5 minute read
TOP 10 PITCHES
10TOP PITCHES
8 1 Unilever In September the biggest media pitch of the year – for FMCG behemoth Unilever –came to a conclusion. While WPP emerged triumphant globally, Omnicom’s PHD picked up significant pieces of the business, including in the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey. Incumbent Mindshare retained most of Unilever’s media business across its top six markets: North America, the United Kingdom, India, Indonesia and China. The pitch was the first open review from Unilever in six years, since 2015.
2L’Oréal In November L’Oréal Middle East selected Accenture to help the beauty group across the GCC use data and advanced technologies to deliver a more authentic and human-centred consumer experience across its brands.
3DTCM In March Wunderman Thompson Dubai was appointed by the Dubai Department of Tourism & Commerce Marketing (DTCM) as its campaign creative partner for the next three years. The award concluded a worldwide pitch conducted in the last quarter of 2020.
4Adidas In April Havas Middle East announced the latest addition to its fashion and lifestyle portfolio – globally renowned sports lifestyle brand Adidas. Havas will lead the communication efforts in the GCC, across Adidas Originals and Adidas Performance.
5Emirates NBD In January FP7 McCann successfully retained the Emirates NBD account following a highly competitive pitch process involving five other network agencies. The same month, it won the creative brief for food delivery service Talabat and The National newspaper.
6Standard Chartered In October Dentsu International was selected as Standard Chartered’s media agency of record for a further five years, having successfully defended the account in a competitive pitch.
7Under Armour In March Under Armour appointed TBWA\ RAAD to lead the creative advertising for its Middle East brand campaign. The new partnership came into effect immediately.
8Euronews In June new communications agency Tales & Heads was appointed by Euronews, a European international news media company, to handle corporate and consumer communications in the Middle East and the UK, following a competitive pitch. The agency later won Saudi media conglomerate SRMG as well. 9 Spotify Premium In September Spotify Premium appointed independent creative marketing and design firm And Us Dubai as its creative agency for its integrated 2021 MENA campaign. The agency worked closely with Spotify and its Premium team to devise and deliver a new marketing campaign called #ShowYourPremium to raise awareness of its Premium offering across multiple segments of the MENA audience.
10 Volkswagen In February Indie digital communications agency Create Media Group was appointed to handle the social media accounts for Volkswagen Middle East. The agency will lead content production, paid media and social media management to support the Volkswagen brand and business across GCC markets, Jordan and Lebanon.
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Etihad airways selects Ad-Lib.io to evolve and scale its cross-channel digital marketing
Ad-Lib.io’s solutions are user-friendly, scalable and transparent
By Janira Hernandez, Head of MEA, Ad-Lib Digital
Etihad Airways, the national airline of the UAE, and Ad-lib.io, the next-generation creative management platform (CMP), have partnered to advance Etihad’s digital advertising capabilities to the next level by leveraging Ad-lib.io’s leading platform for digital-savvy brand marketers. Following a rigorous RFP process, Ad-lib.io’s platform was selected to deliver a user-friendly interface, simple scalability and transparent workflow that would enable teams to collaborate on automated ad production across display, social, and video. The partnership supports Etihad’s mission of digital transformation through advanced capabilities for dynamic creative optimisation (DCO). In addition, Ad-lib.io’s solution fulfilled Etihad’s need for increased personalisation and DCO via an intelligent automation methodology that interweaves the creative expertise of their production partner, EG+, with the trafficking and audience expertise of their media agency, Crossmedia.
Etihad Airways is part of Etihad Aviation Group, a diversified global aviation and travel group headquartered in Abu Dhabi, offering flights to 67 passenger and cargo destinations in 45 countries across the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia and North America. In conjunction with codeshare partners, it offers access to hundreds of international destinations in just one booking through their network. Etihad Airways has been officially rated a Five-Star Global Airline by the Airline Passenger Experience Association (APEX) in the APEX Official Airline Ratings 2021. In addition, media monitoring and analytics company TalkWalker has identified Etihad Airways as the leading Most Loved Brand in the Middle East and Africa.
“Our campaigns must easily scale to reach over 20 markets with as many as 25 routes per market, each including multiple cabin classes and pricing,” said Amina Taher, vice-president of brand, marketing and sponsorships at Etihad. “Add to that complexity the importance of meeting our online customers where they prefer and how they prefer – be that via any channel or creative format – and the challenges of scale and governance increase exponentially. We are looking forward to partnering with Ad-lib.io to easily manage our campaigns to meet these requirements while maintaining a high level of relevance to our customer audiences.”
Ad-Lib.io provides the leading next-generation creative management platform for marketers at the world’s largest brands to enable them to scale their digital creative. Ad-Lib.io connects creative and media workflows using intelligent automation, making it easy and fast to produce and optimise relevant ad creative across all digital channels. These ads are 60 per cent more cost-efficient to produce, according to Ad-LIb.io’s customers, which include 10 of the top 30 global brands.
“With its fingers on the pulse of the market, Etihad has foreseen a resurgence in travel, inspired in part by the trust it has built with its customers during the pandemic. Ad-lib.io is honoured to become an integral part of Etihad’s initiatives to scale the breadth and depth of the airline’s relationships with travellers worldwide,” said Oli Marlow Thomas, founder and president of Ad-Lib.io. “We look forward to growing our presence in MENA to support world-class brands like Etihad.”
To find out more about Ad-Lib, reach out to janira@ad-lib.io or visit the website at ad-lib.io for more details.
