Joseph Ghossoub is president of the Dubai-based Menacom Group. He talks to Executive about how social media has changed regional advertising.
- How did the social media explosion change the way you do business?
Social media changed a lot of things, mostly at the younger level. Part of our communication today is on social media. Every single client that we work for has a need to be in social media.
How can we make money out of social media? We make money [from] our ideas because it’s not just a matter of opening up a Facebook account. The idea is that this is what we get paid for. At the same time, publishing Facebook ads – we get paid. So this is another part where we also make money. But it is still about timing. You would think that this is a big part, but it’s not. It does not represent more than 7 percent of the total spend of the Middle East [and] 15 percent worldwide.
- Has it been overestimated?
I think so, yes. We’re still a long way from being the United States. [Social Media] is growing in our part of the world, but you have to keep in mind the language barriers, the accessibility to networks, cultural barriers — many, many things. So, the spread of social media among youngsters is high but not as high as you would imagine.
- What is holding the region back in terms of social media?
The media as far as I can see today is not evolving as the business has evolved. They still do the same thing they used to do 100 years ago, in the same way. I am [urging] the media not to wait anymore only to play catch-up later, because it will be too late. They have to react immediately because readers are changing, customers are changing. Where do you find your customers? That is what they should be asking.
The agencies are always ready [to evolve] because if they were not ready, they would be out of business. We have complete departments now that work digital. We have complete departments now that work channel communications. The model has changed.
Today we have a bigger, wider screen to look at and each sector of the market is divided into shares. We have to attract the ‘share of mind’ of a consumer at the end of the day, and we have to participate in that share of mind in an immediate way.
- What is your opinion of the creative work over the last year?
I have seen a lot of good ideas and good creativity but I haven’t seen anything that blew me away. I think this is a result of what we saw over the last three years with the economic downturn. Everybody looked at how to work more efficiently and more tactfully, rather than more corporately.
We used to make the investment up front. If you found out that there was a good creative, or a good strategist, even if you [didn’t] need him at that point in time you used to take him, just because you knew that you might need him in the future.
In the last two years, this did not happen because everybody was on a budget. Everybody was trying to keep their expenses down. This is normal. But I think what you are going to see in the next year or two, with the hope that [the region] stabilizes, [will be] more investment coming into the agencies, into their core business [and] into strategy.
“The spread of social media among youngsters is high but not as high as you would imagine”
