General Motors calls agency review

General Motors Middle East has called a review of its communications partners in a bid to ensure its agencies are delivering ‘outstanding service’.

In a statement, GM said it was seeking a “reassessment of its roster of marketing services partners to meet its current and future business and marketing requirements”.

Memac Ogivly and Leo Burnett are GM’s incumbent agencies, both of whom have been invited to participate in the review process.

A company spokesman said: “In our quest to sell vehicles that customers aspire to buy and to build brands they are proud to own and deliver an unmatched ownership experience, we are looking for the best agency partner(s) to deliver outstanding services that meet our objectives.”

ADMC takes the English Premier League online

The English Premier League is to begin its move away from TV and on to the web in the Middle East and North Africa thanks to Abu Dhabi Media Company’s decision to broadcast the 2010/2011 season online.

The announcement was made by Abu Dhabi Media Company CEO Edward Borgerding at the MENA Cristal awards in Mzaar, Lebanon yesterday, and follows ADMC’s winning of the rights to the EPL last year.

The move helps bring to an end speculation as to how ADMC was going to be able to air all of the EPL’s games, and how it was to charge for them. The Orbit Showtime Network has the rights to the EPL until May and has been showing the games purely on satellite pay-TV.

From August, all EPL games will be availabe online for a fee, although Karim Sarkis, executive director, broadcast group at ADMC, said matches will also be available via satellite and cable to those without access to broadband.

“What was different about the contract with the Premier League this time around was that platforms no longer matter,” said Sarkis. ”Whereas before they sold the rights by platform, now platforms don’t matter, because they understand that the whole world is changing in terms of how TV is getting to people. You can reach a higher number of people this way than you can do trying it the Showtime, or the Orbit or the Al Jazeera way.

“What we’re going to do is hit two birds with one stone. On the one hand we’re going to be doing something very new, very innovative, but on the other hand we’re going to make it available to a much higher number of people.

“There is still an issue to deal with, which is broadband penetration isn’t at the same level across all our territories, so you can’t avoid the traditional means of distribution.But even then we’re doing something innovative, which is HD distribution. So, alongside IPTV, cable and broadband distribution we will also have  a satellite based solution but it will be in HD only. We think we need that in the beginning. The way we see it is, over time, the mass of our viewers  are going to shift from the box model, but definitely in our key markets we think the scales will tip in favour of the people who will access it through the non-conventional means.”

ADMC has the rights to the EPL for the next three seasons.

JWT Beirut, OMD and Starcom big winners at Cristals

JWT Beirut has scooped this year’s media Grand Cristal thanks to its integrated campaign for the opening of Le Mall.

The agency walked away with the top prize as well as two other Cristals. The night’s other big winners in the media category were OMD, which topped the media rankings, and Starcom. Starcom won five crystals, including trophies for its work for Galaxy, Aveo 5 and Emirates. OMD also won five Cristals, including those for clients Visa and Mobily and a special jury award.

It was a clean sweep for JWT in the promo and direct category, with JWT Dubai landing three Cristals, including the Grand Cristal for its ‘Stress balls’ work. JWT Cairo also walked away a winner thanks to its work for Vodafone.

There was no Grand Cristal awarded in the cyber category, although Leo Burnett Beirut was awarded for its work for Exotica, and JWT Beirut picked up a Cristal for Le Mall.

Film shortlist for MENA Cristals

Here is the MENA Cristal film shortlist. More to hopefully follow if we manage to work out how to use this French computer

film

Impact’s COO Pierre Azzam departs to seek new path

Pierre Azzam, Impact BBDO Group Lower Gulf COO, has decided  to “seek a new path and explore fresh opportunities”, bringing to a close his 26 years with the group, according to a statement from the agency.

During his tenure, Azzam was instrumental in the expansion of the network, overseeing the setting up of its Abu Dhabi and Qatar operations.

Azzam commented: “Leaving a group in which I have invested more than half of my life is never easy, with all the emotions and history. I shall take a long-overdue break while exploring new opportunties for the second stage of my professional life.”

In a statement Alan Khouri, Impact’s group chairman and CEO, said: ” We are genuinely sad to see Pierre leave the company, but I have to respect his decison. Pierre has been exemplary in contributing to our growth and development. I shall miss him both as a professional associate and as a friend.”

