In 2017, Saudi Arabia was the first country ever to grant citizenship to the world-famous female robot, Sophia. In that same year, the UAE was the first nation to create the role of “Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence”.
Since then, AI has propagated itself at expeditious levels within the MENA region. In fact, in 2022, Google and the Economist Impact estimated the technology to generate up to $320bn in the region’s economic growth across several industries.
And we got to interview one of the leaders behind an Egyptian AI-powered solution that could make said promise become a reality: John Saad, CEO & Co-Founder of AIM Technologies.
In what’s to come, we list how AIM refined the art of social listening and brand monitoring, and why marketers should pay close attention.
They’ve Assembled Diverse & Deep-Rooted Expertise
With Mohamed Moaz as their founder, he is also joined by an unmatched caliber of Egyptian talents; who aren’t all tech enthusiasts by the way. His 4 other co-founders are John Saad, Dr. Samhaa El Beltagy, Mohamed El Beltagy, and Ahmed Yehia Abdallah.
This 5-member committee encompasses more than 120 years of marketing experience across The Gulf area, as well as in product development, and of course, artificial intelligence.
In fact, their co-founder, Dr. Samhaa El Beltagy, is the Dean of the School of Information Technology at New Giza University, who also developed AIMS’ award-winning business model in 2017. Saad, along with his fellow marketing experts, later commercialized the model into becoming the modern-day success that is AIM Technologies.
She was also chosen among 2022’s top 30 artificial intelligence leaders in the Arab world by the MIT Technology Review. Aside from that, she’s also been ranked among the world’s top 2% of scientists twice in 2019 and 2021.
In their First Year of Launching, They Gained Global and Regional Trust
Founded in 2019, the social listening and brand monitoring tool was trusted by Vodafone Egypt, JWT, Mindshare, McDonald’s, and Pepsi in its first year of launching. Their customer base expanded to include clients from Europe, Canada, and Pakistan among other regions.
The company primarily identifies itself as belonging to the deep-tech industry; not analytics, as many could initially presume. Subsequently, this groups them with the numerous deep-tech fields such as robotics, blockchain, drones, and biotechnology.
Their Biggest Edge Is Their Biggest Challenge: Arabic
Most marketers have accustomed themselves to English data analysis, even Arabic-speaking ones. AIM, however, decided to shift its focus to its mother tongue; Arabic.
With 12 different dialects and Franco-Arab, AIM offers distinguished accuracy in analyzing Arabic content; something of indispensable value to MENA marketers.
Saad also shared with us some insights that prove this feature’s value on a global scale:
- Less than 5% of the web’s content is Arabic; which would mean AIM acquired its linguistic excellence with very little material and a highly educated workforce.
- Modern-day Arabic which is used in formal settings across all Arab countries has 12 different colloquial formats; all of which AIM can interpret.
- Making machines understand and deal with language is already extremely difficult, so think of the hurdles AIM had to jump for its Arabic content analysis.
- Arabic 3-letter words are known to have various meanings based on their vocalization, all of which AIM can also analyze.
- Arabic slang that emerges overnight from ads, movies, or even memes -depending on the country- can be both prescriptive and descriptive, and they’re all included in AIM’s repertoire.
- Arabic accuracy is usually a weakness for global analytics tools, which can also hinder the sentiment analysis of the word. And if you read on, you’ll know why AIM doesn’t have this issue.
Excluding Arabic & English, They Offer Multilingual Analysis for 6 Different Languages
One of the company’s offerings is AIM Insights; a social media analytics tool providing analysis for French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Italian content!
“Data is the new black gold.”
– John Saad, Co-Founder & CEO of AIM Technologies.
Aside from mastering written analysis, AIM is also underway in doing the same with images, audio, and video! Be it logos, or solid objects, AIM is currently developing its software to detect these visual elements as well as sounds. However, they’ve already achieved 80% accuracy in detecting logos and images.
And that’s not their only impressive feature!
They’ve Also Mastered Analyzing Intention & Sentiment
In pursuit of understanding brand mentions and beyond, AIM also focuses on the sentiment involved. This includes the words included within the brand mention: are they positive, negative, or neutral? Which feelings do they convey? After this information is gathered, AIM assigns a Net Sentiment Score to analyze how customers feel toward a brand.
In addition to that, AIM also developed its very own intention-detection model: software that can detect users’ intentions while interacting with your content. Were they intending to convert? Were they upset or delighted with a campaign? It can also detect which aspect of a product or service was being addressed in their sentiment, and with what intention.
Finally, AIM assigns a final score to the brand that determines how well a campaign performed -or poorly in some cases. This score can also be assigned to potential influencers clients are considering collaborating with!
It should be noted that both the final and net sentiment scores as well as the aforementioned model were all developed under the leadership of Dr. Samhaa with her extensive and thorough research on artificial intelligence.
So, How Can Marketers Make Use of This?
We could list the endless reasons why social listening is pivotal for brand success, or we can tell you factual reasons on how AIM contributes to that success.
Firstly, AIM’s CEO told us that client satisfaction increased by 20% upon working with AIMS.
Saad also mentioned that advertising tycoons Tarek Nour Advertising and James Walter Thompson (JWT) have won pitches thanks to the contributions of AIM Technologies.
So, imagine the rewards you can reap by gathering such accurate, real-time, and data-backed information on your brand, a rival, or a potential client. And it all starts from EGP10,000 a month!
Does It Sound Dystopian Yet? Not AIM’s Problem
Strictly abiding by each country’s and platform’s laws, rules, & regulations, privacy isn’t AIM’s problem. What’s private remains private and what’s public is public based on the country they perform in and the platform they mine data from.
So if you’re worried about brands knowing you more than your mom, then maybe you should take it up with Mark Zuckerberg instead.