Customer Trend Log

How to build a brand in UAE? Ten rules that all marketers should know

The world is full of global brands. Which were never designed to be global brands? How to dominate the world is about how to beat them.

This presentation adds insights from United Arab Emirates to the points raised by Simon Silvester

Rule 1: Think Zeitgest  - UAE has startled the world through its development and growth, brands should capitalize that

Rule 2: Think Trial – UAE is a paradise of retail outlets, think trial to all the young audience and the expats that have recently arrived

Rule 3: Think Visual – When 208 nationalities combine speaking multiple languages, the language of your brand should be visual

Rule 4: Think Youthquake – UAE population has an average age of 27, you should connect to the young & rising.

Rule 5: Think Small – UAE is getting green, your brand should be saving on paper and all avoidable wastes because you love environment

Rule 6: Think Print – The media in UAE is print, followed by digital. Think visual, body copy and go crazy

Rule 7: Think Fast – People are on the move, fads are coming and going and where the hell is your brand? Move fast because if you will not your competition will

Rule 8: Think Cultural Neutrality – So many cultures, so many languages but one dream — Dubai Dream

Rule 9: Think Kiasu – Ambition charges UAE population & your brand should fuel it

Rule 10: Think Mobile 200% penetration rate of mobiles asks brand to evolve through modern technology

Brand Mantra: In UAE brand should capture human imagination, and should capture it faster than human imagination

Reading: How to dominate the world by Simon Silvester

UAE customer Trend: 6 questions that TGI (Target group Index report) raises about UAE Food market

TGI 2011 product book aims at providing percentage penetration of multiple product categories in different countries.

What I have done in the following table is that I have compared penetration of food products in UAE with countries that have scored high in that category. 

Now this data set poses following questions  

1. Is UAE market of Colas smaller than the market of Fizzy drink/energy drinks?
2. Cola market is smaller than ready to drink fruit and vegetable juices? If yes, then Almarai, Al Ain juices and other such brands have done a good job
3. Obesity in UAE is rising, maybe because of 83% penetration of potato crisps?
4.  Why Chewing Gum penetration is only 63%?
5. If South Koreans are not using oil for cooking than what are they using, because that might lead to low level of obesity?
6. Is there a room for expansion in Mayonnaise or soup market in UAE, considering the eating habits of majority?  

The sampling details for TGI-UAE market are as follow

• UAE 15+
•  8 urban cities
• Sample Size  5,000
• Jul 2009 – Dec 2009

If you have more questions and want to contact TGI group directly, you can drop them an email at enquiries@globaltgi.com

Customer Trend: What consumers are doing while you read this post? 21 social media stats

Statistics, that will make your hair stand. Sit down and watch the counter. This just shows how digital media is helping consumer insight manager in gathering data.

http://www.personalizemedia.com/media/socmedcounter.swf

Consumer Insight: Sally in Dubai and social media

What Sally (a Filipina Maid) is telling the social media enthusiasts? I just saw an article about a blog by a Filipina maid in the Gulf-news.  

My first question is, is this blog by a maid in Dubai for real

My first question is, is this blog by a maid in Dubai for real? If it is, then it is time to ask the following questions

• Depth and breadth of social media in UAE – from face book to blogger, how many do we have? What are the numbers? What are they doing? And how can they be accessed & influenced? I compiled some statistics on social media users in UAE but this needs to be updated and expanded.
•  Work ethics and social media guidelines – This young lady is the first drop of water, now magnify this to the workforce in UAE. Key Question companies need to ask from themselves is when will I be developing my social media usage guidelines, will I be developing them at all? Example of social media guidelines
•  This Filipina lady is a lesson in blogging – I think copyblogger should present it as a case study; this blog caught the eye of press despite of poor language, no proper training in headline development etc.

Key questions she has asked

• Marketers, are you ready to tap into the social media (blogging) world of Dubai?  (don’t forget that expats contribute a lot in your retail success in UAE and the average online shopping spend in UAE is USD 1048. More stats on UAE purchase potential)
• Policy Makers in organizations; are you ready with your guidelines and policies of use of social media?

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Consumer Trend: Insight into mobile usage

Following are few interesting statistics about mobile usage

Mobile subscriptions more than toothbrushes

1. Mobile subscriptions more than toothbrushes - 4.6 billion human beings are connected through mobile i.e. on an average 4 out of 5 adults have a cell phone (There are an estimated 4.2 Billion people who have a toothbrush and 4.6 billion who have a mobile subscription.) Continue reading “Consumer Trend: Insight into mobile usage” »

Consumer Insight: UAE dictionary of change

Change has always been the only constant, especially in the United Arab Emirates. A country which is only 39 years old but has attracted global attention in terms of growth rates, construction marvels and is leading the region on many fronts.

Following are a couple of thoughts on activities/projects which will probably bring some major changes in the media consumption and marketing front of UAE.

The three big changes that I have identified are

• Content creation
• Abu-Dhabi getting traction
• Increased connectivity

I have uploaded my views on slide-share FYR. Hope you find them useful

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Public Sector insight: Trends for Government 2.0

Connected citizens pose a new challenge for Public Sector at large, following is what I believe are the most important three trends which will impact public sector in coming few years. I analyzed it from the perspective of product, promotion and people’s perspective. Hope you will find it useful.   Continue reading “Public Sector insight: Trends for Government 2.0” »

Public Sector Insight: Public Engagement in Public Sector

Recently Community engagement has reached an appraisable level of interest across public sector globally. There could be many reasons for this including success of Obama’s election campaign, strong conviction of USA, UK & Australian government towards public engagement, UN millennium development goals and technological advanced population.

