George Slim: Welcoming the age real
The economy of our country is far from being at its best, and as we all know, this means cuts on all sorts of budgets, including – often starting with – communications and advertising budgets.
But there’s also a different kind of change happening as a result of that: companies, big and small, now need to know why they’re spending on advertising. They need to know what will work for them, how it will impact their bottom-line, then see the results. This means that ad agencies are now, more than ever, expected to think like their clients, keeping the focus on what truly works, holding themselves accountable for the direct impact of their campaigns on the client’s business.
But there are also more opportunities to build, launch, and communicate brands than ever. With all the start-ups, the incubators, accelerators and entrepreneurship programs that have been blossoming in Beirut and the rest of Lebanon, an agency that can reinvent itself under a leaner, more flexible structure has a lot of potential for growth. Of course, the trick for us “old model” agencies is to embrace the change and get excited by the newness – rather than hold on to what used to work and no longer does.
We at PIMO have started our transformation last year, when we rethought what we did and why we did it, redefined the kind of clients we wanted and the profiles of the talent we wanted to attract, and summarized it all in our new tagline: “PIMO - Welcome to the Age of Real.” We have since integrated new tools that allow us to uncover the true needs of an organization, and new services to bring about the change internally first – for external communications and consumer experience to match. We have also reshuffled our digital team setup to create a multidisciplinary
An agency that can reinvent itself under a leaner, more flexible structure has a lot of potential for growth
creative team that thinks of brand narratives across channels.
And we are now working on a new talent hub project that will allow us to connect to and collaborate with the talented young creatives of our beloved Lebanon.
Because this might be the most important challenge for us agencies in these fast-evolving times: how will we attract and keep talents who need transparency, meaning, and freedom in order to perform? How fast can we rethink our business to make room for the new?