Last year I officially celebrated my 20 years in the GCC. After 20 years of witnessing doubtfully made-for-awards work, I was wondering if marketers are bored with that shit or not yet. Seriously, we agencies and clients both know that most of them are fake and meaningless. There has been such a proliferation in that area that you could even claim to have won an award that does not exist and get away with it. My partner Ramsey Naja suggested we claim the Agency of the Chinese Year title last February.
Meanwhile, over the past 20 years, I have not seen a single marketing breakthrough. A real game changer, like a campaign that put a competitor out of business, for example. Growth has been mostly passive on GCC markets. The markets did the job, not the marketing teams, unfortunately. Instead of growing passively, why doesn’t any marketeer become unreasonable in terms of growth? Ask for spectacular results vs. just a fair market share. I once worked with some phenomenal CMOs whose mission was to actually put their competitors out of business. They wanted outrageous growth. Believe it or not, they managed to do it thanks to their agencies!
Today, with all the palette of data and creativity, such a challenge would be even more exciting. This is especially true in a postwar situation, where we are witnessing a complete reset. Instead of competing on the awards shows with useless activation stunts, I’d love to have a marketer call me to say:
“Hey, Hubert can we team up with your organization to put our competitor out of business?”
I have never received that call in 20 years in the GCC, but maybe year 21 will be the lucky charm?
Believe me, such an experience is so much more fun than: “hey get me a Cannes Lions, I need that for my KPI’s”
…and you could probably end up getting a lion for that on top.
Respectfully awaiting your call.
#makeadvertisinggreatagain
(Hubert Boulos is the CEO of Das Kapital Dekuple Group)
