January 2012
1 post
8 tags
10 Mistakes Brands make on Facebook in the Middle... →
A really insightful blog post from our digital, search and social marketing specialized agency Innovations_Digital. This highlights how brands can go wrong on their Facebook pages.
December 2011
3 posts
6 tags
The best tech (online) gimmick oif the year:...
Tech companies great and small always have a gimmick or two up their sleeve, and Google has been known for their screen adaptations and their playful renderings of their logo on the main Search page. But this year’s “Let It Snow” frosting of the search result page takes the icing on the cake.
Just do a search for “let it snow” and watch the flakes fall across your screen until the search...
6 tags
Google news reader app launches on Android and iOS
Google has launched its news reader app on Android and iOS with titles including CNet, Huffington Post and Forbes among the initial publishing partners. The app, dubbed Google Currents, lets publishers customise their content for the platform and is also integrated with Google+ so readers can share content. Publishers can also monitor how their readers are accessing the content via the app by...
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5 Ways to use the Power of Social Media
You can have a thousand friends on Facebook, and 10,000 Likes, but what do they mean? If you’re running a social media campaign for your brand, how do you convert “Likes” to sales, friends to customers? The whole idea behind setting up a successful brand page on Facebook, and of course getting ‘Likes’ is to truly engage with your best fans – your loyal followers, your brand believers. If you...
November 2011
1 post
3 tags
October 2011
3 posts
How Recruiters use Social Networks to screen... →
Click on the Header above to see a really interesting Infographic.
Social networks are being used increasingly to screen potential job candidates. To find out how your brand can benefit from Social Media marketing, contact us today, or visit our specialized Social Media content and strategy creation division at UM/innovations_digital
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5 SEM Essentials for Brand Managers
from a post on Innovations_Digital
While Search Engine Marketing is growing by leaps and bounds (specially here in the Middle East), brand managers need to have a simple check list when working with their SEM strategy agencies to make sure Search yields the results they need.
A typical scenario we come across often is when a consumer in Dubai jumps on to google and searches for a LCD TV....
Blackberry OS6: Low battery life and how to fix it →
Those of us who have switched to Blackberry OS6 have faced huge problems with battery drain. Here’s an interesting post on some simple tips on how to improve battery life if using the powerful new OS6. The post is from UM’s Innovations division.
September 2011
2 posts
5 tags
YouTube and the world of music: Hits from the 70s →
YouTube. Gags, stupid pet tricks, car stunts galore. But what we don’t realize is that it’s a digital treasure trove of all things archived. Including a massive collection of music you otherwise would have had to mixtape or totally file in that draw called oblivion. Thanks to the world’s second most popular search engine (yes, YouTube is only 2nd behind Google), today we can find music we grew up...
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5 Essentials for Building a Successful Website →
Five key elements that you need to keep top of mind when looking to build a successful website are Idea, Ease of Use, Value Addition, the Details and the Team. Everything else is dressing. If you’ve focused on the key elements when building – or re-building, refreshing or looking for a solution – most everything else falls into place.
Click on the headline to read more…
July 2011
3 posts
8 tags
5 Digital driven trends that are changing Media,... →
Advancements in digital technology, increasing demands of the consumer and the client, and changing habits of media consumption are all creating a new landscape in the ad world. What is emerging is scalable, adaptable, lean, multi-dextrous and nimble. And collaborative. Smart. The new ice age is dawning and the cold wave is technology.
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5 web design trends in mid-2011 that you cannot... →
The lines between design and development are fading. It’s the marriage of form and function, and that is a true beauty. Which essentially means that design has grown up, become responsible, and it is is now a team player with technology. Halfway through 2011, and there are a few dominant web design and development trends that seem to have emerged leaders. Before we go into detail, we need to...
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A media agency that does content?
The lines haven’t just blurred, they’ve auto-erased. Media agencies worldwide are fast acquiring, hiring, renting, even, content creation talents or agencies to become a complete solutions provider for their clients. That’s the nature of how today’s consumer’s use and dependence on digital focused channels of communications have changed the way media planning...
