Global Village is the brand that has achieved the greatest uplift in its Ad Awareness in the UAE in November. The multicultural festival park reopened for its 23rd season on the 30th October 2018 and will remain open until the beginning of April 2019.

Global Village have released a number of adverts to promote this season, highlighting the new retail and entertainment offerings, such as a floating market, a redesigned “Wheel of the World”, Superloop stunt shows, Circus shows and more. The campaign made use of both online and print adverts, as well as out of home advertising with a branded ice cream truck giving away complimentary ice cream to the general public in Dubai.

The results of such efforts are clear to see, with YouGov BrandIndex data showing the brand’s Ad Awareness score (whether someone has seen an ad for the brand in the past two weeks) increased by an impressive 20 points, from +15.9 on the 1st October to +35.9 on the 24th November.

UAE consumers are not only noticing Global Village’s adverts, but they are also talking about the brand with friends and family. The brand has seen a 15.4 point increase in their Word of Mouth score over the same time period, which jumps to a 28.5 point increase when looking specifically at respondents who have said they would already consider visiting the multicultural festival park.

In the coming months YouGov BrandIndex results will show how successful Global Village’s 23rd season is, not only in terms of attracting customers, but also the perceptions among those who have attended.

The Modist founder and hijabi model Shahira Yusuf discuss the rise of the modest fashion movement

This month, CNN Style Dubai explores the rise of modest fashion. The programme meets some of the women driving the expanding movement in Dubai to understand more about the value modest fashion holds.

The programme interviews Shahira Yusuf, who is fast becoming the face of the modest fashion movement after she was the first hijab wearing model to be signed by Storm Model Management, the London-based agency that famously discovered supermodel Kate Moss.

Also tapping into the emerging modest fashion market is Dubai-based entrepreneur Ghizlan Guenez, whose e-commerce platform, The Modist, stocks and curates fashion from global brands in the luxury space, tailored to the tastes of women who dress modestly. Guenez discusses why modest fashion isn’t simply about religion and the reasons for the movement’s continued growth.

Key Quotes:

Shahira Yusuf on headscarves being seen as a “trend”:

“Religion has always been around, it’s just now Muslim women are getting more attention. More positive media attention as well. We’re Muslim women; we wear our headscarves because of religious beliefs, at the end of the day. So it might be a trend in terms of mainstream media picking up on these types of things, but it’s something that has always been around.”

Yusuf on being a positive role model:

“It’s important for women to have people that they can look up to. So whatever field that may be is up to them, but modelling can also be that field. It’s just about teaching women to mainly love themselves and feel comfortable in their own skin and also just sharing that positive type of message with others.”

Ghizlan Guenez on the emerging modest fashion movement:

“We don’t necessarily think it’s about modesty or about covering/not covering, it’s about what it is that makes you feel comfortable, confident, strong. I think there needs to be an agreement of co-existence of both sorts of styles and ways that we dress and ways that we want to present ourselves... The reality is that modesty, at least the way we look at it, transcends religion. It transcends age, size, where you come from.”

Guenez on why the modest fashion movement continues to grow:

“I think that is a reaction to that conversation around inclusiveness and diversity and things like the women’s march, #MeToo, things like the first hijabi model walking the runways of Milan and Paris have all really created this platform for modesty to rise and for the conversation to start.”

Guenez on why she’s passionate about supporting local brands:

“One of the things we’re passionate about is the idea of choice. We truly believe that choice and exercising that is the most important thing. We’ve got close to 200 international and regional designers on the site and a few of those are indeed from the region, specifically from Dubai. One of them is Sima Ayad, which I especially love because the story started with the designer herself, catering to curvy women.”

Guenez on why Dubai is a desirable destination for entrepreneurs:

“Dubai has always been very forward and progressive. The reality is it’s becoming a very attractive place for players like us, for international players, and that diversity and that melange of players that come into play in one city is really what creates the style, it’s the opposition of different view points. We talk modesty and other players talk a different style and I think that is what is going to create maybe the DNA of fashion for the city.”

CNN Style Dubai airs on CNN International at the following times:

Wednesday 12th December at 1330 GST

Thursday 20th December at 1330 GST

Source: CNN/CNN Style Dubai 

Company has almost 9,000 Dunkin' and Baskin-Robbins stores in almost 70 countries outside the U.S.

Dunkin' Brands Group, Inc. (DNKN), the parent company of Dunkin' (DD) and Baskin-Robbins (BR), announced today that John Varughese has been promoted to Senior Vice President, International with responsibility for all aspects of Baskin-Robbins and Dunkin' business units outside the U.S. Mr. Varughese will report directly to Dave Hoffmann, Dunkin' Brands CEO and Dunkin' U.S. President, and will serve on the Company's leadership team. He replaces Nigel Travis, Dunkin' Brands Chairman, who served as interim head of International for the past nine months. Mr. Travis will continue in his role as Chairman of the Board of Directors.

