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December 19, 2021
THE YEAR IN
REVIEW 2021 may not have been as dramatic as the year that preceded it, but with new agencies, institutional changes and a continued acceleration of all things digital it has still been eventful, writes Austyn Allison
Choucair, former CEO of that group’s media agency PHD, was promoted from chief operating officer of OMG to CEO, while Elie Khouri, who had re-assumed his position of CEO after the departure of Nadim Samara in October of last year, has resumed his focus on his role as chairman of OMG. In December, Raja Trad announced that he too was retiring. Trad was the regional chairman of Publicis Groupe, and will be replaced as regional head of the holding company by Bassel Kakish, who has become CEO. Kakish was previously chief financial officer, chief integration officer and co-managing director of Publicis Sapient in the Middle East. In February, the industry lost a great when Edmond ‘Eddie’ Moutran, the founder of Memac Ogilvy, died at his home in Beirut. Moutran founded his agency in the 1980s and built it up to be the regional powerhouse that produced some of the Middle East’s most iconic work and inspirational talent.
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t least this year has not been nearly as challenging as 2020. We are far from back to normal, and the Covid-19 crisis is far from over, but we have at least begun to get used to it. In the region, if not everywhere in the world, many of us have been back to our offices, and Herculean immunisation drives mean that events have been taking place with less social distancing and more masks. It seems like a world away, but at the start of the year Donald Trump was still in the White House. Although he was waiting for a grown-up, Democrat Joe Biden, to take over as President of the United States, he was still contesting the outcome of last year’s election. The final attacks of Trump’s presidency on ‘fake news’ and democratic institutions continued to affect the world’s relationship with the media and truth, and reached a nadir when a mob of Trump supporters stormed Washington’s Capitol Building on January 6. While having mercifully more decorum than Trump, Biden’s presidency has been far from smooth, and his decision to fulfil his predecessor’s promise to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan has continued to shape world events and feed an international refugee crisis. The global economy has been on a rollercoaster as it recovers from the shock of Covid-19’s arrival. It has been lifted by the success of vaccines, and lowered by the emergence of virus variations that are steadily teaching the world how to recite the Greek alphabet. Adspend has largely recovered, and marketing intelligence service WARC
Edmond Moutran
predicts it will rise above pre-Covid levels next year. However, some channels such as out-of-home and radio are taking longer to bounce back, and economic sectors including travel and tourism are still dampened by the ongoing effects of lockdowns and health worries. There is a changing of the guard in advertising, as the founding fathers of the industry are gradually replaced with new faces. At the end of last year, Roy Haddad, WPP’s director for the Middle East and North Africa, quietly stood down. Haddad founded the agency that would become J Walter Thompson in the region, and which has now merged with Wunderman Thompson as part of WPP’s ongoing process of consolidation and merging of its portfolio. At Omnicom Media Group, Elda
FRESH STARTS Last year, 2020, saw a swathe of departures at all levels within the industry, either due to Covid-19 attrition or to the start of the ‘Great Resignation’ caused by the re-evaluation of our priorities brought on by a worldchanging pandemic and the introspection of lockdown. This year, some of those who left their posts have been coming back in new guises, including at the helm of new agencies. Margaret Flanagan, formerly of Asda’a Burson Marsteller, and Lisa King of BCW launched Tales & Heads communications agency, which was soon working with brands including Euronews, SRMG and Dubai Fitness Challenge. Lucy and Camilla d’Abo, who sold their agency Dabo & Co to Edelman in 2015, in November launched Together, a consultancy dedicated to workplace culture. Lucy, CEO of Together, had joined Hill & Knowlton Strategies as regional director last January, and Camilla – now non-executive director at Together – had joined Apco Worldwide as managing director in December 2019. THE SOCIAL SECTOR Remember Clubhouse? At the start of the year it was the social media story that