June 2011
7 posts
7 tags
Wimbledon and Social Media
No matter what happens to Andy Murray and the great British hope, taking on defending champion Rafael Nadal – they’ll never look back on how social media is heralding in a new-ish era of ‘open’ tennis – making players and the tournament both easily accessible.
The opening serve or volley, if you will came from Andy Murray and Head. Murray, being Britain’s great hope, is being followed with...
5 tags
HTML5 vs Flash
As we speak, more and more web developers are moving away from Flash for animation, video and navigation towards the new standard HTML5. The war over Flash is ongoing, and while it seems that HTML5 is emerging with a slight edge, one has to recognize that it is still under process. It is being continuously developed and improved over time.
Here’s the basic: HTML5 is a language used by...
I_D invites Seniors & Grads for Summer Internship →
Sister agency offering summer internships in digital
4 tags
Writing for web content: Less is More →
A digital agency viewpoint on how to write content for the web _ and how less is more. More content on digital is available on http://www.innovationsdigital.com
Emiratis 'captivated' by Korean culture
posted by Debi Hickey | Associate Media Director | UM Dubai
from The National
When Korean boy bands release a new video, Warda Saleh can hardly wait the few hours for her and her three best friends to get out of class to watch it. To avoid wasting time, the 22-year-old Emirati, a student at Zayed University, finds an empty classroom and sets up the projector so they can watch their...
3D Projection Mapping & The Middle East →
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6Ps of Selecting an Agency for the Digital Age →
Insightful post that helps brands and marketing people select an agency for digital projects and assignments.
By Tom Roychoudhury, CIO, MCN. First posted on http://www.innovationsdigital.com
May 2011
7 posts
Social Marketing Compass →
UM Dubai Digital Awareness Assessment
Every single literate staff at UM Dubai have been requested to take an online Digital Awareness Test – developed internationally by McCann Worldgroup. The original set of questions was developed by McCann Latin America, but were tweaked to suit the Middle East and North Africa markets here by MCN.
UM Dubai is the second agency within the MCN group to have been exposed to the initiative after...
Elephants and mindset
posted by Zubair Siddiqui, Managing Director, UM Dubai
Here’s an interesting anecdote I heard recently. It’s about our attitude and how it plays, perhaps the most critical role in our day to day conduct.. At home, at work and at play. Its about elephants who are chained. Chained by metal links which by no means can withstand the mighty powers of the elephant. Yet, chained elephants seldom break...
We’ve shot ourselves in the foot!?
posted by Zubair Siddiqui, Managing Director, UM Dubai
Agency remuneration has always been a sour topic amongst agency management. With revenues dropping , the favorite buzz word these days in the board rooms is “High-Margin-Business” (HMB). 2009 was a water-shed year anyways. HMB sounds good, but do such businesses really exists. The problem is global. In the middle east , slightly more...
Future Tense?
posted by Zubair Siddiqui, Managing Director, UM Dubai
A few months back, at a training and leadership summit, had the opportunity to meet 37 MD’s from different disciplines within Advertising. They came from all across the globe. The discussion largely revolved around our core product offering as an advertising agency. Contrary to what i had thought, our issues in the Middle East may not...
Facebook to pay users to watch in game advertising
posted by Debi Hickey | Associate Media Director | UM Dubai
Facebook is to incentivize its users to watch sponsored videos embedded in games and apps on the platform by paying them in Facebook Credits, its virtual currency. The social network has struck a deal with Sharethrough, the online video advertising platform, which will see branded videos appear in 350 games and apps on Facebook...
April 2011
6 posts
UM wins QTel account in Qatar
QTel, Qatar’s largest and leading telecom service provider announced the appointment of UM as their media agency for the next three years. UM won the pitch in a multi-agency battle for the honours which culminated in a final round presentation in Doha earlier last month.
The confirmation was made by Carlo Zappa, Assistant Director of Marketing Communications at QTel to Fady Kamal, UM’s Lower...
Brands becoming media
courtesy of mashable
Platforms such as YouTube, WordPress and Twitter have made it easier and more affordable than ever for brands to create and distribute their own content, thereby becoming media companies in their own right. Brands are investing accordingly — whether they’re hiring editors, producers and social media managers, or expanding the roles of their existing teams — to create...
