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MEDIA GURUS

Staff Reporter
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Omnimedia was founded in 2009, with its name stemming from the Latin word “Omnis” which translates to “every/all.” The media firm, right from its name branding signals its desire of integrating all physical channels (offline) and digital channels (online) to offer a unified customer experience. To this end the firm has involved itself in a wide array of services in the media industry such as; digital marketing, media monitoring, radio and TV, print and casting.
Capital reached out to Omnimedia’s Managing Director, Feruz Jemal for insights on what makes them a cut above the rest, in addition to other pertinent inquiries in the media space. Excerpts;

Capital: As a company working in media monitoring, what kind of data and research have you done or published so far?
Feruz Jemal: Omnimedia is purely a data company. So far, we have done multiple reports on audience measurement, Broadcast Medium Performance Reports, Share of Voice and weekly Hot Music countdown for radio stations and newspapers. As a business company, some of these researches and reports are products that we provide for companies, broadcast stations and NGOs. The general public knows us by our Weekly Hot Music Countdown which used to be broadcasted on Sheger FM 102.1 radio’s Endalkena Mahder show and now on Capital newspaper.

Capital: What are the main goals of these researches?
Feruz Jemal: Our products have a niche consumer group. Take our Broadcast Medium Performance Reports. These reports show the trend on print and broadcast advertisement industry as a whole. Generally speaking, advertisement media performance reports show how the media is performing in terms of total advertisement played or revenues generated. Broadcast stations, print medium products like newspapers and magazine can use these reports to know their performance standing, their competitor’s revenue sources and strategy to better cope with the competition. We had TV stations as a customer that used to get these reports to understand the advertisement spending trend and their competition.
Our Advertisement Share of Voice reports are for our business customers, for companies that has an advertisement presence both on print and broadcast mediums. It shows how our customer’s media campaigns are faring with its closest competitors. These helps our customers to have the bird’s eye view of the advertisement campaign performance of all their competitors. This immensely helps to better smooth out their media campaign strategy. Moreover, it is very difficult for business entities to track their advertisement is being properly transmitted. There always are instances of advertisement spots being missed or misplaced and that is a loss for the advertising business entity. It is paying without its ads running. Currently our data show between 12 and 14 percent of the advertisements are missed or misplaced. This needs a system that can track multiple stations and should have to 99.9 percent accuracy. In fact, we are the only company that tracks around 45 prints, radio and TV stations to prepare the aforementioned reports.

Capital: How are you tracking these many news outlets? Can you explain your workflow in brief?
Feruz Jemal: So, advertisement and media monitoring has been a manual endeavor here in Ethiopia. Following the explosion of the number of TV and radio stations we needed to come up with a solution to better serve the market. What we did was build an automated system that can record radio and TV stations 24/7, eliminating the need for manual recording of those stations. We went further as to build an AI assisted self-contained audio searching system on top of the automated recording system. That was 5 years ago. We are currently tracking 35 broadcast stations 24/7. Our system has the capability of finding new ads, music and shows on its own without a human involvement. But we usually feed and train our AI system by giving it the sample of the ad, music or show that we want to track. That is how we are generating these reports that I was mentioning earlier. Currently, we have a 5 years’ worth of broadcast industry data. We can even go back and find ads that run 4 or 5 years ago.

Capital: How would you define the relationship between media and advertisement?
Feruz Jemal: I don’t think we can separate these two issues. Both are dependent of the other. We cannot think of advertisement without thinking media in its general form and vice versa. If we saw the issue from the perspective of the media, particularly the private media, advertisement is the only income source and the media is very dependent on it. These media outlets’ thrive by selling an advertisement time for businesses, governmental & non-governmental entities. As you know the government owned or government affiliated broadcast companies usually has an annual budget from the public coffers. Not only that, these broadcast entities get a preferential treatment from the government in allocation of public announcements budget and news tips. They compete in the broadcast advertising sector but they are not dependent as the private media outlets. Be it in our country or in other countries, the private business sector is very much deciding the fate of the media particularly the private media. So basically, the current media landscape and form will not be possible without the advertisement of the private business sector. The data tells us that the government’s share of ad spending is miniscule compared to the private business sector at 3.44 percent of the total spending.

