Dubai: These days, ad agencies need to double up as tech services companies as well.
Dubai based TBI (The Big Idea) has set up a dedicated division — Accelerate — to help clients with marketing their brands on apps and gaming solutions. In fact, the entity’s focus areas will be to develop intranet and e-commerce portals, enterprise solutions on cloud, mobile and web, and collaboration apps.
“We will also develop our very own apps and branded digital products that will be ‘go-to-market’ ready,” said Hoshi Siganporia, CEO of TBI. “And we will invite brands to collaborate with us in these digital initiatives.”
But, in an ideal world, wouldn’t the agency be better off tapping a third-party resource to come up with the app development? “In the early days of print advertisements, agencies used to outsource printing technologists to ensure good quality reproduction in newspapers,” said Siganporia.
“Then as clients became more and more demanding, agencies had to hire production specialists in-house to ensure flawless reproduction. The same is true with apps, where the creative director has to engage with the UX/UI team, coders and developers to produce an exciting user interface and an efficient back-end.
“It is a matter of time when apps will start becoming important to brands and automatically force agencies to build in-house development capabilities. Ads today have to create richer, more immersive experiences wherein receivers of the message forget that they are actually viewing a commercial and become one with the messaging.
“Whether it is an app, gaming solution or augmented reality, advertisers use these technologies to engage with customers with the objective of making their brand more appealing.
“At the core of any new age communication there still lies the big idea. Only the nature of distribution has changed.”
