A revolution’s commercial openings

Following the global economic crisis, the Arab uprisings of last year have been felt like a body-shot combination in the solar plexus for the advertising industry in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Though winded by the beating, the industry is still on its feet, and is exploring new opportunities the turmoil has created to get moving again.   Take Egypt for example, the regions’s fifth largest market, where ad spending fell 37 percent in 2011; that belies an impressive recovery in the second half of the year after declines of more than 50 percent year-on-year in the first and second quarter, according to Neilsen Global Adview Pulse data and the Pan Arab Research Center respectively. “The problem is this [‘Arab Spring’] came in the wake of the remnants of financial struggle,” said Roy Haddad, chairman of JWT Mena. “The environment is not conducive to a high level of