The Spot On Blog
GITEX Digital Strategies
It’s almost GITEX time and Alexander McNabb will, once again, be chairing the GITEX Digital Strategies Forum. The Forum takes place on Wednesday 15 October 2014 during GITEX Technology Week 2014 and will take delegates through global digital consumer trends, digital marketing strategy and planning, mobile marketing , digital CSR, one:one marketing and more. You’ll find the full agenda […]
Facebook rules, regs and crime
The UAE’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) announced a whitepaper on Facebook usage guidelines, terms and conditions this week, to a grateful press that reported on TRA ‘warnings’ to Facebook users. As usual, we ask ourselves the question; how relevant is this for brands online? The whitepaper is, in fact, a good, readable summary of Facebook […]
Plenty of content marketing opportunity for Middle East brands
With some 60 million Facebook users, 7 million Twitter users and some of the highest Youtube download rates in the world, it’s no secret that the Arab world has become a big online consumer of content. Social media has ceased to be the sole preserve of geeks and wealthy English-speaking college students and, today, the Middle […]
Is Arab content really a lost cause?
It’s no secret that the Arab world has lagged behind in content creation. Conference speakers have been decrying the lack of Arabic language content for years. According to various sources, Arabic language content accounts for less than 3% of the content on the web (1%, 2.5% and 3% have been quoted), despite the fact that […]
Saudi plans to regulate Youtube
The Saudi government is planning to monitor and regulate YouTube and other online channels, having this week entrusted the task to its General Commission for Audiovisual Media, established last year to regulate the broadcast industry. There has even been talk of issuing permits to Youtube subscribers, which would appear to signal the introduction of a […]
Why you need a media neutral strategy
Spot On has always been an advocate of media neutral strategies, to the point where we have frequently recommended clients take a completely different course to the one they originally envisaged in order to build campaigns that communicate their proposition effectively to their target audience. And that has not infrequently meant not even using media […]
Could your brand commit a content crime?
News media in the United Arab Emirates have reported this week that posting images or video of someone in the Emirates without their consent is a crime punishable by up to AED 500,000 (about US$136,000) and a prison sentence of up to six months (read The National’s story here). To those familiar with the […]
GITEX Digital Strategies Forum
Read about GITEX Digital Strategies 2014 Spot On’s Alexander McNabb will be chairing the Digital Strategies Forum in Dubai next week, which takes place on Wednesday 23 October 2013 during GITEX Technology Week 2013. The conference agenda will take delegates through global digital consumer trends, digital marketing strategy and planning, customer relationship management (CRM), […]
Has news journalism been sabotaged by Twitter?
Talking Twitter on the Business Breakfast is always a pleasure and this morning no less so than usual. The question was, “Has news journalism been sabotaged by Twitter?” and my answer was pretty much a resounding “Yes!” There are three major problems with Twitter and news journalism, I think. One is the challenge of real-time […]
Create more compelling content
Five questions to ask your content before you let it go into the wild The Internet these days is getting pretty busy. There are millions of us out there churning out words and adding them to the growing pile for dumpster diver Google to sift through and select whenever someone has a question. How can […]
