By Karim ElGohary, Ecommerce Executive, OMG Transact
Prime Day is Amazon’s second-largest promotional day of the year after Black Friday, providing an array of deals to their 200 million Amazon Prime members globally. In 2020, Amazon Prime Day sales reached an estimated $10 billion worldwide, growing +45% year on year.
Prime Day represents one of the most competitive and active marketing days within the Amazon calendar in their developed markets, due to the large number of members looking to secure deals in 100+ categories of products. To take advantage of this growing commercial event locally, here are 5 ways to get your brand ready for Prime Day 2021 in UAE and KSA:
1. Inventory, Inventory, Inventory
It is essential to evaluate and forecast your brand’s online inventory in advance of the Prime Day event. If you run out of stock during the sale period, your rankings will be affected, media investment wasted and not to mention limiting your sales potential. Categories such as electronics, appliances, apparel, and jewellery have historically seen the highest volume growth year on year. Forecasting the run-rate of your bestselling products (aka ASINs) on Amazon and applying a buffer on top helps to avoid OOS situations.
2. Be seen, to be sold.
Optimizing product listings plays a key role in increasing your Amazon visibility and ultimately your brand’s conversion rates and sales. Optimizing on Amazon requires you to focus your attention on;
Titles and Description SEO: Write a clear and concise copy that is relevant to your product, audience and optimized towards top ranking keywords to improve your organic search ranking. Monitor your Page View Conversion Rate metrics to assess the uplift these copy amends made on your conversions and identify top ranking keywords from your Sponsored Ads search campaigns or using Google Trends.
Product Content Experience: Ensure your top-selling ASINs have A+ content pages to inspire, inform and convert shoppers. Your full product catalogue should all have primary and alt images in place adhering to the Amazon guidelines to improve your conversion rate.
3. Sweet Deals, Mega Discounts and Exclusive Bundles
Deals, Discounts and Bundles play an important role throughout Prime Day, however, the key lies in creating something of value to the consumer. Submit your best offers into Amazon Prime Day lightning deals and ensure these exclusive, timebound deep discounts that are not available any other time of the year. Create bundles built strategically from basket data analysis, by grouping commonly purchased items together or offering bulk bundle packs at a discounted price for your top-selling items. Bundles are a great way to offer value to the consumer whilst ensuring high basket value is achieved.
4. Learn from your competition!
Keep an eye on your competitor, you can tell a lot about their approach by searching for or ordering their product to assess their end to end offering. Identify their Prime Day deals strategy and if you are a 3rd Party merchant make live price adjustments to remain competitive. You can identify the top sellers in your category by checking out the Amazon bestseller lists featured on Amazon UAE and KSA. It’s essential to observe their tactics to learn for future Prime Day and Cyber Month activities.
5. Accelerate Growth with Amazon Advertising
Each month more than 215M users access Amazon globally to discover and purchase new products, and with events like Prime Day, more users access Amazon to get the best deals possible. Amazon advertising solutions allow you to increase your visibility with audiences that with shopping intent towards your products and categories:
- Build Awareness with Amazon DSP: The Amazon DSP enables you to expand your reach and build your audiences in the run-up to Prime Day using display and video ads featured on Amazon’s network and 3rd party websites. Prime day is an offer driven event, so build your DSP audience strategy based on those showing intent towards your category e.g. including shoppers who reviewed yours or your competitors ASINs. Think about your look back window, you can retarget users who previously bought your product over the last year, so assess this window based on the shopper frequency of your category. Finally, the goal of Prime Day is sales uplift and volume, so increase your frequency cap to ensure this offer based messaging is reinforce with your target audience on a higher frequency than your average DSP campaigns to encourage action within a shorter timeframe.
- Win in Search with Sponsored Ads: Increase your onsite awareness with Amazon Sponsored Brands, Products and Brand Video to ensure your offers rank in search results. If you are new to sponsored ads, begin with ‘Automatic’ bidding campaigns, whereby Amazon identifies which keywords are most relevant. Then set up ‘Manual’ bidding campaigns allowing you to specifically target keywords of relevancy for your products and category from your automatic campaign insights. Remember winning in Sponsored Ads requires attention beyond just your campaign set up a budget and keyword strategy, you need to ensure retail readiness of your ASINs, in-stock availability and relevancy to the keywords as these factors are all taken into consideration by Amazon when assigning who wins the bid.
