WARC Reveals Effective MENA Marketing Trends of 2017

WARC, the global marketing intelligence service, has today released its MENA Strategy Report 2017, an analysis of the region’s most effective marketing trends based on insights from the inaugural WARC Prize for MENA Strategy.

Lucy Aitken, Case Study Editor at WARC, comments:”We’ve analysed all the submissions to establish unrivalled insights into how the region’s communication strategies are responding to a competitive market and ever-evolving consumer needs.”

“Our report shows that MENA is a highly resourceful and youthful region where building brand equity and raising awareness are the main objectives,” added Aitken.

Asad Rehman, Director, Media, MENA, Unilever and jury chair, says: “Increased competitiveness, complex external environments, demanding consumers, and technological developments have made the job of planners increasingly complex. However, the MENA region is ripe and ready for some serious strategy work.

WARC’s MENA Strategy Report 2017 highlights the following key insights and marketing trends in the region:

Genuinely local: Rather than adapting global communications to suit a MENA audience, many case studies that performed well understood the importance of communicating with local people in a relevant way.

Departing from category norms: Communications that make a fresh point in an original way unsurprisingly stand out in cluttered categories such as telecoms or household products.

Changing perceptions: A number of winning case studies entered into this year’s WARC Prize for MENA Strategy were geared towards changing perceptions.

Targeting youth in a fresh way: As 28% of the MENA population is aged between 15 and 29, much of the successful work in this year’s Prize targeted this group in an appealing way.

A summary of The MENA Strategy Report 2017 is now available here

On 14 November, WARC will be holding ‘MENA Strategy Works’, a free-to-attend event in Dubai. To attend register here

The WARC Prize for MENA Strategy is an annual awards recognising strategic thinking that has driven business results in MENA. The 2018 WARC Prize for MENA Strategy will open for entries on 8 February 2018.

Source: WARC

  Asad Rehman, communications, Lucy Aitken, MENA, MENA Strategy Works, The MENA Strategy Report 2017, Warc, WARC Prize for MENA Strategy