and Geoff King, journalist and lecturer at UC Berkeley. See the full discussion and highlights below.

Monika Bickert on how Facebook thinks about free expression…

“We want Facebook to be a place where people can express themselves. It is about connecting people. It is about giving people a place where they can share things with one another and learn from one another. […]”

“We know that people won’t come to Facebook if it’s not a safe place. We actually do have these guide rails in the form of our Community Standards that tell people ‘this is where we draw the line.’ And we draw the line in most cases because we think that speech might lead to real world harm. […]”

“We don’t allow hate speech on Facebook because it creates an environment where people feel personally attacked, where they won’t feel comfortable coming and sharing themselves. But it’s really hard to define hate speech. […] When we think about how to define it, we think about what constitutes a personal attack. […]”

“The one thing that we don’t remove is where someone simply asserts something false. What we do is try to counter the virality of such content or try to promote or make visible other views.”

The panelists on how Facebook should draw the lines…

“The more that Facebook can adhere to free expression principles, including international guidelines, essentially international law taken on voluntarily, the more robust, uninhibited and wide open debate will be.” – Geoff King

“Whether we’re talking about Facebook, Google, any of these other companies […] at the very top are groups of mostly white people making decisions about whether or not speech is violent, whether or not speech is dangerous. And I have to say that they’re making decisions in their own interest. […] If we’re going to live in an economic system where the public square has been so deeply privatized, then I absolutely expect those private companies to take on decisions that protect all the people.” – Malkia Cyril

“More than 80% of [Facebook’s] users live outside the United States. So if they’re going to adopt any sort of governmental system, it certainly doesn’t need to be [the US]. I do think it’s a good system and it preserves freedom of speech, which I see as an important right and social good. But beyond that, I think that Facebook has this incredible opportunity to be a platform for debate and engagement.” – Daniella Greenbaum

“There are some things where we’re all going to agree. We’ll all agree that you don’t want child sexual abuse imagery online…. But it’s when you get to these edges, around things like hate speech, around what constitutes an actual threat of violence, what constitutes actual harassment or bullying that’s where the conversations are the most difficult and also where the enforcement is the most difficult.” – Monika Bickert

On whether Holocaust denial should be allowed on Facebook…

“There is a classical liberal view of free speech that political debate be uninhibited, robust and wide open. […] That said, Facebook, again, is under no obligation legally to allow that on their platform, and I think that’s largely Facebook’s call, but if Facebook is going to make that decision, it needs to have clarity around its decision, it needs to have transparency around it.” – Geoff King

“It’s not about speech, it’s about power. People are actually dying on the streets because of the speech that’s taking place online. So let me be clear about it, it’s not a question of whether an individual has a right to say whatever’s on their mind. That’s a strict US constitutionalist view of the question of free speech, that’s not my view of free speech. […] What I care about is whether or not anti-Semitic crimes are going up as a direct result of people on a platform allowing individuals to organize criminal activity online.” – Malkia Cyril

“Trying to eradicate bad ideas from platforms is not going to succeed at eradicating these ideas from the world. So I’d rather have more room — whether it’s on Reddit or Facebook or platforms that don’t even exist today — for bad ideas to aired and challenged and debated and brought to light so that we can actually engage in meaningful debate and hope that reason will prevail.” – Daniella Greenbaum

“If somebody promotes the idea of the Holocaust or violence of any sort, we remove that. If somebody engages in anti-Semitic speech by saying ‘Jewish people are…’ and applying a dehumanizing label, [we would remove that]. If somebody mocks survivors or victims of the Holocaust, any of that would violate our hate speech policies. And we also block the speech where countries have told us, ‘this is illegal in our country,’ — then we will remove that speech in that country alone. […] Even if it is a horrible assertion of falsity, whether it’s about the Holocaust or any other world even, we don’t remove content simply for being false.” – Monika Bickert

On who’s affected by the debate over free expression… 

“The decision-makers around what speech is allowed and what speech is not are the same people that benefit from that reality. So how do we end up with fairness under those conditions when that is what is happening?” – Malkia Cyril

“Especially for marginalized communities, especially for minorities, especially for groups that are targets of oppression, we need to be supporting the broadest possible speech in the hopes that that speech will be used — and again, this is an optimistic note — in order to stop oppression, in order to help marginalized communities and in order to ensure that minorities always have a voice and a platform on which to say ‘what’s happening here is not okay.’” – Daniella Greenbaum

“Often times with censorship, […] it’s often not the powerful loudest voices, the people with the most access, who end up being affected by those policies, but those policies tend to often times be used against people who don’t have political power, not the dominant ideology.” – Geoff King

Source:Facebook

This month, Birell is the brand which has achieved the biggest uplift in its Ad Awareness in Egypt.