- Unlock Repurchase Potential: Post Amazon Prime Day, think about your remarketing efforts to encourage these new to brand shoppers to purchase again from your brand. You can activate ‘Subscribe and Save’ to allow customers receive recurring and scheduled deliveries of your product at a discounted price. Alongside activating a DSP display remarketing strategy retargeting these new shoppers to increase spends and frequency across your portfolio.
Need help scaling your e-commerce growth in MENA?
OMG Transact is an e-commerce agency powered by Omnicom Media Group, built from a team of e-commerce retail experts focused on unlocking incremental revenue growth online in the MENA region. If you want to accelerate your Amazon and Ecommerce growth online please reach out to [email protected]
This articles was first published in Campaign Middle East
Claire Fletcher has been appointed as head of engagement at OMD UAE. She will be developing new ways brands can connect and engage with audiences by placing empathy and human connection at the forefront. Through a multidimensional strategic approach with content, creators, experiences, and technology, she will be building innovative practices where brands, products and customers intersect to enrich the overall customer experience in today’s world.
Claire offers over 9 years of experience in the advertising industry, having spent 7 of them working with diverse brands and categories across MENAT/GCC. In her previous role, Claire spearheaded an addressable content arm allowing her to work closely with global markets, successfully merging data, tech, innovation, and eCommerce to deliver personalization at scale.
Having led the social media departments across creative and media agencies, Claire will be focusing on building agile teams, products and methods to create work that leans on dynamic content, thinking and futuristic experiences to execute solving business problems creatively.
This article was first published on Campaign Middle East
Alanna Turpin has been promoted to Director of Sustainability and Culture at Omnicom Media Group MENA. In this new regional role, Alanna will propel OMG MENA’s culture whilst building on strategic sustainability and corporate wellness initiatives across the group. She will lead on employee engagement programs, internal communications, and support on the renewal of various talent management processes to enhance OMG’s employee offering.
Alanna has been part of OMG MENA for over 11 years, initially spending the first five years at OMD as a digital media planner, before moving into a 360 holistic planning position. Turpin’s passion for sustainability and wellness led her to take up a role in 2015 to carve out the agency’s corporate social responsibility and wellness agenda.
Over the last six years, Alanna has created volunteering and fundraising initiatives both locally and internationally, raising almost AED 2.5 million, predominantly in the education, health and humanitarian sectors. Some of these events, which are OMG MENA’s biggest charity challenges to date, include trekking Kilimanjaro and Everest Base Camp, as well as volunteering opportunities at their long-standing partner’s children’s home in the Philippines and a community space for homeless children in India.
This article was first published on Campaign Middle East
Omnicom Media Group MENA has appointed Chris Solomi as its new Chief Digital Officer. In this new regional role, he will oversee OMG’s overall digital offering focusing on digital media, analytics and e-commerce, reporting to Elda Choucair, Chief Operating Officer for OMG MENA.
With nearly 20 years of experience in media, Chris has previously held digital leadership roles in performance, programmatic, analytics and e-commerce including 6 years at OMG MENA overseeing their performance and programmatic offering. In a short period of time, his teams won regional awards for excellence in digital.
“The years I spent at Omnicom were the most rewarding of my career. I’ve never felt a greater sense of belonging or purpose in any role I held before or since. The decision to come back was easy and I’m looking forward to helping OMG, and our agencies set the benchmark for what gold standard in digital means in our region” said Solomi.
This article was first published in Campaign Middle East.
Covid has done strange things to our perception of time. Like an old bike wheel, bent out of shape, the time has ceased to roll gently forward – rather slowing down and speeding up at random.
Days in lockdown lasted aeons, months passed in a blur. Quarterly milestones came and went while Zoom quizzes back home with family went on for what felt like a lifetime.
Nevertheless, four hundred years ago unequivocally seems like a long time in the past. Even Myspace wasn’t around then. And the dollar, let alone Bitcoin were distant, unimaginable concepts when Tahir Shah wrote, “stories are a communal currency of humanity”, in Arabian Nights.
But this currency has even older origins. And even greater contemporary relevance.
