The Storytellers: 50 Impactful Marketing And Communications Professionals In The Middle East

Regardless of how good your product or service is, it is of no value if your audience doesn’t know about it, or doesn’t care. This is where the critical role of marketers and communication professionals comes in. They are the link between the company and the consumers, helping to define the personality of the brand and how its story should be told to deliver the right messages to the right people at the right time.

Connecting with an audience today requires investment, creativity and a new way of thinking. Although there are still a multitude of both traditional and online platforms to work with, from television to billboards and social media, consumers are less willing to give their time to advertising, with many investing in adblockers and most switching off within seconds if something doesn’t grab their attention. Marketing in the modern world needs to have an attractive and instant impact.

To honor the storytellers, communicators, and planners behind the region’s biggest brands’ most memorable marketing campaigns, we are for the first time releasing a list of some of the most impactful marketing and communications professionals in the Middle East.

Of the 50 people who feature on the list, 22 are women. Egypt is the most represented Arab country with nine entries on the list, followed by India with seven and Saudi Arabia with six entries.

The companies that these 50 professionals represent have a combined marketing budget of over $750 million, with the food and beverage, telecommunications and automobiles sectors holding the biggest budgets.

Some of these budgets have been spent on celebrity endorsements, bringing on board famous faces like football legend Lionel Messi, Egyptian favourite Mohamed Salah, and Thor star Chris Hemsworth. Money has also been poured into renewing brand identities and sponsoring international events.

To compile this new list, we gathered financial data and information through nominations from the most senior marketing and communications directors working in MENA’s biggest companies. Agencies were excluded.

We considered:

• Total industry experience

• Marketing budget that the individual controls

• Number of employees in the marketing team

• The scale and the impact of the campaigns carried under their leadership