Breaking News: I Went to Uturn HQ

Title says it all, I went to Uturn HQ (sort of).

Me at Uturn HQ.

Ever since I decided on basing my blog on Uturn Entertainment, I knew I had to go to their headquarters and have a chat with the people there. I figured it shouldn't be that hard, given that I would travel back home to the city of Jeddah, where Uturn is based, during December. 

However, getting there was easier than I thought it would be, the company holds an 'Open Day' every Thursday, where almost anyone can come over for a tour of the studios or even to pitch an idea for a programme. Moreover, I was eventually able to book an exclusive meeting with company chairman and CEO Kaswara Al-Khatib. 

Kaswara Al-Khatib in his office; photo courtesy of my sister who accompanied me.

Kaswara Al-Khatib, who prior to taking over as Uturn Entertainment's chairman in 2012, was already chairman and a key founder of Fullstop Advertising, an innovative advertising and marketing company established in 2002, which is still in business today. 

Today, Uturn Entertainment and Fullstop Advertising work along side by side.

Literally, they share the same floor! 

My sister and I in the building's main foyer. As you can see behind us, Uturn and Fullstop are both on the fourth floor. 

It's actually really cool, visually. The moment you walk through the main door encompassing both companies; you can see Uturn Entertainment (which appears to be dominated by the colour blue e.g. blue lights, etc.) on the left, while Fullstop (which just seems to be fully adorned by the colour red) is on the right. So technically, I didn't actually go to Uturn as we were almost instantly directed to Mr. Kaswara's office at Fullstop, but for the sake of the blog, I will state that I did go to Uturn HQ (sort of). 

However, Uturn Entertainment and Fullstop Advertising share a more symbiotic relationship than that, such that ideas circulate to and from each sector before its final distribution, as can be discerned from the image below.

(Source: fullstop.sa)

Nevertheless, when my sister and I first reached the fourth floor, I was absolutely ecstatic. I was about to walk into the melting point of MENA's most prolific online content creator and distributor. Although I had gone there primarily as a researcher and blogger, which I have been for the past couple of months, I couldn't help but feeling like I was walking into Disneyland. I am a fan after all, so getting the chance to see the creative minds that I admire, at work and up close was more than I could ask for.

And with that, I will leave you with the interview below which took place this past December in 2015. It broadly covers questions about the current state of Uturn, its beginnings and where it wants to go in the future and contains footage/clips from various Uturn productions. 

Enjoy! 

PS this interview is so insightful, I am literally wearing my prescription glasses as I'm writing this. So super many extra thanks to Mr. Kaswara for giving us some of his time to answer these questions :) 

NB english translations have been included at the bottom of this post since a portion of the interview takes place in both English and Arabic.

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Interview Part 1:

What would you say are the key factors behind high levels of social media penetration in the MENA region and in Saudi Arabia in particular?

Well as you know, we are a very young population MENA in general and Saudi Arabia specifically. And young people are usually easier to adapt to technologies and what’s happening. I think this is what made us that big it’s mostly young, everybody’s young, you know? And we are hungry to adapt to technologies.

And maybe because, to an extent, it’s a closed country. So when you have restrictions people try to find out ways.

If you look at Lebanon for example, I mean TV is there, everybody is on TV, so they’re not looking into what’s next, what’s the new thing, or how they will connect to the rest of the world. 

So because of the restrictions that we have, they created this need to penetrate, they created the need to find out what’s new and what’s out there, how do we aspire to the people in the WEST, who basically created all this technology and made it available today. And that’s why, because we’re young and we adapt quickly so that’s why you find Saudi penetration is high on Youtube, high on twitter, high on snapchat and even on instagram even that we are in the top lists.

So this is, the fact that what we have now, we as a company, it’s a great opportunity to utilise this and it gives us… because you know…. somebody has to take charge and be responsible.

So we want to be responsible for the types of messages being sent out to these youths, because their the shapers of our future and they will be the leaders of our future.

So we need to make sure that the content that reaches them is empowering and inspirational, and is not damaging. This is the personal responsibility that we have, and that’s why the vision or even mission we have at Uturn is export civilisation through entertainment.

