RAPP, an agency specializing in data fuelled creativity, has plans to launch a new set of insight tools within its Middle East/Africa team to focus on small data in the Middle East, starting initially with the UAE.
With a key focus on women, the news came hours before Emirati Women’s Day 2018 and highlights the growing need for brand’s and marketers to recognize the potential of small data and true human insight in a world where the concept of “big data” is leading across industries.
Mimi Nicklin, managing director, said: “For too long stereotypes have ruled the roost when it comes to marketing campaigns to Arab women. The best of the campaigns we have seen to date show a cultural understanding of dress codes and appearance but beyond that there is a huge gap in truly talking to women on their own terms.
“Halal is no longer a food category convention, it is relevant in beauty, fashion, accessories, travel, lifestyle, health – the list goes on.”
“Within our team, we’ve got a long way to go yet but the systems and talent we are developing internally are our commitment to being a truly relevant agency in the UAE today. We don’t want to be an agency that sits in parallel to local culture, but a business that is built in a way that embeds the foundations of our global positioning “fearlessly individual”, into every facet of local business and the brand’s we service.
“Reflecting and embracing the “individuals” here in the region means truly understanding local culture and society and how that impacts loyalty and sales in business today. This will stretch from who we hire, to how we use data to drive effective marketing campaigns, and the way we develop our creative work, added Nicklin.
Arab consumer spend in the Halal sector is, according to research by the Thomson Reuters foundation, estimated to be worth $3.7 trillion by 2019. Platforms such as Modanisa, a website offering “fashion and shopping for those women who embrace a modest dressing style”, now attracts over 6 million visitors a month and has customers in 75 countries. In a recent article RAPP Middle East spoke to the need for valuing the “empathy” of data, beyond the functions of its size, and never has this been truer than within a segment of global society that holds hundreds of years of tradition, familial ties and regional insights that demand to be understood and reflected in the marketing world today.
“As a female leader myself, this is something I feel incredibly passionate about. Surely if there was ever a time to listen to the Emirati woman, via a set of specially designed ‘small data’ tools for this market, it is now?” Nicklin completed.