Muhammed Ali Jamadar

BI offices around the world used to partner with local agencies for their digital production requirements. This operating model led to the following:

a) hundreds of agencies worldwide serving BI’s country offices with different cost models.
b) variable quality and GTM scopes by country and agency.

I started by leading a global tender for agencies that could provide the scale to meet all of our global production needs. After running a pilot phase across the META and Southeast Asia regions, this model was rolled out globally, with Indegene as our production agency.

This model replaced the “each country with its own agencies model,” which resulted in the following:
a) a single agency and synergies such as cost, GTM time, and asset reuse to manage.
b) globally aligned processes that allowed us to control the production quality of all our digital assets.

The cost model also changed; instead of having local offices paying for production, there was only an annual forecast that allowed BI to negotiate better rates with the contracted agency, Indegene, thus bringing another element of cost reduction. This model was more convenient for local market offices as they could produce what they needed without paying for it.

In META markets—Middle East, Turkey, and Africa—CPMs are usually low, just a few cents and an expensive CPM is between $1.5 and $3, depending on the industry.

Due to the region’s unique nature and the reach of the Cartoon Network website, we had a much higher CPM of $65. The lack of competition, plus the massive reach driven by the region’s top children’s broadcast channel, allowed us to charge a very high CPM for whatever traffic we were getting; the problem was that we often ran out of stock.

So the idea was simple: use an inbound paid media strategy to bring in more traffic to our website at a CPM of around $1 to $1.5, then we would re-sell that inbound traffic through our display ads, which we sold at a CPM of $65.

This “mad science” has dramatically increased our inventory; before that, no web promotion was taking place for the site, and all traffic was organic.

Buy the right audience for a lower price and re-sell that inventory for the special price we can get. This strategy increased our sales instantly; we made an extra $2.5 million each year during the two years I spent at WarnerMedia.

Henkel’s DAC disinfectant brand is Dettol’s second fiddle in the GCC market, with Dettol having the advantage of being a legacy brand.

I came up with the idea of using DAC’s characteristics to create four mother prototypes. The first mother, a doctor, represents DAC’s scientific background; the second, a new mother, highlights the trust in the brand; the third, a nosy mother, argues why is my brand much better than yours; finally, a lazy wealthy mother showcases that users can rest while using this brand to disinfect the floors and not worry about it for 48 hours. We also focused on DAC’s scents which is a key differentiator.

The sitcom followed these four women for more than ten episodes as they prepared for a daughter’s wedding. The episodes took place on the first day of the week, when, traditionally, UAE women gather for breakfast. The episodes would feature unbranded content where DAC was naturally mentioned; for example, tea would be spilled, and one of the mothers would clean using DAC, etc.

The upswing resulting from the release and promotion of each episode saw an increase in DAC’s NPS score of 16%, and within two quarters, the company saw an increase in sales of around 4% to 5%. This campaign was a great success.