So we definitely want to be about civilisation, but entertainment as well so that the Youth can enjoy it while being entertained and not bored by messages typical that you see on conventional media and TV.

Interview Part 2: 

So Uturn will go wherever technology goes in the future?

Yes, I mean, although we are working in media we are a technology company. So, we’re utilising technology to spread our messages. So today as Uturn, we don’t rely on one platform, we are a multi-platform network. Youtube is a platform, Yahoo is a platform, Facebook is another platform.

And we use different social media platforms to distribute our content 

So you’ll find youtube, sorry, our Uturn twitter account to push the content, on snapchat we use this, on instagram we use this, so that, we don’t want it like TV where you only have one station and people gather around it, it’s the other way around, so you go to the fans, 

If the fans are on twitter, you need to reach them with the messages, if they’re on instagram you reach them with the messages, whatever platform, 

You reach them, you don’t wait for them to come for you. So that’s why, that’s how we utilise the technology 

85% of consumption today is one smartphones, which is very high today 

Is that, I mean just for MENA?

Saudi specifically.

MENA is sort of slightly less because it depends on the mobile penetration. In Egypt it’s a little less, and etc.

But for Saudi and the gulf countries it’s a little higher, so 85% penetration of mobile and smartphones, which means access to internet which means access to content. So we’re utilising this, and we have our own application for Uturn, which is using an app which is using technology so this is where we’re working with technology.

We’re working on having our application on samsung smart TVs,  so hopefully by April you’ll find- 

This April?

This coming April

2016?

Yes, hopefully. 

Hopefully, yes, all the best with that!

Hopefully. So, we have Uturn on Smart TVs as well, mainly Samsung, so you buy a samsung TV and you’ll find a Uturn application in there so you can find Uturn view and receive content on there.

Okay, hopefully, all the best, I haven’t heard about this before.

It’s exclusive for you guys. We still haven't announced it.

Thank you!

In an article with Arabnet, you refer to Uturn as a brand. Can you tell us more about that and what it means to be a Uturn production? 

As a marketeer, as an advertiser, you know I started in advertising with fullstop in 2002. I believe in the power of the brand, that’s what we do. Marketeers create brands and this is what I did with Uturn 

So Uturn is a brand, more than it is a production house that makes content, there’s so many production houses out there.

But people relate to brands, people like brands, people associate with brands, people become fans of brands.

So today, when we created Uturn as a brand, people are fans of the Uturn logo, so whenever you see the Uturn logo, you know you have the pin of Uturn, or you see the U of Uturn or even a sticker, Like these stickers (HE GAVE ME SOME!). 

It makes people… And I see kids today that come up to me and say ‘Uncle, can we please have the Uturn pin?’ They love the brand! And when you love the brand, if you make a mistake, they’ll excuse you for it If you do something good, they’ll brag about it

And our that’s why our brand has values attached to it, like I said, export civilisation through entertainment, we’re from the youth, to the youth and.. reaching the youth wherever they are, we go to the fans we don’t wait for the fans to come to us, so these are values of the brand that we have that make people fall in love with us, 

And that’s why we have certain celebrities associated with Uturn, so Darin, you see her, you associate her with Uturn. Ammar and Mahmoud, Badr Saleh from Eysh Elly, they became sub-brands of the big brand that is Uturn. 

And that’s what we try to do, present it as a brand that people like, and we will operate in the domain of video production. 

We’re not TV, this is one of the things that TV usually do,

They say: come and join us - 

Um, can you repeat that please?

TV, because they see it as production so they say to us: come on, bring your shows and broadcast it on TV, you know, we’re TV we’re big- we reach millions of people. 

I say, no. we’re digital and we want to stand true to what we believe we want to stay true to what platform we’re in, we want to stay digital. 

That’s part of the brand, and we have to be focused. We can’t be all over the place.

We are a brand that operates in the digital domain, and we create content that’s interesting, that’s relevant, that’s edgy, that’s Saudi  that’s our brand.

And our values, we call them the 3 Hs; Halal, Harmony and Honesty.

So we have the core values of our brand, we have our vision, we have our mission, 

So you set it up and the rest is what you see around you, we’re open to a policy, transparency, very young and dynamic, you know, challenging and we want to  conquer the whole content scene in the Arab world.