The country saw its national team qualify for the FIFA World Cup, therefore it was well placed to capitalise on some football themed product marketing.

The new ad campaign is a mixture of online, TV and out of home advertising and a primary feature includes the new Birell cans packaging over a football field. The ads also integrate copy that reads ‘a season just for Football.’

YouGov BrandIndex data shows that as a result of its football oriented ad campaign, Birell’s Ad Awareness score (whether someone has seen an advert for the brand) has risen significantly from +12 to +21 since the World Cup began.

The campaign has achieved significant cut through among those who would already consider buying from the brand. Ad Awareness among this group has gone from +36 to +59.

Not only is the campaign being noticed, but it’s also causing conversation. Birell’s Word of Mouth score (whether someone has talked about a brand with friends or family) has gone from +10 to +16.

Birell can be pleased that the World Cup has had a great impact on its campaign efforts, and it will be looking to harness this recent success and continue it throughout the coming months.

Plan a final summer escape with special Emirates fares

Emirates has launched one of its biggest sales yet with special fares to over 70 global destinations within its network. Passengers can still plan a short getaway before the summer season ends to destinations in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, and the Far East. The offer applies to bookings made today until 20th August 2018 for travel between 1st September 2018 and 31st March 2019.

Economy Class passengers can enjoy fares to Beirut starting at AED 945, Mumbai starting at AED 995, Bangkok starting at AED 2,345, Lisbon starting at AED 2,945, Mauritius starting at AED 2,995, Los Angeles starting at AED 4,835 and Santiago starting at AED 5,105.

Business Class passengers can enjoy fares to Mumbai starting at AED 2,795, Beirut starting at AED 5,245, Bangkok starting at AED 9,795, Mauritius starting at AED 9,975, Lisbon starting at AED 15,415, Santiago starting at AED 20,925, and Los Angeles starting at AED 21,275.

Travellers can also book with Emirates Holidays and enjoy a five-star holiday experience for an additional spend starting at AED 300 per person for Economy Class passengers and AED 500 per person for Business Class passengers, exclusive of the airfare.

Family members can now pool up to 100% of Skywards Miles earned on Emirates flights with Emirates Skywards rewarding programme, 'My Family.’ The programme allows travellers to redeem rewards faster than before in over 100 programme partners including airlines, hotels and retail outlets.

Passengers on Emirates flight can enjoy the airline’s award winning in-flight entertainment system with up to 3,500 channels and up to 20MB complimentary on-board Wi-Fi, as well as regionally inspired meals on-board prepared by award-winning chefs.

At Nestlé, we believe that communities cannot thrive if they fail to offer a future for younger generations. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that two out of every five young people are either unemployed or have a job that keeps them in poverty. In the Middle East, youth unemployment rates are estimated at nearly 27 percent, higher than any other region in the world.  

As a global company, Nestlé is determined to help young people develop their skills so that they can find jobs or create their own businesses. We want to help equip the next generation for employment, to become inspiring leaders in our company – successful agripreneurs, entrepreneurs and game changers, regardless of their field or level of expertise. 

This will help build thriving, resilient communities and support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Developing youth helps our business too, because young people are the employees who will keep our company dynamic and competitive, the farmers who will grow the crops we need, and the entrepreneurs who will help us reach new markets.

This is why, in 2017 we expanded our Nestlé needs YOUth initiative to encompass our entire value chain – from operations and supply, to agriculture and innovation. By doing so, we are supporting our ambition to help 10 million young people worldwide access economic opportunities by 2030. 

In the Middle East, where 70 percent of Nestlé’s new hires are youth, Nestlé Needs YOUth impacted more than 4700 young people in 2017 through initiatives that include:

- The Nestlé Center of Excellence, a Nestlé training academy founded in 2012 which trains university graduates in Saudi Arabia and Oman. It has so far trained 170 people, hired 42, and, since 2014, offered 200 internships and traineeships. 

- The Graduate Development Program, a three-year rotational development program that aims to recruit distinguished graduates from leading universities in the region in the fields of Marketing, Sales, Human Resources, Finance and Control, Supply Chain, and Technical. 54 of Nestlé Middle East’s 2,300 youth hired since 2010 have so far joined the program. 

- Career advising, implemented by working with universities across the region to offer expert advice to students in the areas of readiness for work, employability, business and corporate environment, and leadership. These impacted 4,700 people in 2017 through 50 events held in 10 countries across the region. 