Facebook Marketing: Timing may be the clue →
From a blogpost by Tom Roychoudhury, CIO, MCN
Sure facebook (unlike traditional tv/radio) can be engaged in anytime, anyplace. But around the world, marketers are discovering patterns of on-facebook engagement.
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Twitter to offer brands Facebook-style pages
posted by Debi Hickey, Associate Media Director, UM Dubai
Twitter is considering creating Facebook-style branded pages as part of its drive to increase its revenue from advertising. Branded pages, through which advertisers could deliver tailored messages, are under consideration, along with other plans to increase the long-term revenue potential of the social network, according to sources...
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March 2011
34 posts
Google’s Answer to the Facebook “Like” Button: The...
Google is making a big new push into social with a feature called “+1” that is similar in purpose to the Facebook “Like” button, but integrated directly into the world’s biggest search engine.
Starting Wednesday, users who opt into the +1 button experiment(and soon everyone else) in Google Labs will start seeing a +1 icon next to each link in Google search results.
Google defines this action...
Search Is Google’s Castle, Everything Else Is A...
posted by Lara Aboulaban, Digital Media Director, UM Dubai
Google is moving in many directions—mobile, browsers, productivity apps, operating systems, social. At first glance, it may seem like it is trying ever so hard to move beyond its gian tone-trick pony : search.
Warren Buffet famously describes the best businesses as “economic castles protected by unbreachable ‘moats.’” Search is...
Why Xbox Kinect Technology Will Be the Next...
If you’re among the many marketers trying to grasp the game-changing impact of Xbox’s motion-controlled add-onKinect, you’re not alone. Even Microsoft didn’t realize what it had on its hands. When launching in November, Microsoft predicted sales of 3 million units by the end of 2010. Instead, the company sold 8 million in two months and recently entered the Guinness Book of World Records as...
4 Innovative Ways to Use Web Video for Small... →
Interesting ways for small and medium size businesses to use the ever popular video formats online.
Yahoo flags ads targeting info to users
posted by Debi Hickey, Associate Media Director, UM Dubai
Yahoo, as a pilot from the 18 March, will place an Ad Choices icon on ads that appear on the login pages of sites such as Yahoo Mail and Messenger.
When users click the icon, they will be presented with information about the ad and the techniques used to serve it, including the name of the brand, the agency that booked it, and the...
4 tags
The webisode. Well, it's coming to our region...
A webisode is a short episode which airs initially as Internet television, either as a download or streamed content – as opposed to first airing on tv. The format can be used as a preview, a promotion, as part of a collection of shorts, or a commercial. A webisode is usually part of an existing drama or series or it may consist of entirely original material. A lot of webisodes are now being...
5 tags
Corporate Social Media: Do you have a policy?
More and more brands are getting into Social Media these days here in the Middle East, and save for a few well organized ones, I’ve mostly seen fairly disjointed, unstructured, unplanned efforts. There seems to be a lack of social media policy. Which I just don’t understand. Companies have a marketing policy, a marketing budget, a plan, so why don’t they have a similar approach...
Twitfacts
posted by Debi Hickey, Associate Media Director, UM Dubai
Twitter users send on average 140 million tweets a day and one billion tweets a week, according to new statistics released by the micro-blogging site. Twitter is five years old this week. In a blog post yesterday the company said it is growing at a “record pace”. On 21 March five years ago, the first tweet –...
Twitter: 460,000 new accounts created daily
Twitter will soon be celebrating the fifth anniversary of the first tweet, and the company Monday released a set of stats showing how huge the service has become.
This week in 2006, designers began creating a prototype of what would become Twitter. Jack Dorsey sent the world’s first tweet on March 21, 2006. On its blog, Twitter took the opportunity to point out some key stats, including:
It...
Heinz Launches Limited-Edition Ketchup on Facebook...
posted by Debi Hickey, Associate Media Director, UM Dubai
First Bottles Balsamic-Vinegar Variety Go to Fans Who ‘Like’ It
So Mr. Heinz would likely be very happy that the recommendation economy is alive and well: In the U.K. this week, Heinz launched a balsamic-vinegar-ketchup variant by selling the first 3,000 bottles exclusively on Facebook to people who were prepared to...
How To Take Your Company’s Facebook Fan Page from... →