Capital: What are your views on the current development of the advertising sector?
Feruz Jemal: We are actually in the midst of a major media and advertisement business trend change. The first thing we noticed was the change in the number of ads on TV and radio. Radio used to lead TV in the number of ads transmitted but starting at around the Covid-19 lockdown, TV is getting more ads than radio. From July 2021 to April 2022 almost 65 percent of the 235,000 spots were run on TV. This is a huge trend change as radio stations are missing out the bulk of their advertisement business. A few of the most popular radio time slots are now being replaced by TV’s new shows attracting the advertisement. Usually, Saturday and Sunday were one of the most popular radio listening time for the public and that in turn made those time slots the most revenue generating ones for radios. But currently, TV is getting the most advertisement on that time slot. To show you in a little more detail, let’s look at Saturday. Saturday has one of the most popular radio shows from right after lunch time to late night. These are not the advertisement magnets that used to be. The trend is TV now. The time slot 1AM to 11AM is the only time slot that radio is leading TV in advertisement spot numbers on the weekends. 65 percent of the total ads run by the broadcast medium were on TV for those two days. This was unheard of a few years ago.
Actually, there are a few possible reasons why this change is unravelling not only on the weekend days but all weekdays. The first possible reason might be the fact that TV stations are giving out a ridiculous amount of free and bonus spots for their customers. On top of that, TV stations usually broadcast nonstop 24 hours a day unlike radio stations’ 18-hour broadcast time. Usually TV stations replay earlier shows on late night without removing the advertisements. Additionally, TV might be producing more popular shows than radio. These reasons might lead to more advertisement being played on TVs than radio.

Capital: But why is this happening?
Feruz Jamal: We believe there are a few reasons why this is happening. It may be due to the fact that TV stations are producing very good entertainment than before. Saturday and Sunday afternoon to late night time slots are becoming very popular among TV watchers. The other reason is a little bit scary for us. May be advertisement cost is pushing away those that are not at the top of the business ladder. Out of the thousands of business establishment only 20 to 25 companies are the only consistent advertisers. The 25 biggest & recurring spending brands have almost 45 percent of the share. We tracked around 650 distinct brands and the 25 of them has the share of almost half of the rest of the brands. Meaning 4 percent of the brands that has an advertisement in the last 10 months had the 45 percent share of the total advertisement run.
At least Radio advertisement should be accessible for medium and small business companies. Radio in average costs ETB 24 per second while TV cost around ETB 150 per second. A typical 30 second ad will cost these medium and small enterprises ETB 720 for radio and ETB 4,500 per single spot run. That might be costly for them. This will hurt radio more than TVs. In our opinion, radio stations should decrease their per second valuation so that more of these medium and small business enterprises advertise. That way, radio stations will diversify their advertisement source base, increase revenue and help business grow. They are already giving a lot of spots for free as a bonus and re run.
The second thing that is interesting to watch for is the number of ads being transmitted and the revenue that has been generated. The number of advertisement has been steadily keeping the trend line and slightly increasing as our data from July 2021 to March 2022 shows. There were a few up and downs over the trend line but that usually happen following public and religious holidays. What’s changing is what broadcast stations are doing to attract more advertisement. Stations are giving more spots for free as a bonus and as a rerun than anytime in Ethiopian broadcast industry history. Some stations are giving as much as a 100 percent bonus gift to secure a media campaign contract. Our fear is, this might generally decrease the revenue of the stations while keeping the same number of ads on air.
On top of that, TV stations usually broadcast nonstop 24 hours a day unlike radio stations’ 18-hour broadcast time. Usually TV stations replay earlier shows on late night without removing the advertisements. This might in turn inflate the number of spots run.

Capital: Nowadays due to various global and local issues quantity of advertisements revenue is getting low, what kind of direct impact would this have on Medias?
Feruz Jemal: The media sphere is usually dependent on external factors like the time of the year, the economic and political conditions of the country and so on. I believe this question is best answered by an economist but if I must, let me say a few things. Generally speaking, all involving actors be it media houses or media agencies, the economic and political situation that we are seeing has more effect on them than other businesses. The print and broadcast media seems to be thriving for the unsuspecting onlooker only based on the number and frequency of ads running or publishing. But things might not be that way. Media as a business will get hurt by the current economic and political situation of the local and global development. As a business, their cost of production will surely increase leading to an advertisement price hike which in turn results their revenue to decrease. Additionally, businesses that usually advertise might reconsider about spending their cash on advertisement in such an economic restraint times. This will undoubtedly hurt the media sphere more. Like I said, this should be answered by an economist.