A veteran Dunkin' Brands executive, Mr. Varughese has been with the Company for 16 years, all of it working with the Baskin-Robbins and Dunkin' international business units. Prior to joining Dunkin' Brands, he worked for seven years with the Galadari Ice Cream Company in the Middle East, one of the largest Baskin-Robbins international licensees. Mr. Varughese began his career in international sales with Smith Kline Beecham Consumer Brands.

"John is a seasoned international retail executive with a deep understanding of both the Baskin-Robbins and Dunkin' brands and the countries we serve," said Dave Hoffmann.  "His appointment as the head of our international business enables us to seamlessly continue our support of franchisees and licensees and strategically grow our two brands outside the U.S." 

Under Mr. Varughese's leadership, both brands have recently launched new store concepts, with new coffee-forward Dunkin' restaurants now in ten countries with over 150 locations. He has also greatly expanded the number of licensed Baskin-Robbins and Dunkin' products offered in retail outlets and dramatically increased the home delivery business for both brands. Home delivery of Baskin-Robbins or Dunkin' products is now available in more than 30 countries.  

Source:Dunkin' Brands Group, Inc          

"More and more companies are becoming environment conscious now and they prefer to work with event partners that share the same values. Events can produce a lot of wastage like food waste, plastic, paper and electricity. It is important to find solutions that use less wastage like handing out free reusable coffee cups, stop using paper for invitations and itineraries and rely on emails, evaluate the amount of power used by generators to decide alternatives to reduce the amount of power consumption etc" Said Natalie Crampton, the Founder of TEC.

In an interview with MediAvataar MENA, Dubai based events entrepreneur shared her journey so far and how events industry has taken some serious turns in order keep abreast with the newness of all things digital.

Here is the complete Q&A.....

MediAvataar: What lured you into the world of events?

Natalie: My passion for events started at a young age whilst working part time during high school at a conference and wedding venue and, I have not looked back ever since. I love the creativity and planning behind events and I like the way events make a difference to businesses, whether it is creating better employee engagement or customer leads. We make a difference.

MediAvataar: In the past decade, how has experiential marketing changed?

Natalie: People are bored with generic trade shows and conferences. Experiential events create a more engaging environment and memorable moments that customers will always associate with the brand. Today’s experiential events use more interactive technology like VR headsets, photo booths, drones, social media interactions and livestreaming to make events more interesting and shareable. It creates more interactions between the brand and the customer.

MediAvataar: Technology is a big part of any activity that happens on ground today, your thoughts

Natalie: Yes, today’s events are driven by technology. Few of the major trends I see are:

Virtual Reality- Usage of VR to give an immersive experience is increasing.  VR can be used to explain complicated systems or bring a product to life so that people can experience what the product can do to transform their lives. 

Projection mapping- Stimulating 3D projection mapping experiences can engage your audience with immersive and interactive content. Projection technology maps light onto buildings, cars, stages or other objects, thus bringing it alive. It adds extra dimensions and optical illusions that make static objects animated and playful. With projection mapping, you can create any sort of environment, for example, you can turn a warehouse into a party hotspot.

Drones- Drones are perfect for capturing fast moving actions like a race or a sports match and it can be streamed directly to screens at the venue or live streamed, to engage with attendees. Drones can also be used to perform aerial stunts at an event or trade show. 

MediAvataar: Which technique is more exciting and useful to the brands?

Natalie: It depends on the brand positioning and the type of event. For consumer products, projection mapping is a great idea; if it’s a futuristic concept VR can be used to explain it in simple terms to the audience and, drones are perfect for capturing images of fast paced events like sports or for performing aerial stunts at concerts and consumer product launch events

MediAvataar: Are marketers all ears to these ever-changing tech dynamics?

Natalie: These technologies help to create a more immersive, entertaining and engaging event so it is in the best interest of the brands to adapt to the ever-changing technological advancements

MediAvataar: Is environment sustainability really a talking point in the event’s ball game? 

Natalie: More and more companies are becoming environment conscious now and they prefer to work with event partners that share the same values. Events can produce a lot of wastage like food waste, plastic, paper and electricity. It is important to find solutions that use less wastage like handing out free reusable coffee cups, stop using paper for invitations and itineraries and rely on emails, evaluate the amount of power used by generators to decide alternatives to reduce the amount of power consumption etc

MediAvataar: How does your company embrace this mammoth cause?

Natalie: We are very environment conscious and we follow the same procedure that I listed above

MediAvataar: Which markets around the globe are most and least receptive to events?