Interview Part 3: 

How did the lack of a cultural film industry affect the company's early productions in terms of content and aesthetic?

Well, what we had to do is build an industry, honestly. I mean, the way I see it, what you need to do is build the industry, and then when you build the industry. If the industry grows, and you’re the industry, then you grow with it. Rather than, it just being one person alone, and I have to grow and I have to fight off everybody else.   

And online today, we believe that because we started it, we believe that we’re obliged and that we have a responsibility to grow the whole industry, because by default, we’re growing. 

But me, being a pioneer and being a leader means that you shape the industry, and we’re trying to shape it in a positive way. 

So for example, the type of content we put, we don’t do the sexualities we don’t push things that doesn’t agree with our ethics, or even politics, so this is the responsibility we have and that’s where we want to take it.

Unfortunately, because the country lacks a film industry, so you don’t have any cinema institutes, you don’t even have a cinema available, we don’t have an industry. By default, there are no films. I’m not surprised there are no films because there is no industry.

Even if there was a Saudi film being made, who’s going to finance it? Where is it going to screened? How are you going to make income out of it? In the end, unless you have an amateur… or somebody who has a lot of money  who just wants to do a film because he wants to do a film you’ll find something like that.

But it’s not an industry.

Now, what we’re trying to do… and youtube did have a lot of content already, we’re not the first Saudis to put content on Youtube, but we were the first to regulate it. To make it become like an industry, where people can make money.

I have somebody like Dahoomy 999 who’s a gamer, he’s 18/19 years old and today he’s a full time YouTuber, he makes enough money that he doesn’t need to work. So unconventionally, he’s working, but people don’t get that, they’d say to him, what are you doing on Youtube?! That’s actually… you know.

So we created new jobs. Today vloggers and content creators that are online, they earn money, they earn a decent living, so we created a new industry and new ways of revenues for average people to start making money. So this is an industry, it’s true we don’t have a cinema industry, unfortunately. 

But there is the advertising industry, and the digital media one, if you will. We hope that once this grows at anytime, when cinemas do open, we want to be part of that, we want to take part of that, maybe there’ll be a Uturn cinema, you never know.

When Uturn first started publishing its content specifically its first social comedy shows 3al6ayer and Eysh Elly, did you find that there was audience acceptance? What more can you tell us about that?

Of course, acceptance in the begging was amazing.

Almost instantaneously.

Yes, when 3al6ayer first came out, the numbers were scary it went viral and everybody was talking about, you know, Omar Hussein, 3al6ayer and then when Badr Saleh came out with Eysh Elly it was another phenomenon. And then  a couple of months later, Telfaz 11 started and so did 9a7i. So in the beginning when we started the interest was there, because we started from the youth, to the youth.

It was something in which a normal person, an everyday person, became a celebrity and would appear online.

The problem with television is that it’s difficult to penetrate, but if you go on TV. Then, you quickly become a celebrity. Online, it’s the other way around. It’s very easy to penetrate anybody can be online, but not everyone is going to reach the top and become a star. In the begging, on the contrary there was a lot of attraction, people loved them, it was amazing.

The contradiction of it was for females, with Noon Al-Niswa.

So as much as there was acceptance with Omar Hussein and Badr Saleh, people loved them and it was amazing, they became stars overnight. It was the opposite when we started with Noon Al-Niswa.

Can I ask you a question about Noon Al-Niswa? 

Her first episode, which is still on her Youtube Channel, I don’t mean to be rude, but it was obvious that it had very low production value. I think she was filming it on her webcam, bad lighting and the graphics were very simple.

So, when she first started did she come up to Uturn and pitch her idea or…?

She came to us. 

I’ll give you the strategy, so basically I met her, she’s a wonderful person she’s a blogger she writes amazing things and she’s very charismatic. So she came up to me and said I want to make a Youtube show and she had a background studying PhD in Cambridge. 

So I told her, Okay, this is what you do, get a camera, film yourself and send it to us to see it. She sent it, and I loved it!