The region’s Alliance for Youth, launched in May 2016 to bring together entities that share the objective of tackling the Middle East’s unemployment rate, now includes 13 partners and is also well on its way to collectively hiring 3,000 young people and impacting 50,000 by 2020. 

Over the last decade we’ve helped prepare hundreds of thousands of young people for work, trained and supported 4 million farmers and helped 2 million women develop business skills, but we’re determined to do more.

Working towards our 2030 ambition, we're focusing on three key areas: 

• Employment and employability

• Agripreneurship

• Entrepreneurship

Employment and employability

By providing apprenticeships and training opportunities, and hiring young people – like Pieter-Jan in Belgium – we are helping to equip them with the skills they need to thrive in tomorrow’s workplace.

By 2020 we’ve committed to:

• Offering 45,000 to 50,000 apprenticeship and traineeship opportunities worldwide

• Providing 20,000 to 25,000 job opportunities for young people under 30 every year

• Organising ‘readiness for work’ events for young people across the world

• Collaborating more closely with external partners, to motivate them to join us and increase the impact of our initiative

Agripreneurship

With less than 5% of farmers worldwide under 35, jobs in agriculture are attracting fewer young people at a time when the world’s population is rapidly growing. We’re helping to inspire, train and enable the next generation of 'agripreneurs' – to give them the knowledge, skills and entrepreneurial spirit they need to manage farms in the 21st century.

In 2012, we started the Nestlé agripreneurship programme, to help young agripreneurs like Shaukat in Pakistan develop their skills through 'Farmer Connect'. Through this programme we source agricultural materials directly from around 685,000 farmers. 

We’re also crowdsourcing great ideas to help young farmers thrive, through channels like our open innovation platform HENRi@Nestlé

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurs are not only the innovators who will help us find solutions to the business challenges of the future, they will also help us to reach new markets and consumers sustainably.

We’re identifying and nurturing business talent in young people like Wasiu Adeyeye in Central West Africa, through initiatives such as Nescafé’s 'My Own Business', or the Social Investment Accelerator that we recently launched with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation – to help young social entrepreneurs gain access to finance. 

Disability representation marks the latest step towards diversity and inclusion among mass-market brands.

Backlash against unrealistic and alienating beauty standards and their portrayal in the media is reaching fever pitch. Consumers are calling for images and products with which they can identify—and brands are listening. Acknowledging physical characteristics like body hair and stretch marks, honest and diverse representation is becoming the new norm. Designers and retailers are debuting campaigns featuring people with disabilities and mindfully designed clothing lines, marking the fashion and media industries’ latest step towards authenticity and inclusion.

In 2015, the US Census Bureau reported that there are 40 million Americans with a disability. But, while 20% of the population have a disability, less than 2% of media imagery features people with disabilities. Oath and Getty Images are working to amend this with The Disability Collection, a new library of stock images featuring authentic people with disabilities in everyday settings, including a man using a power wheelchair to record a podcast on his computer. This refresh clearly strikes a chord with users; Getty Images’ customer search data revealed increased searches for disability-related imagery between 2016-2017, with searches for “wheelchair access” increasing 371% year on year and searches for “disabled worker” rising by 254%.

The collection, which launched on May 17, 2018 in collaboration with Oath and the National Disability Leadership Alliance, offers a more accurate and inclusive representation of consumers. “What you’re frequently seeing is this idea of disabled as lesser, disabled as something that needs to be fixed,” says artist and activist Ace Ratcliff, who is featured in the campaign. “I don’t need to be fixed from what I am. I just want to be included.”

Brands and retailers are taking heed, expanding their lines to include those with disabilities or special needs and diversifying representation in their campaigns.

Online fashion retailer ASOS recently launched a waterproof jumpsuit that was designed with wheelchair users in mind. The jumpsuit was made in collaboration with para-athlete Chloe Ball-Hopkins, who worked with ASOS to help the company’s designers understand the needs of wheelchair users. As well as being fully waterproof, the jumpsuit has adjustable cuffs to alter sleeve length and a zip around the waist, making it easier to remove.

“It was just literally those little tiny details that make the difference to people like me,” said Ball-Hopkins in an interview with the BBC. “We don’t want to have to look like we’re just doing practicality, we still want to be able to look fashionable.”