Natalie: Everyone likes events. In some countries maybe companies are not willing to splash much on events but we can be creative and work within the budget

MediAvataar: Tell us about your journey as a woman entrepreneur in the region.

Natalie: Being an entrepreneur is a stressful but fulfilling role. It was tough at the beginning, but my husband and family were very supportive. As the business grew, I had a strong team and, my husband also joined the company full time. Now that I am Mom to twins, I try to delegate more work so that I can balance both roles.

Is nine to five still the best way to work? Increasingly, many businesses and employees are looking at alternatives to the traditional full-time work week, using artificial intelligence  (AI), automation and new employee rewards.

In 2018, Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand-based trust and estate planning firm, conducted a breakthrough trial to test the efficacy and benefits of a shorter working week; 250 staff members could switch to a four-day work week with no commensurate loss of salary. Employees were involved in creating initiatives to automate manual processes to work more efficiently in less time.

After the experiment, staff were shown to have lower stress levels, higher job satisfaction, and reported feeling more focused and productive in the office. The trial was deemed so successful that it will now be implemented permanently. Founder Andrew Barnes explains: “For us, this is about our company getting improved productivity from greater workplace efficiencies.There’s no downside for us.”

Berlin-based online project management company Planio is also transitioning to a four-day work week. Key steps being implemented include reducing and optimizing communication, and using project management tools to get rid of inefficiencies.

In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service (NHS) is trialing the use of AI to improve the speed of processing administrative work at the East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust. Administrators claim that the AI assistants are eight times more productive than human staff, allowing them to dramatically decrease the man hours required for paperwork. The new system will enable frontline workers to tackle harder, more complex work, utilizing their skills more fully and decreasing the number of hours they need to work to get things done.

WHY IT’S INTERESTING:

Reduced working hours, even down to a four-day work week, could become the reality for most workers this century. Findings from new research conducted by the UK-based thinktank Social Market Foundation show that automation and AI could lead to sufficient increases in workplace efficiencies to allow workers to accomplish the same tasks in less time. With benefits to employees and productivity increases clearly being demonstrated around the world, companies are beginning to take advantage. This shift comes as people start to embrace flexible or alternative working practices, and employee rewards expand beyond financial incentives to time, wellness, and side hustles

Source:J. Walter Thompson Intelligence

The business of television is rapidly advancing.

Instagram’s recent announcement of serving up long-form vertical video to its 1 Billion+ monthly active users drove Facebook stock up 2.3% in regular trading.

“From both a consumption and a content-creation perspective, IGTV is going directly up against YouTube, which just announced it has more than 1.9 billion monthly logged-in users and is already well established as a place for creators to distribute long form video”, write WIRED’s Louise Matsakis and Lauren Goode.

YouTube Premium, in turn, has found recent success in the form of Cobra Kai.

With numerous new SVOD services on the horizon from Discovery, Viacom, DC, FOX and Disney, the question of “should current measurement advance” is becoming one of “how quickly can current measurement advance”.

The required measurement solution must give anyone in the business of global entertainment the means to gauge the popularity of content in all markets, across all platforms.

Before we dive into how Parrot Analytics has solved this problem, let us first take a step back and look at how SVOD-first digital originals have traditionally fared with audiences worldwide.

First, we will examine two “typical” digital originals: Netflix’s Marvel’s Iron Fist and Marvel’s Luke Cage. Next, we will contrast these with examples of atypical digital originals: Netflix 13 Reasons Why and Stranger Things, and CBS All Access’ Star Trek Discovery.

OTT content adoption curves for typical digital original series

While the launch uptake behavior by a title’s core audience segment is similar across markets, the adoption rate across markets differs. For example, as the chart below shows, the U.S did not enter the top 10 markets for Iron First until long after its release.

Most full-season digital original series feature a similar adoption pattern. Parrot Analytics refers to this as the “digital original demand binge curve”: Audience demand is highest at full season drop and a “second weekend binge spike” is also often observed. Demand then declines rapidly from this point onward.

By 30 days post-release, most of the launch demand for digital original series has dissipated in each of its top markets. Note: This is consequential for a subscriber churn-efficient content strategy.

OTT content adoption curves for atypical digital original series

Stranger Things was the first breakout “smash hit” digital original series for any digital platform globally. The show broke the mold for the format and featured the slowest demand dissipation curve of any other digital original series, including longer-running, multi-season shows. We have also observed that season two of the series has followed this same atypical pattern.

In the chart below, note the 4-month time horizon for season two, compared to the previous 30-day curve for Marvel’s Iron Fist, which is typical with practically every other digital original series. In Stranger Things, Netflix has created a digital original quite unlike any another – except perhaps 13 Reasons Why.

There are many content success factors contributing to the success of titles like Stranger Things and its implications on the content strategy for companies like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Facebook, Apple and YouTube.