Capital: What should be done to increase advertisement, since most of or all of the private Medias income is dependent on advertisement?
Feruz Jemal: We can suggest a few things. Media houses need to try and accommodate businesses that usually don’t engage them. Particularly, medium size businesses should have the chance to advertise their businesses. This is not the case right now. Right now banks, soft drinks and Satellite TV package providers, the top 3 spending business categories, spend 43.1 percent of the total advertisement spending. The top 10 spending business categories are the source of 73.9 Percent of the total media spending. The rest of spending business categories only contributes 27 percent of the total revenue. This is not good. Medium scale businesses are being cutoff of the media and the advertisement market. Moreover, stations are relaying on in too few business categories risking the already strangled income stream.
Prices might not be the only pushing factor and the lack of initiative on the business side might be another reason to consider. The price of stations is giving a bad reputation for print and broadcast ads as a privilege that some few can enjoy. This perception needs to change. Additionally, the advertisement production and distribution process might be a little difficult for them to handle. Creative agencies and media houses should lead the initiative to bring this businesses on air.
The other factor is the ratio of the advertisement time or space compared to the total broadcast time or page count. For example per our advertisement proclamation, stations can only sell 20 percent or 12 minutes of each hour for advertisement. That might need another look at by the Ethiopian media authority. As a commercial media house, their entire existence is highly dependent on the amount of time they are allowed to sell. Surely this might need additional research to definitively say it but it is worth to look at.

Capital: Is there anything you want to add?
Feruz Jemal: It might be misleading only to say that the number of ads running is increasing. This increase usually don’t bring any significant income as most if not all of it are a giveaway as an incentive to get advertisement contracts. Actually, the overall media landscape and the actors involved are more at risk of closure than a few years ago. The Covid-19 crisis, the situation in the northern part of the country and the follow up economic growth deceleration directly affected the broadcast industry as a whole and media houses in particular. Most of the media houses depend on a single business category or the bulk of their source of advertisement income might come from a one or two business categories like bank or soft drinks. This situation had caused a lot of problem a few years ago when the ministry of health banned alcoholic beverage advertisements form the traditional media. This business category used to cover 47 percent of the total advertisement run. A lot of media houses still didn’t fully recover from this.
To get out of this situation, it needs the participation of all actors involved. Media houses should reconsider their business strategy, media agencies and media houses should try to diversify their customer base beyond those that are known in the media sphere, the regulatory government agency should see a way to help these actors by revising the laws and proclamations. It is a collective effort that is needed.

Huawei’s Handshaking Forum Links New Graduates to Ethiopia’s ICT Industry

Staff Reporter
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Huawei’s Handshaking Forum Links New Graduates to Ethiopia’s ICT Industry

Huawei Ethiopia holds its second annual handshaking forum, a program aimed at promoting jobs to graduate students on May 9 and 10/2022. The forum is organized in collaboration with Addis Ababa University at 6kilo campus.
Huawei has a long-standing commitment to train and certify new graduates and equip them with the latest trends in the industry like Datacom, Artificial Intelligence, Storage, LTE, Bigdata, wireless LAN and other more.
Huawei is working in collaboration with Ethiopian Ministry of Education and has opened an ICT academy in 42 private and government universities. After going through all the trainings and passing the exams Huawei issues international certificates to the students.

The Attention Economy

Alazar Kebede
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The Attention Economy

