It’s that time of year again when brands and marketing agencies assemble together to discuss the year’s best Ramadan campaigns, insights and trends.
Ramadan continues to be our biggest marketing and branding event of the year, and looks to continue the tradition for many more years. What does change, however, are the trends and insights we use to keep ahead of the curve and reach our audiences.
It’s for this reason that an event such as the Creative Industry Summit: Ramadan Edition has become an important go-to for marketing professionals and brands. So, what can you learn from this year’s Ramadan edition?
1. Learn from Christmas
Being the most celebrated and most branded holiday, Christmas is the king of iconic holiday advertising.
For centuries, Christmas has been developed to be a mega holiday. Similar to Valentine’s day, Christmas has always been an essential event in the marketing social calendar. The “Christmas Mania” actually doesn’t come from the holiday itself but from the marketing material surrounding it.
Ramadan may be our superbowl, but we’re far behind in accomplishing what brands have accomplished with the Christian holiday.
This looks to be the reasoning behind Tahaab Rais’s, from FP7/MCCANN MENA, topic for this year’s Ramadan summit, “What Ramadan can learn from Christmas.”
You might be interested in “Lean In” Make People Part of Your Content.
A fun topic, as Christmas is such an extreme marketing battle internationally as Ramadan is to us, it’ll be interesting to see some solid points we could learn from it.
2. Discuss with Peers the winners of this year’s Cannes Lions
The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is the annual place to be for agencies and major brands, where the year’s work is subjected to juries and widely celebrated. The Oscars or Golden Globes of the creative industry, the Cannes have the best of the best screened and awarded.
For the first time ever in Egypt, Creative Industry Summit has gotten the go-ahead from Cannes to provide an exclusive look at this year’s winners.
The best part?
Already surrounded by industry peers, discussions and debates about the campaigns can be easily done. This provides a great space to critique and learn from some of the best recent works of the industry.
3. Is Celeb marketing still effective during Ramadan? Ask!
The rate of celebrity marketing during the holy month increases almost tenfold; as the most popular marketing approach, this marketing tactic is beloved by almost all the brands able to afford it.
But with the increase of the amount of celebrities used, both singularly and in groups, an important question arises. Is Celebrity marketing and endorsements still effective during the Ramadan period?
That’s something that marketing nomad Gabriela Lungu is looking to answer with her talk “Use of Celebrities in Advertising.”
With it being an integral and expected part of the advertising scene, this topic could be the talk of the industry until Ramadan 2019.
Gabriela gave us a small peak into her head here.
4. Meet and Network with some of the biggest companies
As always, The Worx is bringing together a highly-sought after group of individuals in the industry. Alongside the usual industry crowd are members of Tarek Nour, Facebook MENA, McCann World group, and Coca Cola MENA.
Check out 5 ways to better network at your next business event to use events to its maximum potential.
As one of the more popular events of the year, Creative Industry is usually jampacked with interesting people from the industry. So why not network?
5. Discover how to do good long-term
As Ramadan’s main themes of charity, giving back and CSR play a major role within the industry during the holy month.
But inconsistent charitable initiatives that stop once Ramadan is done could be hurting brands. Although audiences enjoy and understand the importance of CSR during the holy month, they are also expected and abundant.
Cause marketing used to be an important part of branding building and PR, but could the benefits be decreased when it comes to Ramadan-only campaigns?
These are questions we should ask Christian Møller-Holst, a Danish entrepreneur that has built an international hotel booking company through a business model centered around CSR and causes. The founder of Goodwings, he believes that businesses can and should be using innovative business models that allow companies to stay in the green while going green.
Read our interview with him here.
6. Socialize and Debate about the latest trends and insights
The most important part about conferences and summits such as this is the ability to socialize with fellow industry men and women. To socialize, discuss and debate about the latest trends and insights, and find new perspectives on issues or ideas.
There are some interesting topics and people at this year’s Creative Industry Summit: Ramadan Edition, so try not to miss it.