Oban International

30/10/2026

🎃 It wouldn't be an Oban quiz without a few fun extras: this year, we got into the Halloween spirit with pumpkin carving and loo roll mummy transformations.

A big thank you to Mackenzie, our brilliant quiz master, for a great evening! ⭐

Have a great Halloween weekend everyone 👻

27/10/2026

🎉 We’ve made the shortlist for three more awards!

We’re finalists at the Sussex Business Awards for…

⭐ International Business of the Year
⭐ Professional Services Award
⭐ Businessperson of the Year – Suzie Oakford, our amazing Managing Director

Keep your fingers crossed for us 🤞

23/10/2026

⏰ An extra hour in bed? Yes, please! 😴

This Sunday (25th October), the clocks go back one hour as daylight saving time comes to an end across the UK, Ireland and most of Europe.

But remember to take note of these exceptions:

• Iceland: stays on Greenwich Mean Time year-round

• Belarus: Keeps UTC+3 all year

• Russia: Uses 11 distinct time zones with no seasonal clock changes

• Turkey: Uses permanent Turkey Time

• Armenia: Observes Armenia Time throughout the year

• Azerbaijan: Maintains Azerbaijan Time all year

22/10/2026

What happens when AI influences a sale but gets none of the credit? 😢

Someone asks ChatGPT for recommendations, does their research, makes a decision, then comes to your website through Google. Your analytics credits Google with the visit, missing the role AI played earlier.

From our work with clients across sectors and markets, we know that understanding what drives performance is rarely as straightforward as the numbers might suggest. AI search adds another layer to that challenge.

So what should you be measuring? And how can you tell whether better AI visibility is making a difference to your business? 🤔

In our latest article, we look at how to join the dots between AI visibility and business results, and what to do when the data only tells you part of the story.

Read it here:

AI can influence a sale but get none of the credit. Discover how to combine AI visibility, website analytics and business outcomes for a clear picture.

15/10/2026

📣 There’s a lot happening on social platforms at the moment. YouTube is turning Shorts into series, TikTok can take a campaign brief and suggest a shortlist of creators, LinkedIn is building a creator marketplace, and Instagram’s Edits is bringing creation and performance data closer together.

Individually, these are useful new tools. But taken together, they suggest that social platforms are moving further into the creative process – influencing who makes the work, how it gets made and what gets repeated.

That raises some interesting questions for international campaigns 💭

A creator can look perfect on paper and still have very little influence in a particular market, while a format that works brilliantly in one country might fall flat somewhere else. And as platforms have more of a say in what gets made, it’s worth asking how much we’re relying on their version of what works, and what they might be missing.

🌍 Here’s our take on what it means for global creative:

Social platforms are moving deeper into the creative process. Explore what this means for global content, creator selection and localisation.

08/10/2026

2003 was a big year for Oban 🎉

We were founded in 2002, but 2003 was the year we were incorporated at Companies House.

📆 It was also the year of the Iraq War, Concorde’s final flight, England’s Rugby World Cup win, the Human Genome Project, the launch of LinkedIn and the iTunes Music Store.

Beyoncé was getting started as a solo artist. Hugh Grant was dancing around Downing Street in Love Actually. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and the iPhone were still years away.

A lot has changed since then, but were there more parallels with today than you might expect? 😮

We’ve taken a look back at 2003, from dial-up and Google to AI Search and the way people discover information today.

Read the full article here:

2003 was a big year for Oban. From Google and dial-up to Beyoncé, Concorde and Love Actually, we look back to see the parallels with today.

05/10/2026

ICYMI: Customer service can mean very different things in London, Tokyo, Mumbai and São Paulo 🌍

The tricky bit for international brands is knowing what “helpful” looks like in each market.

We’ve taken a look at what that means for customer experience, search and the information people need.

Read it here:

Explore how customer expectations and search behaviours vary across international markets, and what this means for global brands.

30/09/2026

⚠️ A delayed delivery in London...
📷️ A faulty camera in Tokyo...
😱 An unfamiliar bank charge in Mumbai...
📦️ A parcel held up in São Paulo...
..might all look like different customer service problems. But underneath them is the same question: what does the customer need to know, and how easily can they find it?

Customer expectations, search behaviour and the information people need can vary considerably between markets. And as AI increasingly becomes part of how people research, buy and resolve problems, the information brands provide has an even bigger role to play.

Our latest article looks at what this means for international customer service, SEO and the wider customer journey 💡

Read the article →

Explore how customer expectations and search behaviours vary across international markets, and what this means for global brands.

23/09/2026

Search has been getting more conversational for years. But what happens when that conversation becomes part of the advertising environment? 💬

ChatGPT Ads give advertisers a richer picture of what someone is trying to do, including their circumstances, priorities and concerns, rather than simply the words they typed into a search box.

That could have interesting implications for international paid media 🌍

The same need can look very different from one country to another. People use different language, have different expectations and respond to different reasons to buy.

So if AI is getting better at understanding context, how good are we at understanding the context behind it? 🤔

In our latest article, we take a look at what ChatGPT Ads could mean for search intent, localisation and international paid media:

Keywords aren't going anywhere, but context is changing the game. Find out what ChatGPT Ads mean for search intent and international paid media.

18/09/2026

ICYMI: Thinking about expanding into another country? 🌎

The obvious questions tend to get most of the attention: How big is the market? How fast is it growing? Who are the competitors?

But some of the things that can make or break an expansion are less obvious.

How much will returns cost? Do customers trust a business they’ve never heard of? Who controls distribution? How much localisation is really needed? And what happens when AI starts changing how people find and compare products?

We’ve pulled together nine of the hidden costs worth looking at before committing to a new market: https://buff.ly/VXJjrS6

Expanding into a new market involves more than finding demand. Discover nine hidden costs businesses need to consider before entering a new market.