JEDDAH – The regional boss of one of the world's largest advertising firms on Saturday said Saudi Arabia is a highly attractive market for the multinational advertising agencies and forms the bigger part of the Middle East advertising expenditure. Just after honoring his staff for their achievements, Memac Ogilvy Chairman and MENA CEO Edmond Moutran told the local media that advertising spending in Saudi Arabia topped more than SR4.4 billion ($1.17 billion) and is by far the most important advertising market in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. He confirmed that the current size of advertising expenditure in Arab World is estimated at about $4 billion. “It is considered as a low figure comparing to other countries which are less populated, but we could say it is continuing to increase for many reasons – mainly the increase of investment and consumption and openness to the Western world.” He noted that printed press, which is still and will remain the closest slot to the conscience of human, still trusted by many businesses and consumers, as they are still their favor in the formation of trends seen in society at all levels, including marketing, promotion and advertising. He pointed out that 50 percent of Saudis use Internet which could lead advertising leaders to put more ads online, saying “social media is driving change in markets around the world, shifting the way we form opinions and make purchase decisions. Social media adds to raise awareness about companies and influence brand opinion.” Moutran further said “the industry's moving so fast that nobody can keep up. Because of the Web and social media, our lives have changed faster in the last five years than in the last fifty.” He added that the Internet has opened broader prospects for the advertising industry, as it widened the scale of advertising corporates working in this area. He asked “how do you keep up especially in this part of the world, how do you keep up with the big international cities? .. I believe we should train or either we can go over there to get training or we can bring the best of them here,” Moutran said. He called on advertising agencies in the region to get rid of old thinking by re-introducing younger creative minds. "Creativity is a business necessity in our challenging and crowded environments where people are struggling to get ahead through tenacity, creativity and imagination," Moutran noted. Inspiring young Saudi businessmen, he said “most of the young people I met here in Saudi Arabia have the tendency to earn money faster than they should. I just want to tell them things will come slowly and they can achieve their dream if they put their plans for long- term periods.”