These factors are being studied in-depth with our Content Genome™ initiative – a foundation that drives content production, windowing, distribution and marketing decisions.

For contrast, let us now compare an equally popular though different release pattern for a digital original series. Star Trek: Discovery first premiered on hybrid linear / SVOD and then exclusively on CBS All Access in the US, cable in Canada and Netflix globally. Here we observe that this title features the typical episodic spike patterns shown by traditional linear and cable shows (which makes this an atypical SVOD release).

Consequently, Star Trek: Discovery has maintained its global velocity well into the first quarter of 2018.

We have established that the business of television is rapidly advancing and even in the relatively “new” world of SVOD there are already several accepted post-launch demand patterns.

Let us now examine how Parrot Analytics has standardized international title health analysis across broadcast, pay TV and OTT platforms. To make this possible, we rely on global TV demand data.

Let’s dive in! 

A standardized method for global title health analysis across all platforms

When we discuss some of the most critical business challenges facing the owners of show rights, we often hear the following two questions:

“How can I get a thorough understanding of a title’s international demand?”, and “What additional context is available on a title’s global performance?”

These types of questions have traditionally been very hard to answer without access to global TV demand data. Additionally, viewership data can only be obtained once a title has already been sold in a market.

To answer these questions, along with categorically establishing a title’s international popularity by leveraging globally standardized TV demand data, Parrot Analytics has introduced the Title Health Analysis report.

Uncovering the demand for a TV series globally using a Parrot Analytics Title Health Analysis report can unlock specific insights to drive, for example, a title’s international sales strategy.

Contextualizing the performance of a title using globally standardized rankings

Ranking a TV show in the context of global demand yields insights as to the strength of the title’s worldwide performance. To illustrate this, we will take the example of US comedy The Good Place.

Airing on NBC in the US and available on Netflix in most other markets, The Good Place was very well received worldwide. Over the release period of the most recent season (September 2017 to March 2018), The Good Place is the 173rd most in-demand title in the world.

Refining this further to position the show with respect to comparable titles, we see that over the same timeframe The Good Place is also the world’s 12th most in-demand sitcom.

This obviously makes The Good Place a very strong global title. To demonstrate this strong performance further, we can contextualize the most in-demand comedies worldwide with a distribution curve.

Global data aggregation reveals the major TV events that drive worldwide demand

Show-related events such as trailer launches, cast interviews and, most importantly, new episode releases can affect the demand for a title, even in markets where no promotional events or campaigns are running. This also holds true for markets that do not have official (commercially licensed) access as yet.

Significant increases in global demand can therefore be used to easily identify events that raised demand the most. To demonstrate this, the daily global demand for the most recent season of The Good Place and for comparative purposes, fellow NBC sitcom Superstore which also premiered a new season in September 2018, is shown.

By leveraging globally standardized TV demand data, we can establish that there is a clear audience response for The Good Place, and we can quantify this on a daily average basis: Global daily demand increases for the season 2 premiere on September 20, with each subsequent episode also visible as “daily global demand spikes”. Worldwide demand for The Good Place then remains at a high baseline during the show’s midseason break over the winter holidays.The fact that the show was available internationally on Netflix within 24 hours of the US broadcast kept global enthusiasm for each episode concentrated, as audiences did not have to wait for the official releases in their respective country.

The same type of patterns is visible for season 3 of Superstore, although his title overall has lower global demand compared to The Good Place.

Global demand breakdown shows how fans are interacting with a title, and each other

Demand breakdown reveals which methods fans are preferentially using to express their demand for a title. For this article, we have aggregated these methods into three categories: Video consumption, research and social media. By knowing how fans are engaging with content, global strategies can be adjusted, for example if the share from social media is low then the show may benefit from an increased official social media presence to encourage fans to share and discuss the series online.

To showcase this type of analysis, the chart below reveals the global demand breakdown for the Netflix reality show Queer Eye, from the period the show was relaunched on the service in early February 2018. The major markets that had the highest share for each type of demand driver have also been provided.

Video consumption including piracy is highest in Russia: We can speculate that viewers in notoriously homophobic Russia are unwilling to discuss or research the show online. Queer Eye’s research share of demand is highest in Sweden and neighboring Norwegian audiences are predominately expressing their demand on social media.

The dissimilarities in the Norwegian and Swedish global demand contribution shares illustrates that even between markets that may be (wrongly) assumed to be similar by outsiders, there can be significant differences in how audiences engage with content.

Travelability: How popular is a title relative to its home market?

To identify the markets where a title is currently performing strongest, a travelability analysis is performed: This analysis calculates the Demand Expressions per 100 capita of the title in every market and normalizes these to the demand in the show’s home market.

