Market Research & Strategic Marketing Planning:
Netflix and the Arabian Gulf audience.
The subject of the project deals with the issue whether a streaming service, namely Netflix, should consider sociocultural characteristics of the Arab countries when expanding it's market to this very regions of the world.
In particular, by means of analyzing 13 interviews with Arabs of different ages and social backgrounds, the questions is tackled, whether Netflix made a mistake in not considering sociocultural differences between West and East in terms of a sustainable influence on the media consumption of the people in the Gulf region.
The investigation concludes that -in this context- it is crucial for Netflix (as one service provider among others) to become a part of the daily life of it's customers, otherwise the initiative to go beyond Western markets will result only in a short term profit.
Thus an adjustment of the service to the sociocultural / religious characteristics seems to be crucial.
Other mechanisms, which could in principle compensate for the lacking considerations of Eastern 'peculiarities' -such as, for example, cultural hegemony of the West on the remaining world and the impact of a partially collective society- are not expected to be able to overcome the large differences between West and East in terms of religion, ethnic identity and moral attitude.
Script writing:
Al-Imam TV Series (Ramadan/May 2017).
Al-Imam is a historical drama TV series based on the biography of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal.
He was one of the most established Islamic jurisprudence scholar and he is one of the four Imams in the Sunni sect of Islam,
Our managing director, Mubarak Alkebaisi, was part of the script writing team and worked in the script development as well.
Mubarak's work started from January 2014 until August 2015, when the script and other pre-production issues were finalized and filming began in Mid-2015.
The TV series was produced by Al-Maha/Al-Buraq Art Production Company (Kuwait), and it was broadcasted by major TV channels in the GCC region in Ramadan/May-June 2017, with high appraisal from critics and audience alike.