Hakawati speaks to the ancient Arabic art of storytelling. It enjoys a renewed focus during Ramadan as this millennia-old oral tradition takes centre stage with the Hakawati (storyteller) sharing stories in person or, increasingly, though AV content just before the daily fast is broken at Iftar.
Brands have connected with Hakawati as a content opportunity in the last few years but, like all good stories, this takes on an even deeper meaning today.
Ramadan this year promises to mark a partial return to normality as the vaccine boost is felt and the economy shows signs of recovery. And yet, much of last year’s strangeness will remain, as friends and families continue to meet, greet and break bread, not in person with a warm embrace and familial smile, but through screens.
A Think With Google piece revealed 2020 to be the most connected Ramadan to date, and 2021 is set to continue this trend.
Yet while many of the traditional Ramadan rituals will be shrouded in technology and modernity, one ongoing global trend, born of lockdown, sees people reaching for the traditions and crafts of old – baking banana bread and sourdough on monumental scales, doing jigsaws and, yes, embracing good old-fashioned storytelling. For us at PHD, the greatest brands are the greatest storytellers and they are shot through with the common DNA of challengers. They believe in prioritising attitude over audience, understanding the rules and then breaking them, and effectiveness over efficiency. These three approaches form the building blocks of great brands.
As the ancient and the modern blend this Ramadan, more than ever before, it’s a lesson that brands would do well to take heed of.
Because whilst hugely emotional stories, based on universal themes of sacrifice, generosity and empathy, unfold, it is the perfect time for brands to rediscover their storytelling magic and reconnect with consumers in meaningful ways. Online and offline should be false distinctions so long as brands are telling their stories inclusively and at scale.
Binet and Field’s 60:40 rule, indicating the split between brand and lower-funnel investment, is a constant truth, but if ever there was a time to focus attention on brand-building, it is now. Ramadan represents an opportunity to tell big, bold stories that resonate and connect culturally while investing in brand equity to outflank the competition.
Brands that failed to protect their brand investment in 2009, after the financial crash, took four years to regain their previous brand equity, and it cost them six times the original investment they cut. Understandable as the decision may have been at the time, armed with this information it just looks like plain bad economics.
It’s understandable that the temptation may be to revert immediately to the offer-led comms that had become a Ramadan staple, as much as different flavoured knafeh, and try to claw back 2020’s lost sales, but this would, in isolation, be wrong.
Efficiency can feel like an obligation for marketers when times are tough and, whilst it is important, it’s critical to remember that it is a contributor to overall effectiveness, not its equal. Sharpening the lower funnel to take full advantage of seasonal buying habits is crucial but as a complement to, not instead of, building brand equity that will pay back in the long term, well after the Eid decorations are back in their boxes.
Take the time this Ramadan to reflect. How can you most effectively drive business results in the Holy Month and beyond? How are you behaving meaningfully at the most meaningful time of the year to your consumers? It’s time for brands to channel the spirit of the Hakawati and value the emotional over the rational, empathy over engagement and the inclusive over the excluded.
This article was first published in Campaign Middle East
Dana Sarkis, General Manager of Hearts & Science UAE, identifies the five dominant technological advances that if not applied, could make or break brands in a post-pandemic world in Campaign Middle East‘s Marcomms360 feature.
Luca Allam will oversee the strategic direction of PHD MENA operations across UAE, Lebanon, KSA and Egypt.
Omnicom Media Group MENA has appointed Luca Allam as its new Chief Executive Officer for the award-winning agency, PHD, effective as of February 1, 2021. Most recently, Allam held the role of Managing Director for PHD UAE and was responsible for business growth and further developing the strategic product. In his new regional role, he will continue to be based in the United Arab Emirates, reporting to Elda Choucair, Chief Operating Officer for OMG MENA.
Luca joined PHD over ten years ago when he moved from OMD International, London to Dubai as Head of Digital; since then, he has been an essential part of PHD’s success. He has led an aggressive new business streak and contributed to multiple significant award wins including The Most Effective Media Agency award at the MENA Effies in 2019.
His unwavering commitment to position PHD as the foremost strategic-thinking agency, his drive to developing talent and his devotion to shaping and protecting the agency’s tight-knit culture has helped him build PHD to become a powerful brand and formidable player in the region. Under his leadership, there is no doubt that the PHD network will continue to grow, whilst retaining a commitment to accelerating PHD’s unique strategic product development across markets.
