The post-Iran-Gulf conflict environment has complicated how GCC banks market themselves, against an economic backdrop weaker than at the start of 2026. Commenting on this climate…
The global advertising market entered 2026 facing a strange paradox. On one hand, marketers are navigating severe geopolitical instability, persistent inflation, supply chain disruptions, trade restrictions,…
The economic fallout from regional conflicts and geopolitical friction is starkly reflected in the IMF’s April 2026 forecasts, which project GCC GDP growth slowing to 1.8%…
The Middle East and North Africa FMCG sector is accelerating into a new growth cycle, but rising consumer expectations, inflationary pressure, and digital disruption are redefining…
Pre-Iran crisis, the GCC was on a pace to outperform global growth rates. The Middle East and North Africa economies were projected to grow by 3.5…
Retail companies operating in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region deal with over 500 million consumers, face varying market dynamics and regulations, resulting in…
Brands have spent a decade building audiences on platforms they don’t own, through personalities they don’t control. The emergence of owned AI personas changes that equation…
Every soccer fan is revving up for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, set to take place from June 11 to July 19, an event jointly hosted…
AI or virtual influencers are synthetic creators, pure bot material that look impossibly human, that have evolved into commercially viable media assets. They are intellectual property…
While war is a phenomenon the GCC retail sector is not used to dealing with, harsh economic environments are not unprecedented in the region. John Speers,…
The region’s most powerful companies are giga-scaling AI. An ‘Agentic’ transition is aligning with the rise of consumers enamored with AI and Large Language Models (LLMs).…
The GCC presents a formidable economic landscape for technology applications like AI, enjoying an average GDP per capita exceeding $70,000. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is today an…
Consumers are finicky even in the best of times. In times of crises, they get panicky. They are human stock markets calibrating retail behavior around brands’…
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