As an example for this type of analysis, we will again use Netflix’s Queer Eye and examine its demand since the reboot’s February 2018 release.

As Queer Eye’s home market of the U.S. is taken as the normalization point, it naturally has 100% travelability. The next highest travelability market is Australia, which has 67% of the U.S. home market demand; this confirms that the U.S. is the best market for this show.

We believe that this is an unsurprising result for two reasons: Firstly, most titles typically perform best in their home market and secondly, in this instance it can be argued that Queer Eye is a US-set reality show with a point of view that is strongly rooted in American culture.

The Australian popularity is also an expected result as the sole special episode of Queer Eye so far takes place in that country. This indicates that one method Netflix could use to improve Queer Eye’s popularity in other markets, quite simply, is to set more episodes in other countries: The best candidates for additional specials are the other English-speaking markets in the top 5 markets for the show, these are New Zealand, the UK and Canada.

Most of the remainder of the top ten are Asian countries, with the Philippines displaying the highest demand of these.

Taking an aggregate view reveals the regional travelability patterns as presented in the following chart.

The relatively high demand for Queer Eye in both Australia and New Zealand means that Oceania is the region where the show performs best, with North America second. As would be expected from the top countries for travelability, Asia is the next highest region.

At the other end of the scale, the Middle East region has very low demand for this series with only 1.5% of U.S. demand.

A title health analysis reveals market-specific insights for 100+ countries

To inform content owners about a show’s performance in the markets that are most important to them, the Title Health Analysis report can be customized to go into detail about how all of the above metrics change in 100+ global markets.

This allows for the identification of similarities and differences of how audiences are interacting with a title across territories of interest.

Let us now look at two specific examples of the types of data and insights that can be gleamed from a country-level analysis.

For the first, we will return to The Good Place as our example title, comparing the global rankings with its rankings in two specific markets:

This shows that while the U.S. rankings are over-performing compared to the global average (+108 positions above the global rank), The Good Place ranks lower than the global average rank in Germany (-135).

The lower-than-average German performance may be due to strong local competition, an unappealing translation, a lack of awareness about the show in the market or any number of potential issues. Knowing that this is a weaker market allows the cause to be investigated and hopefully addressed.

Moving to the other example title, we can contrast the demand breakdown for France and Australia for Queer Eye:

We observe that both countries have a higher demand contribution from social media than the global demand breakdown (as discussed earlier in this article). The difference exists in that French audiences are more prone to express demand via video consumption, while Australians are more likely to express demand via research.

These country-level insights allow for a title strategy to be expanded to address the specific environment of each market.

Expanding the Title Health Analysis: Demographics, comparison deep dives and more

Parrot Analytics’ data science and customer success teams work closely with each customer to answer specific global research questions. The Title Health Analysis report outlined in this article is just one way we add value to the customer teams we interface with.

Naturally this type of analysis can be extended in any number of ways to answer the exact business questions concerning a specific title, such as:

A demographic analysis to determine if and how the show has reached past its core demographic in any market.

A more detailed comparisons to similar titles to see where the title over-indexes and where there are opportunities for the show to improve.

Any other custom additions that would give you the information you need to make your show the best it can be, globally.

Source: Parrot Analytics

Over 2.5 million Zeasn connected device users across Asia, the Middle East and Africa will have access to ZEE5’s library of1,00,000 hours of language content

Close on the heels of its global launch, ZEE5, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd’s digital entertainment platform today announced a key strategic alliance with Zeasn, the leading home digital entertainment service provider. The partnership will make ZEE5 available on millions of Zeasn devices across Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Available across 190+ countries globally, ZEE5 offers the largest width and depth of multi-genre and multi-lingual 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 Movies and TV Shows, Music, and Health and Lifestyle videos along with a slew of Originals, across 12 languages. It also has an extensive Live TV offering with 60+ popular Live TV channels, including ZEE’s best loved channels.

With over 2.5 million Zeasn connected device users now being able to watch ZEE5 across any screen of their choice, this partnership further strengthens ZEE5’s international reach, while giving Zeasn users access to the largest library of over 1,00,000 hours of language content across genres. Over the next year, the ZEE5 app will be made available on all Zeasn enabled devices, offering Whale Eco consumers access to ZEE5’s premium content.

“Asia, Middle East and Africa are among the fastest growing markets in the world for online entertainment content and are key markets for us, given the huge South Asian diaspora, and the universal love for Bollywood content even among the locals there. By enabling over 2.5 million Zeasn users to access our unparalleled content library, this partnership further underscores our commitment to bring the best of language entertainment to viewers across devices of their choice.” said Archana Anand, Chief Business Officer – ZEE5 Global

“Bollywood content has a large number of fans around the world and it is a very important part of the world's cultural treasure. The strategy partnership will enable the consumers to enjoy wonderful Bollywood content efficiently on their smart TV devices, that will greatly help enrich the content of family digital entertainment system.” said Jason He, Chief Executive Officer – Zeasn

Have you ever strolled through a specific aisle of your favorite grocery store and noticed that there was more variety of a particular trendy product than your last visit? For example, perhaps you’ve wondered, "Since when did every condiment company start making a Sriracha sauce?"