“Luca has a progressive vision for the evolution of the agency and we look forward to seeing how he continues to push PHD to new heights and further its proud history of growth and success,” as stated by Elda Choucair, COO of OMG MENA.
“Brands need to streamline and optimize operations be it through automated solutions or logistic partnerships to meet the needs of today’s customer, as ‘quick commerce’ starts to become a standard shopper expectation.”
Nagham Akileh, Senior Director- eCommerce Strategy at OMG Transact MENA, shares the top eCommerce trends to watch out for as brands continue their digital transformation journeys in 2021.
Read the full article in The Brandberries‘ Reflections & Resolutions – Digital Transformation report.
To contribute to critical relief campaigns during the COVID-19 pandemic last year, Omnicom Media Group MENA has collaborated with regional media owners in the Middle East to provide complimentary media space to its long-standing partner charities. In this video, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) UAE interviewed Omnicom Media Group MENA’s Associate Director for Sustainability and Culture Alanna Turpin to learn more about the continuous and various support for MSF that started before 2020.
Elie Khouri, Chairman & CEO of Omnicom Media Group MENA, shares his 2021 industry predictions for the region following a year of unparalleled unpredictability.
“The only thing we can safely predict is unpredictability,” was possibly my most accurate prediction last year. Unfortunately. Who could have anticipated the global pandemic and the depth of its impact on the way we live and work? Normal business was temporarily put on hold while we were busy discerning what the ‘new normal’ might look like. Once the health emergency created by Covid is under control, we’ll find that most of the issues raised last year will still be relevant next year.
With one key differentiator: Covid. The outbreak of the pandemic has acted as a time warp. The slowdown resulting from the lockdowns has actually added urgency to existing plans for the digitization of business and marketing. Covid has forced people and brands to meet virtually. These digital brand experiences are now going right through the funnel and end with online transactions for a growing number of sectors and companies. Who thought we’d buy cars online or take virtual vacations? Estimates for the growth of e-commerce in the region in 2020 range between 100% and 150% but the trend is clear and not limited to retail. Governments and the B2B sector are actively involved too. New digital habits are being formed and shopping and consumption patterns are being profoundly altered. More than half of UAE and Saudi residents state they will stick with their new shopping behaviors after the pandemic.
As more of the marketing budgets are going into digital infrastructure, analytics and performance or data-driven campaigns, investments in media continue to shift towards global platforms. This leaves the whole industry exposed and exerts incredible pressure on local media owners. We expect 2020 to have fallen by 20% in media investments, double the 10.2% estimate for the world’s average. The UAE was particularly affected, reliant as the country is on tourism and retail, while Egypt was relatively spared. This will force media and agencies to accelerate the transformation of their business models and diversification of their revenues. On the upside, 2021 should see the region’s first year of growth since 2014, with an anticipated 10% rise. A full recovery to 2019 levels will happen in early 2023.
Governments will play a major role in restarting the economic engine. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 will continue unabated, with its focus on tourism and entertainment, including the first Saudi F1 GP. The UAE will stage its rescheduled Expo 2020. The resumption of talks between Qatar and its GCC neighbors, which could see sanctions lifted, will boost confidence and trade in the region. 2021 promises to be an eventful year, and for the better. Take an inside look at the 10 key trends that will reshape the marketing industry next year.
1- Will TV rise again? The fortunes of the region’s broadcasters are changing. Once the darling of consumer brands, TV now has to fight harder against digital platforms for its place in media plans. TV ad revenues will have shrunk to $450 million in the GCC by end of 2020. The continued lack of reliable and accurate audience measurement (especially TV meters) does little to inspire confidence, depressing CPMs to rock-bottom levels. Though still the leader, MBC will seek to address a significant fall in its revenues, from more than $800 million in 2015 to less than $300 million in 2020. The recently launched in-house sales agency, MMS, which is now fully Saudi owned and managed, will face an uphill battle to reverse the trend. The new leadership, albeit solid and credible, will have to stave off talks of monopolistic practices driven by MMS’ partnership with the Kingdom’s leading out-of-home provider. This will add to the challenges facing a struggling sector that has already paid an unfairly high price from recent political and economic events.
