More than 350 Attendees at Madinat Theatre
“Stand Out Content” Praised By Top Entertainment Professionals, Industry Experts
Initiative Talks’ highly anticipated 2016 event drew to a close at the Madinat Theatre, generating positive feedback from its attendees. This year’s theme was “Stand Out Content,” which explored the importance of creating entertaining content, and hosted top industry professionals and local celebrities.
Following on from the success of 2015’s event that looked at the growth of video in the region, the event is now in its third successful year. “We were pleased to have successfully concluded this year’s Initiative Talks to very positive feedback,” said Faysal Zok, Managing Director at Initiative KSA. “We were very fortunate to have had the opportunity to connect with some of the best speakers from across the world and having them participate in our event,” he added.
Initiative Talks 2016’s list of high-profile attendees included Lebanese media personality and group TV Director of MBC, Ali Jaber, who shared his vision on content development and the main pillars that creators need to keep in mind to create sellable and popular content. Other key speakers included Fadi Ismael, Director of Group Drama (Production/Distribution) at O3; Anas Bukhash, co-founder of Ahdaaf Sports Club and Bukhash Brothers; Karim Sarkis, CEO of Sync Media and Khulud Abu Homos, EVP – Programming & Creative Services of OSN.
The event was hosted in three simple segments. The first segment discussed how media content is instigated and created. The second session discussed the critical elements that producers look at when evaluating which content to develop and how they sell it to platform owners, while the third session explored the important role that platform owners, channels, brands, advertising and media experts play in content distribution, targeting of audience, scheduling and placement.
Initiative is a global communications network within IPG Media brands, one of the world’s preeminent media services entities and part of Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG). The agency operates with a network of over two hundred media specialists, having offices in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Jeddah, Cairo, Beirut and Morocco. Other MCN group offices include Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Jordan, Syria, Tunisia and Algeria.