Dentsu cements partnership with Drive

Dentsu, one of the largest advertising holding companies in the world, is eyeing up a majority stake in Drive Communications as part of its long-term strategy for the Middle East and North Africa.

The Tokyo-based group has cemented its association with Drive, with the agency now called Drive Dentsu as of this month. The change to Drive Dentsu follows a year of discussions and is in part recognition of the success of Drive’s 10-year affiliation with Dentsu.

The move represents another step in the Japanese giant’s longer-term agenda to exercise complete control of Drive and follows the June 2005 purchase of a 3.1 per cent equity stake in the company.

Speaking about the changes, Cheriff Tabet, CEO of Drive Network, said: “I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the tenth anniversary of our partnership with Dentsu than by joining our names together. It has been a decade of mutual success and the renaming marks the start of a new era of expansion and progress as we extend our reach across the MENA region”.

Headquartered in Tokyo, Dentsu is one of the big six advertising holding companies, the other five being WPP, Omnicom, Interpublic, Publicis and Havas.

Drive was founded in Jeddah in 1997 and has grown into a full-service network with 11 fully-fledged offices across the Middle East and North Africa, including Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Beirut, Damascus and Cairo.

It recently won part of the Mobily account in Saudi Arabia and has landed several other key pieces of business, including Riyadh Bank in Saudi Arabia and Credit Agricole in Egypt.

Dentsu’s main Japanese rival, ADK, has a regional partner in AGA|ADK.