Chairman & CEO at Choueiri Group
No introductions are really required for Pierre Choueiri, who has been one of the most prominent industry players in the region for years.
The son of Antoine Choueiri, who established Choueiri Group and remains widely viewed as one of the founding fathers of the region’s media, marketing, and advertising community, always had media sales in his blood – even though he briefly flirted with the idea of becoming an engineer in his youth.
Choueiri graduated from the American University of Beirut with a Bachelor of Science in Economics in 1987 and quickly embarked on a media career, handling Abu Dhabi TV out of the UAE before formally establishing the Choueiri Group’s first operation in the GCC in 1994. This wasn’t an easy ride for the young operative, who told Communicate back in 2011 that his father was very tough, something he is thankful for today. “By being so tough with me, this is what made me stronger. It wasn’t easy and it should be this way, especially because I’m his son. You shouldn’t take things for granted in life,” he said.
Under his father’s guidance, Choueiri slowly rose to the top of the company, getting more involved with management starting 2005, becoming CEO in 2007, and finally taking the helm fully as Chairman & CEO upon the founder’s death in 2010. Although inheriting his father’s legacy was quite a challenge, Choueiri consistently cemented the company’s position as a prominent media player in the Middle East. He already had a vision for the future of the group, launching Digital Media Services (DMS), its digital media arm, in 2011.
Choueiri Group went through a rough patch in recent years, when MBC, one of its longest and most critical clients, announced in 2020 that it would handle its media representation itself via the launch of MBC Media Services (MMS). Abu Dhabi Media, another long-term partner of Choueiri Group’s, made a similar move in 2022, further demonstrating the trend towards the management of media sales in-house.
Yet, Choueiri always was a true believer in the “Golden Triangle” – advertisers, agencies, and media groups along with their representatives – being the main pillar of sustainable growth for the media and advertising industry in the region. Therefore, the group is adjusting by moving into new areas with major growth potential, inking media representation deals with music streaming platform Anghami in 2020 and with OTT video streaming platform Viu in 2021. Among other strategic decisions, it also partnered up with programmatic advertising giant The Trade Desk that same year. This partnership allows advertisers to launch and manage their digital campaigns across multiple channels, including desktop, mobile, connected TV, and digital out-of-home, and to make the best out of Choueiri Group’s extensive inventory at a larger scale.
Today, Choueiri Group has offices in nine MENA markets as well as representatives in Paris, Tokyo, and Warsaw; and 13 subsidiaries spanning out-of-home (Arabian Outdoor), TV attribution performance (Brand4Mance), digital media services (DMS), and more. It represents 19 TV stations (including Zee TV), six daily newspapers (including An-Nahar and Al-Hayat), five magazines (including Jamalouki and Zahrat Al Khaleej), more than 28,000 outdoor faces, 55 movie theaters, 18 radio stations, and more than 40 websites. It also got involved in event management recently via its event agency client Brag.
Over the years, Pierre Choueiri collected awards and accolades, from Advertising Person of the Year at the Dubai Lynx in 2017 to the prestigious Bunyan Award for Leadership and Entrepreneurship from the UAE Ministry of Tolerance and Coexistence in early 2022.
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