On the home front
Are you in Cannes? Of course not, if you’re reading this as soon as it’s landed on your desk. If you were in the south of France, you’d be sipping rosé on the Croisette. Instead, like me, you’re keeping the home fires burning while your colleagues fly the flag at the Lions. And, like me, you’ll be starting to ease back into a postRamadan work schedule, with longer hours and more to do before the summer fully kicks in.
Ramadan can be a bit quiet, but this year there has been a fair bit happening. Turn to our news pages and you will see that global social media giant We Are Social has bought into home- grown agency Socialize. This is great news. It is another local agency proving that it can help the multinationals compete at a global level. And while it has not been long since Hug was acquired by WPP’s Grey Group, that deal was to bring digital capabilities to a traditional agency. The Socialize deal is all social, all digital, all modern and tech and the stuff the industry’s future is built on ( or so we are constantly told).
Ogilvy too is going through change. At a global level, Ogilvy & Mather, Ogilvy PR and Ogilvy One have all been merged into one entity, one Ogilvy. Turn to page 8 to read what global CEO John Seifert has to say about the move. His interview will fill your CEO Bingo card pretty fast with talk of “totality of brand”, “holistic and integrated mindset’ and “emotionally compelling context”, but the overall idea is quite simple: stop operating in silos and put all your capabilities together to best serve clients.
WPP’s “horizontality” philosophy may go to its grave with Sir Martin Sorrell’s leadership of the group, but across the industry agencies are reintegrating. Call it “Power of One” or horizontality or whatever you like, the marketing and communications industry is putting its skills back under one roof, one P& L sheet and often one name. More restructures and acquisitions are in the pipeline both internationally and at a regional level.
Ogilvy is also offering new technology consulting services in the region, and has moved its office in Cairo as it looks to build on a resurgent Egyptian market.
Influencer law has changed in the UAE – thanks, in part, to parent company Motivate and our stablemate Vamp. The new licensing laws had been eagerly anticipated by some and dreaded by others, but are now here and – thanks to a new three-tier system – are much more workable than they sounded at an early stage.
So while we may not be on stage collecting Lions, there is a lot happening at home, while we cheer from afar.