Trump’s victory ineffective on Iranian marketing landscape

EghtesadOnline: ‘Will Goodhand’ innovation Director of Kantar TNS, a market research company dismissed any dramatic effect from Donald Trump’s victory as the new US president on Iranian digital and marketing landscape.

News ID: ۷۷۱۷۰۰

27 November 2016

Talking to IRNA on Friday, he outlined his views on the impact of victory of Trump as the next president in America.

The full text of the interview follows:

Q. Tell us about your findings?
A. for the first time a study in Iran was done on connecting lives.
What is very interesting is that a lot of what we know about Iranian attitude and the kind of enthusiasm for western brand, we do see that reflected in the digital picture.
If you do look at the social network the people use, for example over 90 percent of people who are online use telegram and then you see a very wide use of Whatsapp around 40 percent
You see this mix of people adopting the kind of western platform but also some of those Iranian ones coming through as well. For example 20 per cent of online users use APARAT.

Q. Future outlook of trade relationship between Iran and Europe?
A. Clearly it is a very exciting time.
We have to remember that 55 percent of the Iranian population are online at the moment, in many ways, even in a mature economy like the UK you’ll still say you need a tier strategy
What is very exciting is that there are these platforms which have a really significant take up so you can be confident that you can reach your target and this is only going to grow
We are seeing a really positive attitude and appetite towards digital platforms
We are also seeing, that because of the different ways people connect it has a positive effect in for the consumer perhaps because it is hard to track their behavior because in some mature market we are seeing people starting to become very uncomfortable with the way the brands are attracting them and that actually cause them to disengage from branded content, so that’s a problem for marketers, which is what we are increasingly seeing in the UK and US; but this problem does not exist in Iran
So if you are thinking of doing digital marketing you going to find a very receptive audience who are very accustom to these kind of things.

Q. What are the challenges that European companies find in doing business with Iran?
A. I think there is something very important about recognizing that you cannot just lift a product from one market and expect it to work in another market. So what companies coming into Iran need to be aware of is that Iran is not the same as Turkey.
Something that works in Arab countries might not necessarily work in iran.
People need to understand the Iranian culture.
Iran is a market of great opportunity. There is 80 Million people there, already 55 percent is connected to the internet, 98 pc of those people have smart phone, clearly its worth investing in this market.
However if you are going to do it you need to have that local market understanding, You need to understand the culture, tune what you are doing in that culture.

Q. How much is there interest from British companies to do business in Iran?
A. There is a lot of potential in the Iranian market and there is a lot of potential for the British firms to go out there and to learn, adapt and be innovative.
I would absolutely say to British companies this is definitely a market that you should be looking at

Q. What is your though on Donald Trump’s victory and the impact that it could have on trade relations with Iran?
A. I don’t think it having a dramatic effect on the digital and marketing landscape, at least not at this stage.
What we are seeing is very fast roll out of 4G technology, we have seen saturation amongst online people of smart phone usage so we have seen lots of fast technological and digital developments and these seem to be unaffected.