Work life has changed radically over the past few decades. We used to have working conditions in which our attention could more easily focus on the task at hand. We now experience distractions and information overload all the time. Our cell phones, tablets, e-mails, texts, and the like place continual demands on our attention. According to Tom Davenport, the former Director of the Accenture Institute of Strategic Change and coauthor of the book “The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business”, “Understanding and managing attention is now the single most important determinant of business success.” We are living in an “attention economy” in which the ability to manage our attention and the quality of our attention is key to our success as leaders.
But in the current reality, where our ability to pay attention at will is under siege, we have a problem. The question is how big is this problem? Researchers studying the mind’s natural tendency to wander calculated that on average our mind wanders 46.9 percent of the time. In other words, while we are at work, 53.1 percent of the time our mind is on task. The rest of the time, it’s off task. From a leadership perspective there is a lot of potential to be developed here. Even just a small increase in “on-task” time could have a significant improvement in many aspects of leadership, including productivity, leadership effectiveness, employee satisfaction, teamwork, and anything else that would benefit from more focused attention.
Attention wandering is a natural neurological tendency. But in the Harvard Business Review article, “Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Under perform,” researcher Edward Hallowell outlines the fact that attention wandering has increased drastically over the past few decades because of the challenges of the reality. Specifically, he concluded that “modern office life and an increasingly common condition called attention deficit trait are turning steady executives into frenzied underachievers.” Attention is indeed a new variable of economy in business and certainly in leadership.
McKinsey outlines in the McKinsey Quarterly article “Recovering from Information Overload,” that “attention fragmentation hit CEOs and their colleagues in the C-suite particularly hard because senior executives so badly need to synthesise information from many different sources, reflect on its implications for the organization, apply judgment, make trade-offs, and arrive at good decisions”.
Traditionally, business productivity has been enhanced through time management, goal setting, prioritization skills, and general qualifications. Attention, in the reality, is becoming a new foundational skill of leadership and business performance. But the big question is whether we as leaders, facing the reality, are destined to experience attention wandering with resulting underperformance? Are we destined to have minds that often wander and lose focus? Thankfully, according to Edward Hallowell, the answer is no. Attention can be trained and strengthened. It’s much like a muscle. We can enhance our attentiveness to the task at hand or people we are leading.
Researchers on the field seriously recommend that mindfulness is the method. And make no mistake, mindfulness is no touchy-feely, New Age concept. Based on thousands of years of development, mindfulness is a rigorous practice of enhancing focus and clarity of mind while opening the eyes to the potential in ourselves and the world. It is a practice of mental high performance, and in many ways a long-awaited answer to the challenges of today’s fast-paced and information-overloaded leadership reality. Decades of research shows that our brains are changeable. It’s called “neuroplasticity”.
In short, the way we use our brain is the way we reshape it. According to research studies, any action we do or thought we think is creating neural pathways in our brain and becomes easier to repeat. The brain is changing according to how we use it. This means we are not predefined by what we are now, but rather we are recreating ourselves by what we do now. This means that every moment we spend with a focused and clear mind, focus and clarity become traits of our brain. In the context of the attention economy, this means we are not destined to have a wandering mind. We can train ourselves and gain high levels of attention, focus, and clarity of mind and thereby become better leaders of our own lives, business and the people.
Mindfulness involves entering the attention economy and being able to manage our wandering mind and external distractions. But the practice has an impressive list of research proven by-products including stronger immune system, lower blood pressure, reduced stress, better sleep, improved cognitive function, enhanced focus and awareness, increased job satisfaction, better work−life balance, enhanced creativity, and better overall quality of life. Realizing benefits from mindfulness requires formal training that can be viewed as going to the gym for the mind.
Many of the approaches to mindfulness training includes helping individuals enhance focus and awareness – critical skills for today’s leaders. Focus is about training the mind to maintain sharp focus on a particular task, with minimal distraction, for a long as we want, with minimal effort. Awareness is about training the mind to be open and see clearly what is happening internally and externally and make wise choices about where to focus your attention.
Sharp focus is the opposite of being distracted. And the opposite of open awareness is to be on autopilot, not having awareness of where we direct our focus. These mind states can be combined into a matrix. According to Edward Hallowell, our state of mind can be described as being absorbed. It often happens spontaneously when we do routine tasks or run, swim, or do other monotonous activities. The risk of the absorbed state is that we lack awareness. In leadership, lack of awareness can mean the difference between picking up on an employee’s stress signals and pushing too far.
There can be benefits to loosening focus and allowing random thoughts to bubble up. Some people find that they come up with more creative ideas. But if our mind is too distracted, we’ll have difficulty retaining any good ideas. Good ideas only become innovative solutions when we have the focus to retain and execute them. Sharp focus and open awareness are beneficial skills for anyone at any level of an organization, but they are particularly important for leadership. In many people,s view, mindfulness is a foundational skill for effective leadership.
Mindfulness is about developing high levels of self-management by switching off the autopilot and getting in the driver’s seat of our life. Mindfulness also cultivates the ability to be more aware of others, which is a cornerstone for leading people and leading an organization. Peter Drucker said that we can’t manage others unless we learn to manage ourselves first.