The future of broadcast TV in MENA rests on the industry’s ability to inspire confidence in its grip over audiences and MMS’ new commercial policy. Despite being one of the cheapest TV landscapes in the world, the last thing the Covid-hit market needs is further price instability and inflationary pressures.
2- The streaming battle heats up. While linear TV audiences continue to dwindle, existing streaming platforms such as Shahid, Awaan, Starzplay, OSN, Netflix, Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Video are gaining subscribers and, with their investments in content, will continue to grow and dominate over time. SVOD (subscription video on demand) will see growth accelerating, adding 30% next year, while AVOD (advertising video on demand) will grow more slowly at 15%.
The key differentiator will be Arabic content. Shahid VIP, which claims to have gained over one million subscribers in just six months, has 42% of its content locally produced in Arabic. OSN Originals is aiming for 25% next year. Despite recent efforts, Netflix achieves only 1%. This is what people will pay money for, especially younger audiences, offering TV content providers a viable alternative to the advertising-funded linear model.
3- Digital will reach 65% share of total marketing spend. Despite concerns about and efforts to control the influence of the big 4 (GAFA) in politics and society, the weight of digital in advertising investments keeps growing. Next year, it will reach 65% in MENA. Data is at the heart of this growth, turning precision into performance and profitability. The dominance of digital platforms will be exacerbated long term by their diversification from an advertising-funded model to one including e-commerce, cloud services, content, etc. The introduction of 5G will surely help fuel this growth.
Meanwhile, the two dominant forces, Facebook and Google, are starting to feel the heat of competition as their growth slowed in 2020. The challenge from Snapchat is strengthening everywhere, as the platform is expected to grow from north of $200 million in revenues in 2020 to close to $300 million next year. Still small compared with the +$3.0 billion for Facebook and Google combined, but the trend is telling given its strong advantage especially in Saudi Arabia, where it holds a 12-15% market share. TikTok is growing fast thanks to content diversification and is poised to reach $100 million in 2021. Amazon remains the smallest player, from an ad-tech point of view, until it rapidly scales up its marketplace and ad solutions which are planned to roll out across the UAE, KSA and Egypt with the promise to be in the top 5 by 2022.
Net net and what most observers miss is that more than $3 of the $5.5 billion MENA investments end up outside the region, after accounting for operational costs related to the running of the big ad tech players.
4- The best is yet to come for e-commerce. Think of 2020 as a dress rehearsal for what’s coming in 2021 in terms of e-commerce. The increase in both demand and supply will only accelerate next year, making MENA the second-fastest-growing market after China. One sign of this is Amazon increasing its regional workforce by 30%. Several concurrent developments are also leading to this. There are significant investments in our e-commerce infrastructure, led and supported by government initiatives. The offering in terms of products, pricing and service, such as delivery speeds, will continue to improve. As well as strengthening regional giants, this will attract new e-tailers and entrepreneurs. Shopping habits will also continue to turn digital, with half of MENA consumers stating their behaviors will not change post-Covid. 49% of global product searches are occurring on Amazon, against 22% on Google; e-commerce is now an essential first stop for product discovery. The experience borne out of necessity is breaking down any previous resistance. In 2021, this will only increase with social and mobile commerce, instant deliveries and digital payments.
5- Clients will continue to favor “Performance” over “Branding”. Following the impact of Covid, the emphasis on “Performance-driven” campaigns vs “Branding” will intensify in an attempt to meet targets. This is particularly true for the most impacted sectors of automotive, travel and hospitality. In 2021, we will see CMOs further transforming their marketing strategies towards always-on, data-driven approaches based on a single view of existing and potential customers. Loyalty programs will be particularly key in this. Unifying first-party data, enriching it with other data layers before activating it for greater precision and performance is a far cry from past marketing practices. While some are in-housing their data function, most companies will outsource as the investment in tech, expertise and data is significant.
However, we should not underestimate the power of “Branding” which contributes to roughly half of the total MENA investments, as marketers will seek to elevate the value of their brands, via crafting content and stories that will create magic and connect with consumers. In addition, programmatic trading, which is still nascent in our region, will continue to grow as a vital component in the mix.
