Dubai: Gulf News was awarded the ‘Best Digital News Outlet’ at a recently concluded conclave in Dubai that focused on the role of the Chief Digital Officer in an organisation.
The event witnessed several top digital executives from the UAE and region share their experiences in tackling digital marketing, building their brands online and connecting with consumers.
“The CDO Conclave is a professional platform that gathers some of the biggest thought leaders in the region to discuss how digitisation is changing all industries. In this edition we focused on finance, health care, FMCG, dot-coms, telecom and energy,” explained Ahmed Osman, Production Manager at Bloomberg BusinessWeek Middle East, which was the media sponsor of the event.
“The goal was to understand the importance of digital transformation and the strategies that will lead to effective digital transformation. All this is done with the Chief Digital Officer job title at the centre and whether or not it is needed for the digital transformation.”
The various presentations during the day featured business cases and discussions on whether digital marketing works better than the traditional format. This was the inaugural CDO Conclave and Awards, established to “recognise and award digitisation across all sectors — promote digitisation.”
Osman said Gulf News was selected based on its news application. He said: “The award looks for a traditional news outlet, which has adopted digital to reach its audience. We looked for the best designed app that was most user friendly, had the most content available online, was interactive (users can change settings) and most importantly free to the consumer at point of access.”
Today’s users require seamless experiences across platforms and Gulf News has long recognised that need to connect with our readers where they are. Innovation and an aligned digital strategy is key to progress and a necessary investment if organisations need to stay relevant today.
David Westley, Gulf News Online Manager: “To win the Bloomberg Business Week CDO Award for ‘Best Digital News Outlet’ for the Gulf News app — at an event specifically designed for those people driving digital strategy — is a great honour, and a recognition of our drive to make Gulf News relevant across media — in print, on the web, on the mobile web and through our apps. It does not matter where you are, we strive to deliver news you can trust to build your decisions on.”
