Creativity in the Middle East and African markets is booming. In the past few years we’ve seen many talented creatives and successful agencies flock to the region and the market is bursting with creative and digital opportunities. As a digital production company working with agencies we are very interested in the MENA region since we work with creative ideas (that are getting much better) to make those work on digital platforms (that grow exponentially). Platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and SnapChat are more popular here than anywhere else, and the region has one of the largest density of internet connected mobile phones in the world.
Besides that, MENA is one of the best suited regions to take the lead in global advertising in my perspective. Just as brands and agencies in any other market nowadays, the MENA region is looking to play at a global stage while still being relevant to local markets, and thus local cultures. The question of how to achieve that is the key question in advertising at the moment, and not only in our Dubai office, which opened in the spring of this year, but also globally in our Amsterdam, London, New York, Singapore and LA offices. One of the strengths of the MENA agencies is that they already house so many different cultures and producing concepts that have the potential to be executed in many different cultural formats.
MediaMonks’ expertise is to execute the creative ideas on the different digital platform in multiple regions. As John Hegarty said a long time ago ‘advertising is 80 per cent idea and it is also 80 per cent execution’. When creating a campaign which has to be culturally relevant, execution is therefore just as important as the idea itself and I dare to add that it’s even getting more complex and important in the digital age. The main challenge for us as a production company is how to execute this successfully, efficiently, in a timely fashion in the best possible quality we can provide, and how can we use our globally gained skills and apply them in the MENA region to help in its digital and creative development?
When tackling the challenge of producing global campaigns that are culturally relevant there is a mantra that we always keep in mind. We strongly believe that the strength of digital experience lies in the unrivalled interactivity that it can offer in emotionally driven and evocative stories. Digital experiences can offer a level of interaction, participation and personalization in their storytelling over-and-above any other available medium, in every culture. And while we don’t come up with the Big Idea, we do work on the Beautiful Execution, mixing digital disciplines across platforms in an increasingly complex world and tailoring them to every market and their specific needs. It’s software development on creative ideas with marketing deadlines, in an industry that’s always looking to innovate.
A lot of successful work will come out of MENA and we look forward to contributing to that.