I have tried to compile the learning’s from across the globe in this document (public engagement in public services), I hope you will find it useful.

I personally believe in identifying the challenges first because that stimulates the thinking as to how these challenges can be addressed. Below is an extract from the document, it highlights the key challenges

Challenges:

A comprehensive list associated with community engagement is available at the website of Queensland Government (Australia); following are some risks which I foresee in community engagement

• A broad target segments: Unlike private sector Government reaches out to everyone equally. Now this involves lower & higher SECs, hard to reach audiences, opinion leaders and followers, literates and illiterates, segments with vested interests etc. This together broadens the scope of community engagement for public services and makes it complicated to ensure unbiased results
• Accountability, information access and federal government:-  Unlike private sectors in public sector – community and citizens have all the rights reserved to access the information they shared at all levels. But it is very difficult from Governments’ perspective to share information at all levels, especially in the absence of web 2.0 technologies. Governments are also centralized and decisions take a lot of time before implementation. This results in distrust of communities on the Governments and consequently people feel that their input is not being valued.
• Generic community management issues:- Addressing the destructive impact of ‘bad participation’, where negative attitudes to community involvement lead to poor engagement practices, causing increased hostility, decreased trust and poor experience and outcomes not only for communities, but also for officials and politicians, thus further reinforcing negative attitudes and behavior. Recognizing the catch-22 faced by residents who take on responsibilities as community leaders, but find their legitimacy challenged precisely because they ‘stand out’ – becoming labeled as ‘unrepresentative usual suspects’.
• Inconsistent vocabulary: - The term ‘community participation’ is understood and applied differently by different statutory bodies, and by different officers within those statutory bodies. These variations can make it hard for different bodies to work in partnership with each other and with communities.
• Lack of available statistics on how community engagement helped Governments gain popularity, enhanced their positive image and got re-elected also acts as a barrier from government officials view point
• Managing expectations: – increased community engagement results into high level of expectations. So it at times become a catch 22 whereby increasing satisfaction through involvement Governments can lead to dissatisfaction by inconsistent policy or by not incorporating the community inputs
• Lack of time and interest: – An audit in Canada found that 55% people don’t want to be involved in community engagement because of lack of time, feeling of no influence over decision making etc.

IMPLICATIONS to United Arab Emirates

• In a tax-free environment, the first question which Government as a service provider asks is the depth of community engagement. Why and to what level people should be engaged? On top of tax-free environment, high turnover rate of expats (which constitutes the major part of the population) complicates service delivery, satisfaction levels and result oriented community engagement
• A unique mix of expats from different parts of the world results into different level of satisfaction and expectations across different segments. It becomes increasingly difficult to understand the cultural, lingual differences in involvement and product delivery.
• UAE has very high penetration of mobile phones and internet; this actually paves a way for technologically advanced means of sustainable community engagement.

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Customer Trend: Post recession Consumer

We (you and I), people who are in the eye of the recession and were in the eye of the unrealistic boom are one of the most interesting consumer segment I have come across during my marketing career. This is the reason why I think so

• We saw a magnanimous growth in last few years – We saw more than one economic bubble i.e. the dot.com bubble, real estate bubble, and the most interesting of it all is the rise and fall of credit based economy.
• We have seen wars and threats of terrorism – 9/11, Iraq war, Afghanistan war
• We have seen the most devastating natural disasters – Tsunami, Earthquakes (Haiti, China, Pakistan) and still we are expecting much more as the “globe is warming up to take its revenge from mankind.”
• We have seen media revolutions and are still witnessing it – Satellite television, computers, Internet & social media  

All of this has shaped our behavior, we can laugh about things which our previous generations couldn’t. We worry about situation which never existed before. In short, We are stronger, agile, insecure and more connected. If you disagree then enlighten me with your opinion.

Now in the following presentation I am investigating the post-recession consumer. I believe the world is going through an optimism divide i.e. hopeful BIC (Brazil, India & China) vs. the rest of the world. The insecurities and the charged passion is changing marketing landscape.

Here is my view:

Additional Readings

I talked about trust in this blog almost 6 months ago and PWC’s report released today on 31-Oct-10 just re-confirms my thoughts (talk about bragging): PWC – Trust report

How The Current Economy Has Changed Consumer Behaviors

Survey report – 3 out of 5 people in UAE believe that UAE is in recession - (This is just the executive summary – full report can be viewed by premium members)

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Customer Insight: Marketing to Muslims

We are living in a world where almost 1 out of every 5 person is a Muslim. The degree to which they practice religion is subject to debate, but the fact that is important to understand that Muslims are too big a niche to be ignored.

• According to JWT Muslims are Britain’s biggest untapped Niche (ref: article on tapping Muslim community)
• When British banking  giant HSBC began offering Islamic banking practices in Malaysia, it was surprised that more than half of its customers were non-Muslim (business week article on Islamic banks )

We need to explore more powerful means to tap into this segment. I am sharing a presentation that elaborates my POV.

Continue reading “Customer Insight: Marketing to Muslims” »