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Industry Snapshot: Wavemaker’s Rabe Iyer

A brief interview with Rabe Iyer, CEO, Wavemaker MENA

HOW DO YOU SEE THE MARKET CHANGING IN 2020?
The market is moving rapidly towards personalisation. We are no longer operating in a space where brands are targeting mass segments. With massive pressure on outcomes, the market is heading towards segmenting audience to granular levels and seeding messages that are relevant to their interests, moments and behaviours. With audience behaviour becoming channel-agnostic there is an opportunity to drive performance through all screens.

WHAT WILL MOST DISRUPT THE INDUSTRY IN THE COMING YEAR?
5G! We will be experiencing a paradigm shift in the way we consume our regular content. With 10-times faster data speed, there will be so much more power in the hands of consumers. Seamless access to AI, dealing with connected devices and increased connectivity in the deepest pockets of any market will make the overall ecosystem much smarter and therefore open up newer opportunities for the brands as well.

WHAT WORK FROM LAST YEAR ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF?
I am really proud of our work on Friesland Campina’s Rainbow, which recently won a Silver Effie. We were able to segment the tea drinking audience by their interests and deliver personalised messages that were relevant to the moment. I am equally excited about our work on unlocking the potential wearable market for Huawei beyond handsets.

WHAT ONE DIGITAL HABIT SHOULD WE ALL ADOPT?
Organize yourself better. While digital is a lot of fun, with so many content opportunities, I also feel it  gives us with fabulous tools to organize our work life and daily life better. In fact, in Wavemaker I have rolled out a new digitally driven initiative to institutionalise collaboration by connecting talent over shared projects with a single timeline to enhance project duration.

HOW DO YOU SEE ONLINE AND OFFLINE INTERACTING IN THE MEDIA SPHERE?
We are now in a world of audience-first and solutions neutrality. In the advent of chasing audiences over media, we are creating solutions where both go hand-in-hand. Our single-minded objective is to drive growth for our clients and, as a result, driving performance through TV becomes as important as through programmatic. I see both complementing each other.