Insights
From the blog
Notes, playbooks and points of view from the Xanadu team.
The AI questions you’re not asking yet
Recently, I wrote about the questions regional CEOs keep asking me about AI. Where do I start? How do I stay in control? Will…
Most AI projects quietly fail. Here’s how to know if yours will.
Most AI projects we see across the Gulf are quietly failing. Not loudly. There’s no crash and no post-mortem. The pilot just goes quiet,…
The questions regional CEOs keep asking me about AI
Most weeks, I’m across the table from a CEO somewhere in the Gulf. Real estate, financial services, government-adjacent businesses. A year ago, the AI…
You don’t have to rip out Adobe to stop overpaying for it
The biggest line in most enterprise creative budgets isn’t the software people use. It’s the software they don’t. Walk into almost any large organisation,…
The Hardest Part of a Brand Update Is Not the New Assets. It Is Retiring the Old Ones.
This is the most common failure mode in brand management, and it is almost never caused by negligence or a lack of care. It…
Canva AI 2.0 Is Not a Feature Update. It Is a Platform Shift.
The organisations that will fall behind on Canva AI 2.0 are not the ones that ignore it. They are the ones that treat it…
The Cost of Off-Brand Content That Nobody Is Measuring
Most organisations measure the cost of off-brand content in terms of the time and money spent correcting it. A designer’s hours spent fixing the…
Translation Changes the Language. Localisation Changes the Communication.
This scenario is familiar to almost every marketing leader who has worked across languages in the UAE market. The translation is accurate. The communication…
You refreshed the brand. You did not rebuild it. Here is the difference.
This scenario plays out across organisations in the UAE with striking regularity. The investment in the visual refresh is significant. The investment in the…
