mediaME speaks to Amy Morgan, the co-founder and Managing Partner and Director of Strategy at Unisono, a leading marketing communications agency from Bahrain. Amy sheds light on the nature of the Bahraini market, its growth the levels of creativity, future trends and much more.

Q. Kindly introduce yourself and your company.

I am co-founder of Unisono, a leading independent integrated strategic communications consultancy. I currently hold the position of Managing Partner and Director of Strategy. 

I discovered my passion for strategy and business solutions relatively early as a Business Analyst at Prudential. I later discovered my passion for communication and entrepreneurship – first founding a holistic branding and design consultancy Tap, London, then moving to the Middle East in 2003 and consulting for Sabic-SMO and Saatchi & Saatchi. Having launched Unisono in 2006 with Liam Farrell, we are now a full service integrated company with a team of 38 across a range of disciplines - from strategy, planning and advertising, to PR, digital, branding and design.

They say if you love your job you don’t have to work a day in your life, that’s how I feel about Unisono. Our vision ‘to positively transform’ expresses a genuine philosophy to be the best you can be. We apply this transformational attitude to ourselves and to our clients. This is why brand-centric thinking is at the heart of everything we do – it drives us to think holistically and discover innovative solutions that will maximse our clients’ brand potential in the long term. Unisono’s fully integrated service ensures we can then deliver the vision.

Since its launch five years ago, Unisono has grown 200% year on year. We’ve achieved this through a firm commitment to quality from the start and have worked with several international brands such as Toyota Formula 1, STC and Cityscape. I’m also proud to say that we have successfully created number of award winning brands including bni, Majaal and Ijara, as well as visioning and delivering some of the most memorable and successful brand launches in the region, such as VIVA Bahrain, an achievement we are most well known for.

Q. As a leading marketing communications agency in Bahrain, tell us about the market growth witnessed in 2010, and what were the main drivers of this growth.

Much of 2010 has been about a recovery from 2009. Ultimately, there was growth, but not the kind of growth we have seen during the financial boom. Instead growth has been achieved via careful planning and calculated investment – this applies to most industries including our own.

Competition has reduced in terms of numbers, although it may have become more aggressive, with people ensuring they have genuine unique selling points. Market leaders are also realizing investing in their brand and quality creative communications is a necessity to sustain and even grow market position. Strong brands stand the test of time, and can even grow during an economic downturn as the first thing less visionary companies cut is their marketing budgets.

Q. In your opinion, are the levels of advertising creativity in Bahrain, in general, on par with other advanced markets in the region? If not, what are the obstacles?

If the region pertains to the GCC then the advertising is more advanced with the exception of the UAE. Advertising in Bahrain is fully accepted as a proper school of thought and an industry. Other GCC countries are only now starting to understand the benefits. What we need to see more of is clients working with quality agencies as strategic partners, instead of ‘artwork factories’.

The main reason for the advancement of Dubai and the rest of the UAE in terms of advertising and branding has been their understanding of marketing spend as an investment. Big aspirations were paired with big budgets. This allowed for proper planning and adequate time for the development of quality solutions - this approach delivered big results. Unfortunately in Bahrain clients are often unwilling to invest in quality even though it may cost them in the long run and reduce ROI. No matter how much money you spend on media, if the idea and execution is poor, results are poor.

Q. Kindly mention particular clients and campaigns that achieved significant results working with Unisono.

Though there are a lot of clients we could mention, I’ve selected 3 recent success stories.

Majaal is a brand developed by Unisono with our long-term client First Bahrain that delivers integrated warehousing solutions. Majaal has been very positively received by the market – regionally and internationally, and also received an award for the best industrial real estate brand. Having developed and launched the brand, Unisono continues to provide marketing communications solutions.

A very well known success story for Unisono is VIVA - Saudi Telecom’s operation in Bahrain. VIVA has achieved significant brand awareness and market penetration, establishing itself in less than a year as a significant competitor to long-term players Batelco and Zain. This has been achieved through Unisono’s brand centric approach that has resulted in a truly differentiated brand and innovative, through the line communications – from advertising and design, to digital. 

And last but certainly not least, Bahrain Financing Company (BFC). Unisono took them through a rebrand and fully integrated roll out that culminated in the exceptionally well received ‘money faces’ launch campaign. This campaign was identified as having one of the highest recall factors in Bahrain, despite a proportionally low media spend. This has been more recently followed by the ‘Lost’ campaign. BFC has seen a significant increase in results since the launch.

Q. What’s your view regarding the potential of the Bahraini advertising and media market and what is your prediction regarding its growth in 2011?