6- A new dawn for e-gaming. The opportunities for brands within gaming have been touted for years but the lockdowns have made e-gaming an even bigger leisure activity. The region’s gaming population is growing by 25% a year. Beyond subscriptions and in-game purchases, the revenue potential from brands is huge. Consider last year’s 10.7 million online attendees at Marshmello’s DJ set on the popular game Fortnite, which had multiple opportunities for brand presence and content. Whether directly through dynamic in-game placements, or via e-gaming’s thriving streaming and e-sports ecosystem, the possibilities for natural advertising in this space will be limitless.
7- Data privacy will be its own pillar in 2021 marketing strategies. The risk of data being compromised during remote working sessions has kept the issue of data protection and privacy on government and business agendas everywhere. Investments in public cloud infrastructure are expected to rise by 35% next year, with businesses focusing on data protection, security, automation, machine learning and hardware. This is part of a broader rethink of workspaces in a post-pandemic world, where teams may need less physical space to operate and collaborate.
The focus on data protection and privacy also applies to consumer data. Following the implementation of the new data protection law in DIFC and consultations on similar laws in Jordan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, we can expect the regulatory framework to make privacy measures and practices mandatory.
8- Tectonic shifts will alter the landscape. Compounding a drop in billings that started more than five years ago, the pandemic has proved a formidable challenge for not only media and agencies, both big and small, but clients too. The loss of business has caused severe cash-flow issues, and many have had to resort to cost-cutting measures.
The impact of Covid on the creditworthiness of some clients and agencies will add to the financial strain on the marketing ecosystem. With the lack of credit and business models being seriously disrupted, the lack of liquidity will see businesses fail on a scale never seen before. Clients will ask for delayed payments, which will put more pressure on fragile agencies and the publisher ecosystem.
The task will now be to rebuild for the forthcoming bounce-back. It’s unlikely we’ll see the same structures again, as remote working has successfully challenged conventions and traditional thinking. We will most likely see more agile and solution-based structures relying on flexible hires. The gig economy, with a modular approach to solution building, will permeate our industry more. In 2021, collaborations between entities will be more project-based and time-bound.
9-The ebb and flow of talent. Saudi Arabia is trying to force expats out while still attracting companies to create jobs for its population, the UAE is openly welcoming them with a loosening of regulations and new visa options. In both cases though, with the recent loss of jobs in our industry, talent supply will exceed demand.
This is the perfect opportunity to reboot or pivot as an organization, adding talent with the right set of skills and experience as well as the right traits and aptitudes, particularly the ability to handle ambiguity. The alternative is the training and upskilling of current employees giving companies the opportunity to transform their talent base. The fact that demand for online training and education has gone through the roof since the start of Covid only seeks to enforce this ambition.
10- Purpose and Culture, the critical importance of the CPO. After the upheavals of the pandemic and the stress caused by the restrictions, talent undoubtedly needs a great deal of attention. Now is not the time to lose sight of that in the name of profit preservation. Your HR team are the glue that binds your talent together, be they remote or socially distant. They are the guardians of motivation, ambition and performance. The three are intrinsically linked. The quest for profits begins with a strong sense of purpose, one that rallies the whole organization and guides their growth. A purpose-driven company articulates why it exists, makes sure it is accountable for the progress against its goals and delivers a meaningful experience at work.
Like most crises, the pandemic will separate the wheat from the chaff. This Darwinian effect will not, however, favor the fittest today as much as it will reward the bravest. It’s about proactively making the necessary changes. Visionary, ambitious, agile, and resourceful companies, and individuals will prevail in this environment. To capitalize on these trends and the growth opportunities they will create, entities across the board will have to be imaginative and build memorable, distinctive, and valuable technology-empowered experiences, products and solutions. They also need to bring back human emotions and warmth in a world that has turned very cold, driven by data and automation.
There’s a reason for this. Expectations placed on marketers today are bringing them ever closer to revenue generation and profitability. The focus on ROI has never been stronger. This clearly impacts the rest of their ecosystem, which also needs to rapidly adapt.
Of course, we all need to make it through the storm, but this cannot be the only consideration if we are to get a proper sense of direction. Efficiency may be paramount to survival, but at a time when people are demanding more from businesses, marketing post-Covid will be about creating authentic human connections.