East Innovations. Digital First.

So you may have noticed that we’ve rebranded. How exciting! But why?

East was founded in 2007. Since then, we’ve gone from a bootstrapped graphic design agency, to a full-service marketing team before dropping the traditional side of things to focus entirely on digital. In 2017, we’ve evolved again.

Over the years, we found ourselves providing a far more strategic level of support to our clients. As a digital agency, we’ve had a front row seat. Watching as businesses have relied more and more on digital. To reach and engage with consumers. To communicate, to help direct their business decisions, to compete and to be cost effective.

Digital has changed the world. Business as usual is no longer an option and organisations need to adapt. But that isn’t always easy to do from the inside. This is where we help.

We support organisations in the Middle East and those looking to work in the region. Organisations who have recognised the threats and the opportunities that digital presents.

Dubai, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Saudi, Abu Dhabi. If there’s one thing that Arab countries share, it’s a voracious appetite for tech. At 78%, the UAE has the highest smartphone penetration in the world. 92.7% of the population in Bahrain have internet access. Unfortunately, businesses are failing to adapt to consumer demand and digital has yet to take it’s place at board level.

We want to change that. Consumers in the Middle East are more than ready for businesses to match their expectations. But they won’t wait forever. Whilst the internet continues to breaks down global borders, organisations in the region are missing out.

Now that’s all well and good, you might be saying. But why rebrand? What’s the significance of the connection between the ‘s’ and the ‘t’? What do you mean by Digital First? And isn’t the company called East Innovations? What happened to the Innovations bit? Aren’t you innovative any more?!

The Renaissance: Part II

Ok so first off, the connection between the ‘s’ and the ‘t’. In the mid 1400’s Johan Gutenburg invented the print press. Drastically reducing the time and cost of producing printed material, it moved the entire continent of Europe into the original age of information, the Renaissance.

Fast forward 600+ years and there’s now more content published online in a day than any of us can read in a life time. With internet access and a smartphone, anyone can publish anything. They can do it with a click of a button and they can do it for free.

The connection between the ‘s’ and the ‘t’ in the word ‘east’ is known as a ligature. Where two letters were frequently used together on a print press, they were put on a single block. Rather than having to find and set each letter, ligatures made the process faster and easier.

The faster and easier the process, the more information that could be published. The more information that could be published, the more knowledge that could be shared. The more knowledge that could be shared, the faster and more collaboratively the world could develop and adapt.

It’s the parallels between the impact of the print press and of digital today that we recognise in our new identity.

Digital First

The Renaissance is considered a major turning point in the history of the world. A transition from the old world to the modern. We’re living through an incredibly exciting moment in history. One that historians will look back on as another transition from old to new. From analogue to digital.

When we talk about ‘Digital’, new technology tends to take centre stage. But we’re also talking about a new culture that’s reshaping business and society at large. Those who are seeing the change are rushing to adapt. But embracing the benefits of digital needs a new way of approaching business strategy and an entirely new set of skills. User experience and service design, programming and web development, social media and community management, content creation, new media buying, measurement and analysis, agile project management. The list goes on and on.

The challenge for established businesses is to avoid entirely outsourcing these skills to agencies. Although outsourcing offers a solution to bridging the skills gap, it also delays the process of integrating digital throughout the organisation. Unless digital is an internal focus, businesses won’t be able to develop the level of strategic thinking and new ideas that go beyond just one-upping the competition.

In a study by MIT, it was found that over 90% of surveyed companies lacked the digital skills to remain competitive. 87% stated that digital transformation represented a competitive advantage but just 46% were investing in the development of digital skills.

Without putting digital first, organisations will fail to adapt and ultimately cease to exist. You only need to look at Kodak, Blockbuster, Borders or a Taxi rank to see that digital disruption doesn’t discriminate. To think that your industry won’t be effected is to underestimate the impact of digital.

East Innovations

We haven’t dropped ‘Innovations’ from the name entirely and yes, we’re still innovative. By removing the word from our identity, we’re only mirroring what we were hearing around us. 9 out of 10 times, when someone referred to us, they simply called us East.

We like to keep things simple and to the point. So there we are. You can call us East. You can call us East Innovations, the choice is yours.

What has changed is that where we would have designed and developed your website for you, created email marketing templates or run your social media platforms, we don’t personally do that any more.

Where we do help is to support you to do it yourselves. In the meantime, we can find the right agencies to plug the gaps whilst we develop your internal capabilities. We’ll help benchmark your organisation, finding out how best to integrate digital. With this knowledge, we can start to develop a roadmap for you, moving on to strategically implement change throughout your business.

To learn more about how we can help, check out our consultancy and digital transformation services or feel free to get in touch.