Across a challenging global business landscape, there’s one place that seems to be bucking the trend – the Gulf.  An estimated 200k people annually are heading to Dubai for better career prospects and a safe place to bring up their families. Influencers show off their aspirational lifestyle against the backdrop of gleaming towers and man-made islands – Dubai has recently created the world’s first ever influencer training programme and Saudi has put enormous store by its Vision 2030 project, designed to create a thriving economy and a supportive environment for businesses of all sizes.

There’s definitely a buzz about the place, which is why we decided to take a look for ourselves…

Just before Easter, a five-strong Waypoint team flew to Dubai to take the temperature of the marketing services industry there. What we discovered by attending local events including the Dubai Lynx Awards ceremony and speaking with successful businesses across multiple disciplines, reveals an exciting opportunity for those who are in growth mode and looking to accelerate their global ambitions.

Characteristics of the region

Understanding the broader social context and generational shifts is important.  The region is undergoing huge demographic and cultural change, with urbanisation, wealth, and globalisation creating new consumer behaviours, fast.

In Saudi in particular, marketing maturity is deeply linked to societal change. And while that societal change is happening at pace, a full adoption of Western-style marketing approaches is not expected in the near term. But then again, let’s remember that good advertising is what works for a local audience.

But when it comes to things like service fulfilment, our experience in Dubai highlighted the region is streets ahead, particularly when it comes to convenience shopping and ecommerce. Fuel is brought to your door/garage, breakfast can be ordered and delivered to your desk and none of us waited more than two minutes for an Uber the whole time we were in town, despite the usual challenges with traffic.

For agency heads, Dubai is most definitely the hub, but leaders are increasingly now looking across, and outside, the region to build sustainable, diversified growth, including in locations such as Oman, Egypt, Azerbaijan, and The Philippines. Saudi still represents a huge opportunity, but greater scrutiny is now being placed on budgets. 

While the opportunities are huge, the market does have its idiosyncrasies that can easily trip up the most seasoned practitioner looking to establish a business there.

Energy, Optimism & Entrepreneurial Spirit – with a few local caveats

Almost without exception we encountered huge levels of business optimism and ambition and a mood that is less cautious than in Europe for example.  Agility, bold ideas and confidence are attributes that are valued in both individuals and businesses. Our take away is of a “growth-market” energy that is high-paced and commercially minded with entrepreneurs who are willing to take calculated risks.

While double-digit growth is definitely doable for well-managed firms there are some caveats that are specific to the region. Some businesses have learned to be cautious about scaling fast because of risks around late payment, over 12 months in some cases. That presents huge operational challenges and requires clever work arounds. Western businesses might gripe at 90 day payment terms, but businesses here know that if want a certain kind of client and the benefits they bring more broadly, they have to find ways to make it work.

Talent & Leadership: An Expat-Driven Market

As well as home-grown businesses, global expat leaders are a characteristic of the marketing sector here. They can find it an easier market to succeed in than many of their home markets because it’s less crowded, less formalised and full of white space that presents a huge opportunity for savvy operators.

Some of these expats are essentially repeating their past playbooks and finding success while steering clear of regional pitfalls and embedding a culture of disciplined financial management and client selection strategies.  For any founders in more mature markets looking for their next growth opportunity, that is definitely a model to look to. Others are building new and exciting businesses with little or no experience of doing so in other geographies, and also achieving successful growth.

While there might be a shortage of local talent in certain specialisms such as UX, digital and creative, smart entrepreneurs have learnt to work around them, building complex virtual and cross-national teams, importing talent to fill in the gaps.

This agility also shows itself in the way that many agencies maintain a US or European presence to lend credibility with global clients, even if operations in these regions remain small.

Market inconsistency

Without being overly critical, businesses on the ground reported diverse levels of professional and operational sophistication, but comment that progress is taking hold fast. Some are able to thrive despite being relatively unsophisticated while others, particularly those led by people with industry experience are well-run and set a bar that others aspire to.

The same can be said to apply to creative standards which are evolving quickly to deliver greater impact and value in the local markets. Regulation and industry standard quality benchmarks are beginning to influence expectations, particularly via global trade bodies such as the PRCA, which contribute to a more trusted ecosystem.

While some award categories at the Dubai Lynx continue to be dominated by the network agencies, the case in the media category this year, there’s a growing desire to level up in line with top global standards.

And clients are becoming more discerning, particularly around reputation, reliability, and delivery — signalling a market that is on the cusp of formalisation.

While the region has an ambition to become an AI and digital transformation powerhouse, this is still in the ‘scale up’ phase, with clients on a journey of understanding on what makes for “good tech” and agency access to local tech expertise and talent still quite restricted. As a result, outsourcing to low-cost global tech hubs still dominates digital infrastructure in the region. This creates an opportunity for high-quality native digital product and transformation specialists to emerge and fill the gap as clients desire more sophisticated solutions from local partners.

To conclude

In summary, this cash-rich and progressive region, while structurally challenging, presents enormous opportunities for those with entrepreneurial flair and operational discipline who can operate cleverly in the gaps, while navigating issues around talent, and sometimes complex payment dynamics.

These growing pains experienced are characteristic of any fast-developing market, and the businesses we spoke to are deploying seriously impressive solutions and innovative operating models to by-pass some of the challenges they face.