Tommy Hilfiger’s spring 2018 collection included a line of adaptive clothing with magnetic buttons, adjustable hems and Velcro closures for men and women. This follows the success of Hilfiger’s 2016 adaptive clothing range for children, which was created in collaboration with Runway of Dreams, a nonprofit seeking to make fashion more accessible for people with disabilities. Earlier this year, Target also released an adaptive clothing range, which is thoughtfully engineered for adults with disabilities and special needs. The line offers sensory-friendly items with flat seams, soft fabrics and heat-stamped labels rather than tags, as well as denim with a high-rise back, longer inseams and wider leg openings to make dressing easier.

The mass-market fashion industry is additionally diversifying representation by featuring disabled models in its campaigns. American Eagle’s intimates brand Aerie recently released a lingerie campaign starring women with chronic illnesses; one model is pictured with her insulin pump, while another is photographed with her stoma bag. Irish retailer Primark’s latest campaign spotlights model Kelly Knox, who was born without an arm. The positive feedback has been overwhelming; the image of Knox has become one of Primark’s most-liked Instagram photos, receiving thousands of comments and over 115,000 likes as of August 2018.

It’s clear that this shift to a more realistic reflection of usership is resonating with consumers and encouraging positive brand engagement.

Source:.JWTIntelligence

Aisha Alkhaja, founder and creative director of Little Wren, an online boutique designed for the modern family, is relocating her e-commerce business and family back to her roots, the United Arab Emirates.

Aisha’s business venture was inspired through her own experience of becoming a mother.  During her pregnancy, Aisha and her husband John, found it challenging to find high quality family brands, which resulted in the launch of Little Wren. The website has been operating in the United Kingdom since the launch in 2017.

As an Emirati, Aisha sees potential for business opportunities and a gap in the market for a family focused e-commerce brand. This August, Aisha will be re-locating the whole business and her family back to Dubai. Little Wren.com already delivers internationally, and now the UAE will be a central distribution hub for the shop, with growth plans of opening an office and distribution warehouse in Dubai.

“I have big plans for Little Wren next year, and re-locating back to the Middle East is part of the strategy to not only centralise distribution, but to fill a gap in the market.” Says Aisha. “I am also looking forward to Lawrence aka ‘Wren’ experiencing some of his Emirati heritage.”

According to a survey conducted by Visa and Dubai Economy*, more than two thirds of UAE customers are comfortable to buy and pay bills online. While a survey of 600 UAE residents showed that 66 per cent of residents are now happy to buy online, with 81 per cent of these being Emirati. Showing that as the trust grows with consumers, there is room for growth in the e-commerce space within the UAE.

Aisha also plans to support local and regional designers and brands by offering them an online e-tail space on Little Wren, something she will be exploring later this year.

Mars consolidates global media planning and buying into MediaCom

Agency wins as part of a GroupM solution to extend 25-year relationship with client

Mars, Incorporated, the global pet care, confectionery and food business, and one of the world’s biggest advertisers has appointed MediaCom to handle its media planning and buying duties across most of the company’s portfolio. The result follows a competitive pitch against Omnicom, led by Hearts and Science, and Publicis, led by Starcom.

MediaCom had previously managed media planning globally for the client and buying in over 20 markets, including Mexico, Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands. 

The entire global business – which is worth £1.4bn globally, according to data from Recma – will now be consolidated into MediaCom, including buying for the US and China. To deliver on the assignment, MediaCom will work as part of GroupMW, a GroupM solution, tapping into the resources of GroupM and WPP agencies to deliver outstanding results for Mars.

This decision connects to the larger transformation Mars has been driving with its marketing and media agenda – looking to build competitive advantage through insights, investment, and innovation. With an ever-changing marketing and retail landscape, Mars have been putting an increased focus on driving value from fast approaches to data, new creative and content models, and ways to incubate innovation.

“This partnership will be a crucial accelerator in our ambition to be quicker, bolder and even more innovative when it comes to meeting our consumer needs. It brings thought leadership and actionable use of data and insights to meet our media needs,” said Andrew Clarke, Chief Marketing and Customer Officer at Mars.

“It was impressive to see some of the fresh, challenging approaches from all three of the agencies. It’s helped evolve our thinking throughout the pitch and inspired us to be even bolder in our ambition. GroupM created a custom operating model for us which enables us to put data at the heart of our decision making, drive speed at a global, local and campaign level, and use our resources efficiently,” said Rob Rakowitz, Global Media Director at Mars.

“Building on our existing remit, and extending our 25-year relationship, we, along with our GroupMW colleagues, will now be managing all of Mars’ media buying, as well as their data & analytics,” said Stephen Allan, Worldwide Chairman & CEO of MediaCom. “This confirms our place as the trusted media partner to one of the world’s most prestigious advertisers.”

The full assignment will go into effect on 1 January 2019 and the transition period will run from August until December 2018.