Leading brands are breaking campaigns into moments, blending employee and creator-driven content, and building agile ecosystems that deliver relevance, credibility, and cultural resonance.
In an interview with Communicate, Ibrahim Hasan, Regional Head of McCann Content Studios MENAT, shares how GCC brands are rethinking content strategy by balancing scale and creativity, while leveraging creators and employees to build relevance, credibility, and lasting brand impact.
Brands today are under pressure to produce more content, faster, across more platforms. How are the most advanced brands balancing speed and scale with creative quality?
The most advanced brands have stopped chasing scale through singular “big ideas” and instead are engineering many small moments that ladder up to a cohesive brand narrative. They’ve decentralized their platforms into content threads: snackable, repeatable, daily expressions of the brand rather than monolithic campaign statements.
Even campaigns themselves have been atomized, broken down into modular pieces that hit the same message from multiple cultural angles instead of shouting one headline and hoping it sticks.
This is where content pillars become more important than platforms. Smart brands aren’t asking, “What do we post on TikTok versus Instagram?” They’re asking, “What conversations can our brand credibly participate in every day?” The execution then adapts to the medium, not the other way around. Speed comes from clarity, not shortcuts.
One of the biggest unlocks has been employee-generated content. We’ve seen it work incredibly well across the region, from retail to automotive. The logic is simple: a paid talent gives you a burst of visibility; an employee gives you continuity, credibility, and cultural legitimacy. An employee doesn’t just appear in a campaign; they embody the brand over time. That endurance is impossible to fake.
Over the last five years, how has the way brands collaborate with external partners fundamentally changed in the GCC? What are brands still misunderstanding?
The narrative is that brands moved from dictating to co-creating, and while that’s partially true, the reality is more nuanced. You still see celebrities fronting glossy TVCs for airlines and tourism boards, so control hasn’t fully disappeared. What has changed is where influence actually lives. Brands are increasingly allowing creators to act as natural amplifiers as the best work today feels lived-in, not staged.
Where brands still struggle is understanding that creators aren’t just distribution channels, they’re strategic inputs. FMCG brands have been the most progressive here. We’ve pushed some brands to an 80% creator-led, 20% brand-led ratio. Community-first events, creator-driven formats, and social-native experiences have replaced the traditional KV-first thinking.
The misunderstanding is thinking co-creation means less control. In reality, it means smarter control: clear brand codes, strong editorial direction, and then letting creators do what they do best. When brands get that balance right, the work feels effortless. When they don’t, it feels forced.
Platform monetization has historically been weak in the GCC, yet investment is rising. Where do you see sustainable revenue models emerging, and how does McCann Content Studios fit in?
We’re watching this shift happen in real time. Social commerce, affiliate models, and creator-led retail are finally gaining traction in the region. Unlike other markets, brands in the GCC actually have the financial power to shape platform ecosystems rather than depend on them. That means brands will continue to be the primary drivers of creator monetization here.
What’s changing is the rise of nano-influencers as primary campaign drivers, not afterthoughts. Instead of one face, you get a constellation of voices. Volume over vanity. We’re also seeing affiliate models and performance-based creator frameworks becoming more sophisticated, especially in retail and FMCG.
At McCann Content Studios MENAT, we’ve been at the forefront of this evolution. From piloting new creator monetization models, exploring influencer exclusivity frameworks, to using AI as a scaling layer for creator output rather than a shortcut, we’re building the next version of the content ecosystem. Just like we once built one of the region’s largest in-house content operations, we’re now focused on what content 2.0 looks like.