And I said, you know what, push it as it is today, don’t put it under Uturn, don’t say it’s Uturn so that it doesn’t show that we’ve started growing and let’s test it.  And the poor thing when she first came out, she was sworn at and cursed at very badly.

Oh my god…

I think the comments might still be there ‘what are you doing?’ ,’You should be in the kitchen’  really nasty things etc. They just roasted her. Actually, before she started with the show, when she told me she wanted to start making the show, I told her we can do the show for you under one condition: the second you publish your show, you’re going to get sworn at and cursed at, are you willing to take that fight?

She said ‘yes, I am’. 

I said okay, and when the pilot was published and she got sworn at, she called me and she was breaking down, ‘did you see what they said about me?!’ And ‘I told her, do you remember what we said? Remember your promise that no, i’m going to stand up for what I believe in?’

I told her this is the moment of truth, are you going to continue or not? So she decided to go with it and she did.

At that time, I was the Chairman at Uturn, but I wasn’t running the operations, there was another team running the operation and we had our differences about what direction we wanted to take. They wanted their own closed productions that was just them and didn’t want to take new people on board.

And I saw she was talented, so I said ‘screw you guys’ I’ll produce it at Fullstop so that’s why the first, or technically second episode was produced through Fullstop and not Uturn. 

So for her second episode, I invited her to Fullstop, we set up the studio, the lighting and the Background, we designed her logo. So by her third episode, it was when the other team started getting convinced that okay, she’s great and that’s when she became a part of Uturn. 

Two of your more recent programmes such as Nmkosaur and Sundouq are arguably more niche and varied. Would you say that developing more variety in your programmes is a means of keeping up with audience demand?

I mean, yes in general because in the end we’re here for the audience, so if I don’t give the audience what it wants, they’ll find somebody else who can give them that. So it is definitely audience-driven. But it doesn’t mean that everything…

How do I say this?

Sometimes you gotta create the need, sometimes the audience doesn't know what it wants. So, we hear what they want and we give them that but sometimes, we think what they want and that’s where we test whether it works or not. If they don’t like it, then we kill it.

But it doesn’t have to be, like, if they like comedy doesn’t mean we test something else, doesn’t mean we don’t try something like Nmkosaur. We wanted to test with Nmkosaur, we wanted to try with Nmkosaur and we did and it turned out to be… They didn’t tell us ‘We want Nmkosaur’ 

So we come up sometimes we things we believe they would want it and we capitalise it and we play at it. 

Would you consider Uturn to be a production house?

Uturn is a network and not a production house, this is how I think we’re different from our competition. Competition is mainly, okay, either a channel so everything is on that channel or a production, so they’re only focused on their own production.

We are a network, we create our own content and we aggregate content. And we do different genres; so you’ll find we have the female genre, comedy genre, there’s edutaintment, there’s sports, there’s automotive… there’s drama series, We have more in the works like music, and kids…

So we see ourselves as a network that has different genres to cater to different audiences, not all our audiences are the same. some of them are older, some of them younger, some of them like this, some of them like that…

The best way to reach everybody is to give a wide variety of content, which we call genres, so we have different genres to cater to different audiences. If you find niche genres like, for example, cooking and female, maybe they’re viewership would be a smaller number but it’s more focused, it’s mainly niche and targeted.

Then you have the general masses like Eysh Elly and others… Targets everybody.

Like a larger Saudi Audience…?

Exactly.

Can you tell us more about the camera equipment used at the company?

We use DSLRs, and now we’re using Sony 500 we use Black Magic, in a couple of shows like for example Bakhsheesh, we brought the RED cameras and the guys got really excited, then we realised, it’s not about the technology and having a more sophisticated camera, in the end, content  is really the most important, then comes the distribution, then comes the quality of the picture.

So if you don’t mind me asking, you utilise this as a sort of low-cost production here at the company?

Yes, of course.

So you take advantage of that?

Of course! I mean, why do I need to go that big, if in the end it’s going to be viewed online and is going to be interrupted with streaming issues and low resolution that isn’t that much.

Today…while the Technology has evolved I mean DSLRs honestly, we’re filming advertisements with them. Like Made in Saudi Films, a production company of ours. 

