Campaign’s Breakfast Briefing has returned with a focus on the evolving world of marketing, powered by new technology and ideas.
From adtech to AI, performance marketing to measurement, the event provided a platform to gain key marketing insights, relevant market developments, and collaborative business opportunities.
It was a great opportunity to hear from platforms, brands, and agencies on how the industry is shifting from traditional marketing methods and cracking the marketing code of the digital age.
Natale Panella, Head of Digital at Fusion5 Advertising moderated the first panel ‘The Evolution of Data and Measurement.’ The discussion included Franck Ardourel, Chief Marketing and Technology Officer at Knowledge Group Consulting, Ramzi Atat, Head of Marketing and PR APAC, ME, and Africa at Lotus Cars, Ameen Jaber, Head of Marketing at Al Masaood Automobiles and Wajahat Osmani, Commercial Head – MENA at Tailwind EMEA.
The panel explored the key shifts in ad tech and measurement as well as how the changing role of data poses both challenges and opportunities across different industries.
It delved into the synergy between creativity and data-driven strategies, and touched on the ever-evolving dynamics of agency-client data discussions.
Ramzi Atat, Head of Marketing and PR APAC, ME, and Africa at Lotus Cars, said: ” In the past, campaigns were completely unmeasurable. Now with data, our KPIs are quantitative and very numerical.
“For example, before launching our new car, we sat down to see what we need to achieve from this launch. Was it a successful launch or not based on this very measurable pre and post data.
“Its good and bad. Good because it’s measurable and you can learn and you can fix things. Challenging because you can’t control all the values and it gets amplified. Everybody will know we didn’t generate this, we didn’t hit it, and there’s a problem.
“It just adds a dimension of difficulty, but it’s a dimension of measurability that pushes things forward.”
Ameen Jaber, Head of Marketing at Al Masaood Automobiles, said:”Now we have a dashboard that we can look at in real time and make decisions quickly to optimise, to change course if we need.
“Beyond that, we’re also looking at our customer experience to launch a CDXP, which is really next level. A customer data and experience platform that pulls all data, from different touch points from across, wherever we operate.
“It really allows you to personalise, get to know your customer better, have one view in terms of retargeting, in terms of so many different values that we could bring to the table.”
The second panel discussion looked at interactive advertising experiences and how AR has been one of the biggest breakthrough innovations for ad formats recently.
Moderated by Youmna Borghol, Head of Measurement at Snap Inc. and featured Maxine Minty, Senior Manager of Digital Marketing at Al Shaya Group and Mazen Mansour, Data & Programmatic Lead at Omnicom Media Group MENA.
Maxine Minty, Senior Manager Digital Marketing at Al Shaya Group, said: “AR is definitely having much more of an impact when it comes to, upper and mid funnel objectives.
“It’s definitely increasing and improving our kind of cost per brand lift. We’re seeing strong improvements in ad recall as well.
“Even going through to action intent. KSA particularly, it’s almost 4 to 5 times more swipe ups than other video formats. We’re seeing that in terms of incremental page views.
“It’s not necessarily directly translating into immediate sale, but it brings that recall and that engagement with the brand.”
The final panel focused on AI’s Role in Reshaping Advertising. The panel discussed the pivotal role of AI in sculpting the future of advertising.
Moderated by Hicham Auajjar, Chief Products and Services Officer at GroupM and included Hussnain Hamid, Head of Performance at Al Futtaim Retail, Faheem Ahmad, Performance Manager at Chalhoub Group and Mansour Salameh, Retail and e-commerce Industry Partner at Meta.
Mansour Salameh, Retail and Ecommerce Industry Partner at Meta, said: “If you look at the content that you see on our feed, whether it’s Instagram or Facebook, 20 percent of it is actually driven by AI.
“We see a better customer experience, we see better conversions on our client side. We have seen 20 percent improved conversions on our partners.
“Yet we are still in the very early days of using AI, especially in advertising.”
At the Breakfast Briefing, brands got the visibility for what they are doing differently while agencies, production houses, tech and other solution providers get to network and understand the pain points of brands.