Bahrain has a diverse cultural mix allowing for unique ideas based on the varied perspectives of cross-cultural communities. This makes it potentially a very exciting market to work in. Of course, as a strategic consultancy, we want to ensure we are focusing in the right areas to deliver ROI for our clients. Our research showed that while print media has traditionally owned a major portion of the advertising spend, outdoor media has been the most effective medium for advertising in terms of consumer impact. Radio is also highly effective.

Although Television was also mentioned as an important tool, the reality is that due to the size of the market, production and media costs, Bahrain generally does not enjoy the economies of scale that make TV advertising cost effective medium - unless there is a regional audience. There is still plenty of room for the region to grow the quality of the advertising and media market and compete with the global leaders. In terms of growth, we expect to see continued growth in media spend, although we sincerely hope to see more investment in strategy and consultancy.

We hope to see more investment in building brands over the long term through customer centric initiatives rather than reactive ‘me too’ competitor driven activities. Annual budgets should be increased but better planned – a general ‘rule’ being approximately 10% of budget allocated to marketing and 15% in key growth or launch years. We also expect growth beyond traditional channels into social media as it develops into a proper discipline.

Q. What’s your view regarding the impact of digital marketing communications in your local market? Tell us about awareness levels and some success stories.

The impact of digital marketing in our local market is still minimal. Corporate institutions in Bahrain have not been able to truly utilize it because the thing to realize about digital marketing is that in order for it to be effective, you need to dedicate resources to the cause and treat it as an investment. The results of digital marketing whether it is social media or whether it is a loyalty program, or even advertising, can be tracked in terms of short term results, but the results need to be measured on a more holistic scale over the longer term.

Q. Unisono has recently launched a Research Division, tell us more about the consumer studies you have worked on, or are preparing, some of the key findings and the importance of this initiative.

The research division recently announced the results of its first white paper on a qualitative study about the perceptions of consumers in Bahrain about conceptual advertising. The results clearly showed that consumers are ready for, and enjoy more conceptual advertising – the public are a lot more intelligent than many people appreciate! This is great news for the creative industry as I think we are all tired of seeing the results of poor investment in low-level work.

The consumer study significantly increased our understanding of why and how consumers respond to different kinds of advertising. It also proved that consumers like and have highest recall for conceptual advertising. This fact is key, as it guides clients to go for creative solutions that may challenge the consumers and increase the profile of the brand and its sales. The next step for the research division is a more in depth continuous study to understand shoppers' purchase and usage behavior and deliver deep understanding and insights to our clients.

Q. Looking towards the future, what other main developments or services are you planning at Unisono?

We began as a branding and design consultancy, and within two years we have become an integrated advertising and digital agency. We look forward to further building our role as strategic partners, developing our offer as a truly integrated communication consultancy and holistic, business aligned, solutions provider. To this end, in 2010, we launched a new PR department as well as a research team, including social media, and are investing in trainings and seminars for worldwide best practices. We need to ensure we deliver measurable results in these new areas before we turn our attention elsewhere.

Another plan on a more ideological level is also to continue to champion industry standards as we did by investing in our own research project. We hope to positively transform the industry landscape into something that works better for everyone. We want to raise standards and build respect. When we respect ourselves and stop selling our ideas and solutions to the lowest bidder, we will be able to do better work and build better strategically integrated client relationships. One requirement is to decrease the number of open-ended ‘unknown criteria’ pitches with very low budgets, these are very time consuming and could hurt our industry. Simply if we start to value our time, our clients will. This will benefit clients and agencies alike.

Clients and agencies need to work together to achieve this – it is a partnership. Clients have a responsibility to adopt professional pitch practices, prequalify and short list agencies on credentials before inviting those carefully selected agencies to a creative pitch. The client should give a realistic budget derived from their business objectives, and then it is the agency’s job to propose the best use of that budget to achieve the goals. This approach will help the client select the right agency for the right reasons – having ‘the lowest price’ as the only qualifier means neither the client nor the agency wins. Likewise section criteria should be objective based on market needs rather than the personal preferences of executives – after all the selection panel are often very far removed from the tastes of the market they want to capture!

Q. Is there anything else you would like to add?

It’s all about positive transformation, and it is a challenge that never ends. We have to keep innovating so we can deliver innovative results for our clients. We have to live our vision, even when it’s not easy. This means the best team, working in the best environment, on the best briefs, to deliver the best results.

It’s about working with our clients as their strategic partner offering business solutions that return real value, we cannot simply be ‘order takers’. Gaining buy into the value of this approach can be tough sometimes, but it is essential if we are to create and grow global brands that put the region on the map. The greatest positive transformation of the regional communication landscape will be through partnership – with our clients and each other.