Crowding is a phenomenon that tends to be created by burgeoning trends and can happen in any fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) category or segment. Here’s how it often materializes:

Consumer tastes and preferences evolve and new trends emerge.

To win over shoppers, retailers and manufacturers innovate around these trends.

Sometimes the initial rush to innovate adds copy-cat items to the shelf.

As a result, consumers are faced with too many options that have the same benefit.

It’s scenarios like these that not only contribute to an increased number of items on the shelf, but also erode products’ pricing power and promotional efficiency. To justify their product’s role in the category, manufacturers sometimes go the quick route of slashing prices and putting their product on sale to trigger a rise in purchasing. When they take this approach and execute incorrectly, sales could decline.

We see this happening across categories. For example, sales growth has slowed in the craft beer segment in recent years, contrasting earlier periods of explosive growth.

During the 2008 downturn, consumers sought solace in affordable luxuries, such as craft beer. So much so, that retail sales soared and reached an eye-popping growth rate of 23% a mere five years ago. Today, however, sales are flat and share in this segment have declined to about 13%. And, even though innovative value adds such as sours and Imperial IPAs help to continue to drive sales at U.S. retail outlets, overall category growth is tougher to come by.

Stagnation of craft beer growth

At the same time, craft beer still has the most pricing power, with an average price that’s 79% higher than domestic premium beer.

Pricing power of craft beer

While there are a few ways to reverse segment-level crowding, let’s take a look at how building a more efficient approach to price and promotion can benefit the price-powerful craft beer segment (and other mature FMCG categories). Here are six steps that we recommend manufacturers take to jump-start stagnant sales and successfully sell into retailers.

STEP 1: VALIDATE WHERE YOUR PRODUCT FITS IN THE MARKET

Often the industry encourages manufacturers to optimize their pricing quarterly or yearly to help them reach their goals. But pricing should not be considered in such a one-way fashion. Instead, manufacturers must always be focused on what’s optimal for both their brand and their retail partners. As a starting point, consider what the market will bear—in addition to other factors, such as profitability, brand objectives, etc.—when setting price.

STEP 2: UNDERSTAND THE ROLE THAT PRICING SENSITIVITIES PLAY IN YOUR STRATEGY

First, you need to understand how price changes impact sales and what the price threshold is for your product. This is where price elasticity comes in. Build a flexible strategy that accounts for price elasticity across all of the different channel types (e.g., high assortment) where your product is sold and its dynamics (e.g., premium packaging).

STEP 3: “BE YOURSELF” WHEN IT COMES TO TRADE PROMOTION

Finding the right approach to price and promotion can be tricky. Here is a helpful framework that can help manufacturers build an effective pricing and trade strategy. Combining products’ everyday price sensitivity and their promoted sensitivity leads to different price-promotion implications (below).

4 Strategies for Price and Promotion

According to this framework, we recommend trying a “hybrid” approach for craft beer, as it has above-average everyday and promoted price sensitivities. No matter what strategy you use, it’s important to start with deep investigation instead of trying to provide a simple solution when competing in a crowded space.

STEP 4: STRIKE A BALANCE BETWEEN PRICE AND PROMOTION SENSITIVITIES

Companies look to quick promotions when growth slows, which can lead to unintended consequences. For example, craft beer’s promotional “efficiency”—or percentage of promoted sales that are incremental —is relatively low (about 33%). How a product responds to trade promotion depends on myriad factors, including:

Promotion expectations that have been set by the category or competition

The price and promotion sensitivity of the product

The product’s ability to bring in competitive buyers and those in adjacent categories, possibly inducing trial and hopefully repeat purchases

The key is to judiciously invest and look for the trade promotion sweet spot that maximizes profit, share, volume and retail partnerships, and considers product attributes such as pack size.

STEP 5: PROMOTE YOUR PRODUCT IN THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY POSSIBLE

An important part of strategizing is to fully evaluate what it costs to make, distribute and bring your product to market. Here are a couple of rules of thumb to keep in mind regarding retail promotional levers:

Sales of impulse products (e.g., craft beer) tend to be display driven. Displays help raise awareness to new products.

Planned and expensive purchases tend to benefit from ads.

In both cases, it’s important to consider the trade-offs between the value of the additional volume and the cost of the promotion itself.

