Businesses “not delivering” on advertised promises

Companies in the Middle East are failing to effectively deliver the services they promise to their consumers, according to one of the region’s leading marketing executives.

Nigel Vaz, EMEA CEO of the digital agency operating unit Publicis. Sapient, said that too many brands do not follow through on the claims and promises they make through advertising and communications.

His comments followed the launch of the agency Sapient-Razorfish, part of Publicis. Sapient, which aims to help businesses adapt to an increasingly digitised world.

“Effectively, the traditional communications agencies were working with clients to express the brand and come up with a new campaign, and that was the promise,” Vaz explained.

“A lot of us as consumers recognised that brands were making promises through communications, but not delivering them through products and services when you went into the store, called the call centre and used the product.

“If we say this is the promise of the airline, how does the airline actually deliver the promise? Not just when you board the plane, but when you’re on the inflight entertainment system or when your bags are lost. The idea is you are what you say and what you do. There is no dissonance between the two things.”

Part of the worldwide holding company Publicis Groupe, Publicis. Sapient will work alongside its sister holding company Publicis Communications, which holds the advertising agencies Leo Burnett and Saatchi & Saatchi.

Regionally, both agencies and publishers have suffered from the slowing down economy, and the resulting cuts to advertising spending by businesses.

But despite the uncertain period, Raja Trad, CEO of Publicis Communications ME, said he still expected Sapient-Razorfish to grow in revenue and staff numbers over the course of 2017.

He said: “Considering the gloomy environment in the region here, there is some good news due to the fact that clients are looking for a different kind of service and business transformation.

“This is not like classic or traditional growth; there are needs coming from the clients that they didn’t have before. They are waking up to the reality that they need to transform their business in this field.

“If you look at advertising and the Zenith Optimedia figures, they say that spending is going to fall by 12 per cent this year, and then next year by another 12 per cent. So there is some hope somewhere in the shift of advertising spend and the business spend.” Vaz added: “Our current pipeline is that we are going to double the business in terms of revenue. We grew our market in digital space by almost 28 per cent last year globally, and we expect this space to double this year in this region.”