DDB Worldwide CommunicationsPresident and Chief Executive Officer Chuck Brymer sat down with Executive to give his perspective on the Middle East’s advertising industry. DDB Worldwide was one of the initial building blocks of Omnicom, the New York-based communications holding which just reported $12.5 billion in earnings for 2010. Brymer was in Dubai on the occasion of an internal merger of three Omnicom-owned agencies into an entity called DDB FZLLC.
- We established that you do not talk about the value of your unit here in the Middle East…
We do not talk about revenues anywhere in the world. But you can look at the [overall] revenues of Omnicom, where we reported our results just yesterday.
- But we would love to understand more of how much the Middle East represents of the total.
What I can tell you is that the Middle East and Africa is a market that in my view is still somewhat in its infancy compared with [where it will end up]. We look toward the region with optimism; we look toward the region as having growth potential. We have invested into the Egyptian market; we have invested into this [the United Arab Emirates] market, the Saudi and the South African markets. These are the core hubs that are the important markets for us.
- What do the events in Egypt say about the role of social networks?
Egypt demonstrates the power of social networks and the power of people talking to people. My business has been historically about connecting people to a product and connecting people to a brand. Today it is just as much about connecting people to people. It’s much more powerful sending you a television commercial that you take in. If it’s well done, it will motivate you not only to buy the product but hopefully to send that message through to your network of friends and community. If I’ve done that it creates a greater opportunity for communication.
- Middle Eastern brands are missing from the list of top global varieties. As an expert on global brands, how can brand owners in the Middle East make the list?
I happen to believe that brands are, in many ways, not only an engine to a company’s profitability but can be the engine for growth and prosperity of a country. Look at a market like South Korea, which was able to raise and enhance the quality of life through exportation of goods. The exportation of goods was predominantly driven by the success they had with brands. China as a market has yet to create brands. There are a number of brands on the horizon that China will begin to export and with that they will create an even more powerful economy.
If you look at the Middle East, the same thing applies. The ability to create strong brands will generate significant revenues back to the home markets and there are none that currently exist in this market at that level. That being said, I do think hospitality brands like Emirates have the potential to be well known and globally established.
- Does the Middle East currently play any role for you as a source of talent?
I think the creative product here in the Middle East is good but I think it’s going to get a lot better. We’re investing in our people, in cross-pollination and in training, so that we can create even better work here and use the people here to build up that work in a bigger way.
- Senior members of the industry here told us that agencies in this region in the past won international awards but these campaigns were created only for award shows and never ran commercially. What does this say about the acceptance of creativity in the market?
I think it is an ethics question. There is a lot of skepticism toward work that has been created just for winning an award show. We’re trying to achieve recognition for work that is run in the market that has brought recognition to our clients’ brands, so we don’t really support that whole premise.
- And how do you see your role as a global owner of a unit here in the Middle East in pushing standards in this market to more compliance with best practices?
Well, I think the more that we invest in the market the more we expect our markets to comply and to deliver that work. At the end of the day it comes down to talent — nothing else. If you have good talent, you will create great work.
It used to be if you have a great client, you’ll create great work, and I suppose there is a little bit of that as well, because you need clients that are willing to take a step out and to take chances and to support the creative product through work that is edgy.
If you want to get noticed in this world, sometimes you’ll have to step out and do something different and clients that understand that give us greater opportunity to do that.
- This brings us back to the question of how to better nurture talent that comes from this region to succeed on the global stage…
The most important thing is to allow the local talent here to see and to participate in global work. By understanding and seeing how other markets do it, Western markets and increasingly those in Asia, it brings a greater appreciation for creativity.
I think the second thing is getting our offices to engage in that kind of work. We might take a global assignment and say ok, ‘I want to see the work from Australia, Dubai, Paris, London and New York’ and we’ll drive all five or six of those markets together to look at the work.
I think getting the local talent here to be a part of that process and see the work coming from other markets is very helpful. It’s like playing tennis. You play a better tennis player and theoretically you raise your game.
- The ‘American Idol’ method of defining talent for entertainment has been very successfully translated to the Middle East. Would you expect the same for the advertising industry where consumer-generated advertising spots can generate huge attention at an event like the Super Bowl?
Will we see more of that? I think so. ‘Crowd-sourcing’ ideas — soliciting ideas from anywhere — can make sense. My own point of view is there is no wrong way to create a great idea.
Many of these ideas need to be polished, taken from a raw state and built into a more expressive way of communicating it, but wherever it comes from I think is fine.
No agency or individual has a lock on creativity. The most important thing is that the idea has been polished in a way that it is presented in a most effective way to consumers.
And the instant response rate that you get nowadays will show you very quickly where you went wrong. Absolutely.
- Is that the end of marketing or just the beginning?
The beginning. Marketing has a future. The one great thing about the business I’m in is that our currency is ideas. The world will never turn off the need for ideas.
“Marketing has a future. The one great thing about the business I’m in is that our currency is ideas. The world will never turn off the need for ideas”