STEP 6:  CONSIDER SEASONALITY IN YOUR APPROACH

In trade planning, timing plays an important role, as it can be lucrative to align promotional events with seasonal ones. While seasonality typically doesn’t play a significant role for craft beer, craft sales do tend to be 24% above average during the week of Christmas*. But, it’s also important to consider the seasons where there are too many promotions, as it’s possible to lose opportunities to competitors who successfully promote their products in a lower seasonal time period.

To learn more about trade promotion seasonality, price elasticities, and where your product fits in the market, download our How to Drive Sales When Segment Growth Slows white paper.

*Source: Nielsen Total U.S. All Outlets (xAOC). Period ending Jan. 31, 2017.

Authored By Peter Shapiro, VP, Sales Effectiveness

“‘Language’ is the core proposition of ZEE5 which is embodied across the entire content and user experience of ZEE5. The platform offers its viewers around the globe a completely integrated entertainment experience across 12 languages and 11 display language personalisation options.” Explained Archana Anand, Chief Business Officer, ZEE5 Global.

In an interaction with MediAvataar India, Archana shared about the newest OTT platform on the block and how it will resonate with people who are ‘Dil Se Desi’.

Here is the complete Q&A.....

MediAvataar: Tell us about ZEE5.

Archana: ZEE5 is Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited’s digital entertainment platform. We launched in India in February 2018 and soft launched across 190+ countries globally last month in October. With this launch we are the first Indian entertainment company to have an OTT available at this scale globally, after Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. 

ZEE5 is a completely integrated entertainment offering, with both On-demand and Live TV channels. We have over 1,00,000 hours of content available for our global audiences across various genres like Indian Movies and TV Shows, Cine plays, Music, and Health and Lifestyle videos etc. along with a slew of exclusive Originals. All this content is across 12 languages: English, Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Oriya, Bhojpuri, Gujarati and Punjabi. With this range, we offer the largest width and depth of multi-genre content available in a single destination. 

ZEE5 is available across multiple platforms-across Android and iOS phones. web, specific Smart TVs, Android TV, Apple TV.

MediAvataar: What was the key purpose behind launching this platform?

Archana: As a global content company, we need to be where our viewers are. With increased penetration of smartphones and improvements in internet infrastructure, more and more people are watching content online and on-the-go, and we needed to ensure that our viewers had access to our content anytime, anywhere. 

We also saw a definite need-gap in the OTT space for strong language content. As more and more people come online, they increasingly want to watch content in the language of their comfort, and there is a clear dearth of this, which ZEE5 fills perfectly.

MediAvataar: What is it’s USP?

Archana: ‘Language’ is the core proposition of ZEE5 which is embodied across the entire content and user experience of ZEE5. The platform offers its viewers around the globe a completely integrated entertainment experience across 12 languages and 11 display language personalisation options. We have multi genre content available in English, Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Oriya, Bhojpuri, Gujarati and Punjabi. Not just that; on ZEE5 a user can also customize his navigation language, choosing from among 11 languages including English, Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bhojpuri, Gujarati and Punjabi. 

It also offers various additional user-friendly features like voice search, download to watch offline option, HD Quality video, adaptive bit rate streaming etc.

MediAvataar: Which are the key markets you are looking at initially and share the expansion plan?

Archana: In the first phase we are focusing on the South Asian diaspora across the globe as our language content is perfectly relevant to them. APAC, MENA and Africa are where we’ve rolled out our TVC right now, and we will soon launch this in Europe and Canada and Caribbean too.

MediAvataar: How do you look at the competition in this digitally dense era?

Archana: It’s really about how relevant you are to consumers and how distinctly you’ve been able to create a positioning for yourself, where the consumer considers you as the go-to destination for a particular proposition. If you’ve been able to clearly create this distinct positioning with the consumer, then it really doesn’t matter whether you have one competitor or a hundred.

MediAvataar: How do you plan to position ZEE5 on a global platform?

Archana: ZEE5 will clearly be the go to destination for language content. With over 100,000 hours of content across genres and languages, ZEE5 is the singular platform that’s tailor made for Indians and South Asians and beyond, around the world. With the launch of ZEE5 globally, we intend to own the India peg completely and be the unequivocal go to destination for Indian content for South Asians and beyond, wherever they may be. We offer content across 12 languages today and this is just the start. Over the next few months, we will be launching a significant amount of dubbed content in non-Indian languages also and will also create original content for local markets abroad.

MediAvataar: Throw some light on the ‘Dil Se Desi’ campaign.

Archana: Both ‘Dil Se Desi’ and the ZEE5 India launch campaign (which was rolled out in February 2018), ‘Apni Bhasha Mein Feel Hai’ actually have their genesis in the same insight; that Indians and 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 becoming an intrinsic part of one’s identity 

Given that digital is such a youth centric platform, our campaign plays on how traditions and cultural symbols have been adopted and adapted by the youth today – i.e. a henna tattoo replaces the traditional mehndi; payals get paired with sleek stilettos. 