Balancing Beauty Through Dialogue

Dr. Desta Meghoo
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Balancing Beauty Through Dialogue

In the ongoing battle between Addis Abeba urban renewal and riverside development, Ethiopian artists are voicing concerns and taking proactive steps to ensure both agendas are addressed, in a balanced and beautiful manner. Dagu Dialogue #2 opened at Guramayle on May 13th to advocate the conservation of the historic home built by Fitawrari Tessera Retta in 1945. A patriot who received the land from Ras Mekonnen for his heroism, similar narratives are by many families in the homes found in the famous Piassa – Ras Mekonnen Bridge area. Guramayle is located across the street from the notable bust of Ras Mekonnen featuring the iconic water fountain and seba dereja or seventy steps where curator, Mifta Feleke, and the artist collective are taking initiatives to save the space. Opened 10 years ago, Guramayle has hosted exhibitions, talks, and special events for emerging and established artists alike. However, artists have resided and worked on the lower level of the home for over 22 years. Two of those artists, Tamrat Gezahegne and Dawit Adnew, have garnered international acclaim helping promote art out of Ethiopia. Their mixed media show is currently on exhibition in Dagu #2 through May 30th including Tamrat’s array of hand sculpted stones found on the compound and Dawit’s aesthetic expressions of concerns, frustration, hope and history.
This hope has been extended to include a wider community of the concerned ready to save the architectural relic and its surroundings. Renderings have been done by Mardet Gebreyesus and Robel Gemachew, two young architects committed to the cause. Their dynamic drawings illustrate the potential of the full integration of the site which would be in compliance with the Addis Abeba Rivers Development project plans. According to Mifta, Addis Abeba City Culture and Tourism Director, Sertsafre Sebhat, participated in Dagu#1 several months ago encouraging the artists to develop a substantial plan to save the space. Dagu#2 closes on May 30th and invites all to enjoy the exhibition while being educated on the history and current relevance of the area for Addis Abebans and all visitors to the city.
Lack of communication has been one of the biggest complaints sited by the residents of the region and city in general. Undoubtedly, all want to see the once pristine now polluted rivers get cleaned up, but the process is the issue. Well intended plans are adversely affecting a substantial number of families. According to a March 2020 report in Climate Change News, 60 year old Takale Getachew shares, “We were swimming in the rivers, played football and other games on buffers…I witnessed closely how the Ginfile and Kebena have gradually been polluted and become waste disposal sites and sewerage spillways.” While the cleanup is welcome and flora and fauna will have a place to thrive, ‘who will address the people’s lives and livelihoods,’ asks the displaced. The Beautifying Sheger Project should not devolve into a “road to hell is paved with good intentions” scenario. That said, sacrifices do have to be made and all reasonable people should agree with this sentiment. However, at odds is the methodology and manner in which this important project for the environment and future generations is being implemented. To quote Takele, “I think the new riverside development project will save the rivers…they are a living memory of “past good times” and of the city’s “identity”.”
In this regard, some have argued that two of the 15 principles of sustainable development, agreed in 2012 at the Stakeholder Forum of the Rio 20+ meeting are being ignored. Principle 9 states that, “all citizens should have access to information concerning the environment, as well as the opportunity to participate in decision-making processes.” While principle 5 says developments should ensure “individuals and societies are empowered to achieve positive social and environmental outcomes”. Reasonable. However, all things considered, sometimes even the best intentions and policies are interrupted by reality, be it pandemic, economic crisis, political strife amongst myriad issues and agendas. Artists are asking us to take heart, be proactive be involved and not sit like powerless victims but powerful assets. Dagu #2 is an opportunity to engage, share, and step away from the sometimes “urban news” that is usually betwixt facts and fables. Artists see and experience the same things as us all, just from different perspectives. It is these fresh views, approaches and understanding of current issues, across the board, that MUST be included in every stage and level of urban development in Addis, particularly. Not to mention the value artists and creatives in general are adding by exhibiting abroad and placing Ethiopia on the map as a haven for culture contemporary fine art alike. We cannot sleep on anyone or anything that will add value to our development and advancement as a nation, especially when it comes from within. Ethiopia artists and the creative community are to be lauded as feathers in the cap of Addis Abeba, the diplomatic capital of Africa.

Dr. Desta Meghoo is a Jamaican born Creative Consultant, Curator and cultural promoter based in Ethiopia since 2005. She also serves as Liaison to the AU for the Ghana based, Diaspora African Forum.

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