Najam Khawaja is the new kid on the block (he says so himself), having moved to Dubai only six months ago as CEO of DDB Gulf. But although he’s fresh in Dubai, Khawaja is hardly a newcomer to the Middle East. “I’ve been in the region for about 30 years, most of them in Saudi Arabia,” he says. “The reason I’m in Dubai now is because we merged our two UAE operations into DDB Gulf, and we also merged our operations in Saudi Arabia and the UAE into one, DDB Holding.”
Khawaja has moved to Dubai from Jeddah at a time when many are making the trip the other way. Faced with the choice of a Saudi job or no job, they take a “hardship posting” in the Kingdom.
“It’s more to be in the centre of things,” he says, explaining his move in the other direction. “KSA is a great market and I miss it in a lot of ways. But I found that as a regional hub, Dubai was a better place to be, in terms of the ability for me to connect with the industry.”
However, he does believe the UAE ad industry has been thrown off balance lately, because it was developing so fast and then the credit crunch brought it to a standstill.
“Dubai’s market was growing at a pace we’d never seen before,” says Khawaja. “When you stop a car at 60 kilometers an hour, it gives you a mild shock. But if the car is racing away at 200 kilometers an hour and you brake, the shakeup is a bit harder.”
Dubai has borne the brunt of the slowdown, but this loss of momentum has been felt across the region, he says. “It’s an industry-specific jolt, not a country jolt. That’s all there is to it,” he says. “I am quite happy about the move – and that the traffic is a bit lighter.”
Dubai’s roads may have benefited from the crisis, but the ad industry is still reeling from the collapse of the real estate market. Khawaja says although it still works for Emaar (in Saudi Arabia), his agency has not been affected “at all,” as DDB did not focus its work heavily on the real estate sector.
The network could instead be banking on another major advertising sector. Last week, DDB Gulf announced a new venture, Luciola DDB, a telecommunications brand strategy consultancy. (The unit was previously announced under the name Firefly DDB at the start of April, but Khawaja says this was in error.) “We are not telecom consultants,” explains Khawaja. “We are brand consultants in the telecom industry. We provide services including trend reports in the area of technology and business, and specifically in the area of consumer trends.”
Khawaja, who is also behind DDB agencies in Lebanon and Pakistan, says that although advertising standards differ from country to country, big agencies in the Middle East haven’t been delivering, especially on cultural relevance. “If you look at Saudi Arabia or Egypt, the demand and need is for much more relevant communication,” he says. “In the last few years, we’ve taken a lot of young Saudis on board, therefore a lot of the advertising you see is something the consumer wants and expects.”
He says this shift is yet to come to Dubai – and may not come at all. “I might be wrong, but I don’t see this happening in the UAE, although there is a need for it,” he says. “But I have spoken with the IAA, primarily to engage with local educational institutions and get talent from there.”
And value breeds value, says Khawaja. “I would say the challenges are bringing high-quality talent into the region, making them interact with local talent, and retaining that talent, so that overall standards can go up,” he says. And that rise in standards can be used to justify hiring the right people. “We have to make sure clients see their value. If you’re going to hire quality talent, somebody’s got to pay for it, and at the end of the day that’s the client.”
Rather than being a time to panic, Khawaja says, the credit crisis is in fact an opportunity to reflect, and to come up with ways to correct some of his agency’s failings. “We have to think about how we can avoid being in the same boat as some other industries and getting linked to a situation where anything that happens across the globe in a specific industry should affect us,” he says. “It’s very difficult to do, but it’s an opportunity for us to position ourselves a little bit stronger than we’ve been doing before, and make clients see and understand that an agency actually adds value to his business. If that is received well, you will see clients wanting to invest in quality talent, and agencies will become more profitable and healthier.”
And that will mean agencies can put their feet back on the gas.