‘Dil Se Desi’ is therefore a contemporary blend of tradition and modernity that perfectly blends our audience’s current state of being with the connect back to their home, culture and tradition, thus building a strong resonance and emotional quotient with the brand

This emotion and connect to our roots and culture is celebrated in our campaign, and is further captured in the creative rendition #♥Desi be.

MediAvataar: What made you come up with the concept?

Archana: As we were launching in international markets we wanted to create a campaign that resonated with not just every Indian but every South Asian around the world including audiences living in countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh; one that would extend the ZEE5 identity to a global audience. 

Dil Se Desi was Inspired by the insight that South Asians across the board are referred to as ‘Desi’ and wear that tag as a badge of honour. The South Asian diaspora remains hugely connected to and are proud of their roots, embodied in their culture and traditions, their language and their entertainment. With the tremendous love for desi content across the globe, the campaign speaks to the South Asian diaspora as a whole, and not just Indians living overseas.

MediAvataar: What was the messaging you had in mind while implementing the campaign?

Archana: ‘Dil Se Desi’ and the ZEE5 India launch campaign (which was rolled out in February 2018), ‘Apni Bhasha Mein Feel Hai’ have their genesis in the same insight; that Indians and 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. For South Asians around the globe Being ‘Desi’ today has moved from being just cool to being an intrinsic part of one’s identity. The campaign taps into the emotion which not only embraces this desiness but celebrates it.

MediAvataar: What’s to expect from the Platform in the coming time frame?

Archana: We will very soon be going live with ‘Dil Se Desi’ in Europe as well as in Canada and the Caribbean, marking our official entry in these markets. We have a line-up of some really interesting original content as well as several blockbuster films. On the business front, we have recently announced a strategic partnership with NetRange for their line of smart TVs. We’ve also got a lot of really strong partnerships in the pipeline and these will be announced over the next several weeks. These partnerships are across IPTVs, Telecoms and OEMs. So lots of exciting news coming up!

In today’s crowded car market, auto advertisers are hard-pressed to connect with consumers, encourage new sales, and do it all under shrinking budgets. It’s a steep challenge, and one that can only be met with a full understanding of how consumers shop for cars and how they react to automotive advertising.

Our recently published Nielsen Auto Marketing Report 2018 seeks to help you meet this challenge with fascinating new insights into the automotive path to purchase and media strategy.

We’ve all seen the traditional sales funnel, with brand awareness at the top and purchase intention at the bottom. There are two big misconceptions with this view of the consumer journey.

Consumers don’t have an intrinsic bias favoring one brand over the other at the start of the car buying process.

The shopping process itself is a process of elimination, whereby consumers eliminate brands that don’t meet their needs one by one until a winner finally emerges.

Let’s start with the first misconception. Our research shows car buyers do, in fact, have a bias, and it comes down to their level of unaided brand awareness (i.e., how top of mind you are) of car brands.

Unaided awareness is responsible for 85% of all purchase intentions, yet only accounts for 20% of total brand awareness. The other 80% of car brand awareness is aided, which requires a prompt to jog the memory.

In fact, purchase intent conversion rates for unaided brand awareness of a brand are a whopping 25 times those of aided awareness.

It’s clear that you need to build deeper connections with consumers—not simply awareness for awareness’ sake. It takes a more media-agnostic, customer-first marketing approach to build these connections long before prospects are actively in the market for a new car.

The good news is that you have many more channels at your disposal to reach car shoppers efficiently.  You also have more and better car shopper data to guide your audience segmentation, targeting and creative decisions, not to mention the technology to automate your advertising workflow. 

And now for the second misconception: Our research shows that car shopping doesn’t follow a linear path with a consistently decreasing consideration set. The number of brands being considered actually increases the closer a person gets to a final decision.

Car shoppers start out on the path to purchase by considering two to three brands on average, but by the time they’re ready to buy they have five brands under consideration—nearly twice as many as they started with.

The fact that shoppers are considering more brands as time goes by is encouraging. It suggests that they are open to considering additional brands even while having a top of mind brand that carries a natural advantage.

The key is to develop campaigns that can deliver on both fronts: building long-term brand equity and capturing people’s attention when they’re weighing their options.

And this takes an understanding of how media flights should be sequenced based on the path to purchase: employing mass reach media like TV and radio for brand building, and transitioning to more targeted and “personalizable” media including mobile, digital and direct mail to increase purchase consideration and dealership foot traffic.

Simply put, there’s never been a better time to be an automotive marketer.

Written by Brett House, VP Product Marketing & Strategy, Nielsen