We film with Sony, or we film with DSLRs and it’s aired on TV, so it’s TV quality, if it’s done well with professional lenses and good lighting, we can you know, put content on TV as well. 

This year, Uturn made several distribution partnerships such as Danyah Shafei's MBC3's Danyah Cartoon. Can you tell us more about this partnership?

We have two types of partnerships, premium and premium plus.

A premium plus show is any show that has the U on it, whether its our production or like Swar Shu3aib for instance, it’s a premium plus partnership that has the U.

As for others like Saudi Reporters, Danyah Cartoon, Hassan Turki, they’re premium partners, which means we don’t put the U on it, we just help in publishing and distribution and it’s to be added to the network of course.

One of Uturn's most popular programmes ever, is the web-drama Takki. However, it's second season was broadcast on television. What could you tell us about this transition?

It was broadcast on TV because, you know sometimes when you start (a project) there’s going to be some confusion in the beginning, so Takki was a partner show, we financed the production, but we didn’t have contracts, binding contracts, unfortunately, or fortunately, it depends on how you see it, it became a big success and the producers.. actually the writer of the show wanted to take it and get out of Uturn 

Oh Okay, you mean Muhammad Makki. So it wasn't an in-house production?

It was an in-house Production Season 1, we financed it we developed it we wrote it we did everything but we didn’t have the contract.

So, sometimes people need contracts sometimes you don’t need a contract to have an agreement, they wanted a contract, we did not do the contract, so consequently when it became a big hit. Makki was like, ‘thank you, and now I can be on my own’.

So the transition had nothing to do with Uturn and instead was because the creator, who had the rights of the show, wanted it that way…

Yes, the writer wanted to go to TV, so I think The Araby Network approached him or he approached them and he wanted to keep it. 

What kind relationship does Uturn have with other MCNs in Saudi, like Telfaz 11, for example?

Honestly I think it’s a big market, a big pie, so we all… I mean, if you add Uturn’s programmes with Telfaz’s and Masameer in the end you’ll get around 2 hours worth of content a day, so the market is big and we all support each other, our team appears in their shows, their team appears on our shows, I have a very good relationship with the guys on Telfaz 11 Yousef and Khairallah and all of them really, so on the contrary, we even support Malik Nejer and Faisal Al-Amry, we have…

I don’t want to say it’s a competition, we collaborate together to grow the market so it’s not really an issue where we have competition as much as we want… to basically grow the interview in the country 

So… There is no space for competition anyway...

It’s too early, we want to first dominate the market and then start thinking about competing. But the way we first started, we all were together, all small companies, that started growing and had good reputations and then we have good relationships and you keep that relationship.

Like I said, when you’re a leader, you try to lead it properly. And this is how it’s happening, so I thank God that we’re leading it in a positive way rather than a negative way through backstabbing and cheating and keeping secrets from each other and etc.

Where do you see Uturn headed in the future, let's say 2020? Would you say that it will remain in the online digital domain?

Well… For now I’d yes, I don’t know what happens tomorrow .

But… especially 2020 is too far I mean, in our industry, it changes year for year, the situation 3 years ago was different from today, it’s different than, you know, in a couple of years. But, we know that we want to be in the digital, we want to be the largest online entertainment network, for Arab speakers worldwide.

So want to still be Arabic, but we want to be a global company. So we want to appeal to any Arab around the world, but with mass localisation.

In other words, not all Saudi; Saudi for the Saudi, Egypt for the Egyptians, US for the Arab Americans, UK for the Arabs that live in UK and speak Arabic.

So we want to appeal to all Arabs Worldwide, within their local context.

We want to be a platform. We’re already a network so we want to be a platform, we want to be our own platform, so you know, the alternative for YouTube for instance, you go to Uturn to watch all the different types of content. Maybe we’ll have developed subscription, VODs, premium, we know it’s going to be somewhere around that. 

Okay... We’re done! Thank you very much Mr. Kaswara, thank you very much...

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Many thanks for Mr. Kaswara.
Thanks for Dede for getting me through to Mr. Kaswara in the first place.

Thanks for my mom for encouraging me to go.

Thanks for my sister for coming with me and documenting the interview.
Thanks for everyone else!

And thank you for reading this!