300 issues and counting
This is the 300th issue of The magazine has been published by Motivate Media Group since October 2008, before I got involved with the brand. I was at the launch party, though. It was Halloween, the champagne was flowing, there were dancers in transparent globes floating on the hotel’s pond, and everyone who was anyone was there. For years afterwards, the sign of an OG creative was a beanbag pilfered at the end of that night.
My tenure as editor began later in the game, shortly before we published our 200th issue. That milestone seems like just yesterday, although in truth it was published in November 2016. I have a copy of #200 open beside me. Emaar chairman Mohamed Alabbar had just announced the launch of the Noon.com e-commerce site and WPP was making inroads into Iran through partnerships with local agencies. It would turn out that e-commerce was a good investment; banking on the Iranian market less so.
As long as has been covering the media, marketing and advertising industry, it has chronicled the ebb and flow of ideas, agencies, technologies and ways of thinking about a field of practice that is at the forefront of popular culture.
The campaigns we highlighted in our Work section once used to be either films shown on television or cinema screens or static graphics for use in print or on billboards. Today there are not only digital executions, social campaigns and content designed for consumption on Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok, but also the sort of PR campaigns and experiential activations that are designed to be shared and magnified through user-generated content.
We have increased our coverage of social platforms as they have become a central pillar of every media plan, and are dedicating more space to adtech and other digital innovations. We have boosted our coverage of brands themselves and the client-side leaders, through initiatives such as our Marketing Game Changers reports. And we continue to champion rising talent through our annual Faces to Watch, highlighting young professionals on both the agency and client sides of the business.
Just as the industry has moved away from being film-and-print-centric, the Campaign Middle East brand has expanded too. Back in 2008 we didn’t need a website. But as the financial crisis unfolded, a decline in print advertising and an acceleration in digital consumption would make a digital presence essential. Today is still a magazine, but we also have a thriving web and social presence, events, directories, podcasts and more. We have diversified as the industry has, and will continue to do so.
We published fortnightly until the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, when we shifted our schedule to monthly, a move we had long anticipated but never put a date on. Like everyone else, we didn’t know what would happen next. Print distribution was cut for all titles during lockdown, and we wondered if we would end up digital-only before the year was out.
But instead the magazine grew. We are now producing more pages for one monthly edition than we did with two in a month. Website traffic has soared too. This was all thanks to the support of the industry, thanks to the support of you and your colleagues. You read our articles, you contribute your expertise and opinions, and you support our brand. That’s kept us going for 300 issues and a lot of added value besides. I’m looking forward to us going great places together long into the future.