FP7 MENA organized a four-day planning workshop last month bringing together young strategists and digital talents with senior leadership.

Describing the workshop’s ambition, Tahaab Rais, regional head of strategic planning, FP7 MENA, says: “Helping brands play a meaningful role in people’s lives makes people want our brands more and makes our brands want us more. In a constantly evolving world, our network is our net worth in doing this effectively.”

FP7/Next

As a testimony to this, the agency has brought together its various departments and tech partners to action new proprietary strategic and digital methodologies and tools. It has also introduced a new initiative, FP7/Next, where the agency’s “young talents are creating ideas to make meaningful work in a constantly evolving world,” Rais says.

WARC partnership

The agency also teamed up with WARC for an Effectiveness & Innovation Strategy Day, which saw attendees from Leo Burnett, Ogilvy, MediaVest, OMD, PHD and Mullen Lowe, among others.

Attendees’ thoughts

Carl Bou Abdallah, senior brand planner, FP7 Beirut:

“We’re all extremely inspired. We have returned home with a plan to do work that has meaning and makes a difference to us, our clients, their business and importantly, to people.”

Aakriti Goel, strategic planning manager, FP7 Dubai:

“A great opportunity to collectively work as a network and innovate. One of our proposed ideas, “The Insight Squad”, won The FP7/Next Challenge. We’ll now implement it with the leadership team.”

Karl Salibi, executive head of strategy, Publicis Communications MEA:

“A great initiative with excellent content. Keeps the momentum going and keeps bringing the community together.”

Ian Dolan, head of strategy & content, PHD: “It demonstrated the high quality of regional work. One element of driving excellence was forging closer cooperation between Creative and Media agencies; something achieved by the event itself in connecting ad and media agency counterparts.”