It is the second time in as many weeks that Impact BBDO has made headlines.

As reported in the current print issue of Campaign, BBDO Worldwide is believed to have taken majority ownership of Impact BBDO after Alain Khouri ‘ceded’ a portion of his shares to the Omnicom Group company.

The agency declined to discuss details of the deal as it was between a private individual and a public listed company, admitting only that Khouri retained a ’substantial’ amount of shares and his responsibilities as chairman and CEO.

Impact was formed by Khouri in Lebanon in 1971 and in 1979 became the first regional agency to partner with a global agency network.

Group president Dani Richa will work with Azzam and the exisiting management to ensure a smooth transition of his duties over the coming months.

Regime change at Fortune Promoseven

An unprecedented number of Fortune Promoseven’s senior management have been fired or have ‘left of their own accord’ following a major shake-up of the agency.

Azmi Yafi, CEO of the agency’s Dubai operations; executive creative director Peter Russell; deputy managing director Christie O’Higgins; and creative director Leslie Oakes have all gone, although the agency would not say in what circumstances they had left. A number of mid-level account managers have also ‘moved on’ from the Dubai HQ.

Russell (pictured) had been in his role for less than a month, having been appointed ECD at the end of November following the departure of Marc Lineveldt to Saatchi & Saatchi.

It is not known whether further departures are imminent, but a rebranding of Fortune Promoseven is expected within the next few months.

Kamil Najjar, regional marketing director at P&G, has stepped in to replace Yafi as CEO, while Daniel Georr has been flown in from the network’s Beirut office to take up the position of executive creative director.

Tom Roychoudhury, chief innovations officer at MCN, Fortune Promoseven’s parent company, said the agency was looking to re-model itself along the lines of McCann London, which has a ‘perfect blend of creativity, effectiveness and innovation’ according to its website. “We are restructuring because we want to be a completely different agency,” said Roychoudhury. “We want to be different in two ways. Different to what we were and different to what’s already out there. Fortune Promoseven wants to rebuild itself along the lines of the agency for tomorrow.”

FP7 is part of MCN, which is an Interpublic group company.

arabianEye gets creatives to shoot from the lip

Visual content producers arabianEye have  launched a fun initiative to provoke dialogue within the region’s ad agency creative departments.

The project, called ‘Straight Shooters’, canvassed the opinion of 10 high-profile creative directors, filming their replies to a number of burning industry questions, while allocating only 30 seconds to answer.

Figures including Tonic’s Vincent Raffray, Y&R’s Shahir Zag and Saatchi & Saatchi’s Marc Lineveldt, do their best to come up with the goods.

The resulting series of short videos showing their responses will be aired on arabianEye’s website over the next 3 months, with a different topic tackled every week.

This week’s edition covers the thorny issue of scams, with the question: “Why have we seen so many ’scam’ ads in the past UAE advertising awards?”

Celia Peterson, managing director, arabianEye, said: “We wanted to do something different to set the tone for our new blog and show that arabianEye is more than just about pictures. ‘Straight Shooters’ is meant to build a sense of community amongst Dubai’s creative agencies by highlight issues that affect the advertising industry and those who work with visual media. It’s a fun way to bring people together, open a debate, and address these challenges.”

Ramzi Raad named Dubai Lynx advertising person of the year

TBWA\Raad’s chairman and CEO, Ramzi Raad, has been named this year’s Dubai Lynx Advertising Person of the Year.

Only the third person to receive the accolade, Raad will be handed the award during the Dubai Lynx Awards Ceremony on 17 March at The Palladium in Dubai.

The Advertising Person of the Year award, which was previously won by Joseph Ghossoub, president and CEO of MENACOM, and Tanvir Kanji, head of Inca Tanvir, honours someone who by their efforts, energy and dedication, has lifted the presence and profile of the region within the international advertising, marketing and communications community.

Terry Savage, chairman of Cannes Lions, who, with Motivate Publishing are joint organisers of the festival, said: “Ramzi has been, and continues to be, an instrumental figure in the development and growth of the advertising and communications industry throughout the Middle East and North Africa. We are delighted to pay tribute to his dedication and success.”

Raad, who founded TBWA\Raad in 1999 and has been in the industry for 40 years, said: “I am extremely humbled and flattered to be acknowledged by the Middle East ad industry with this award, which I consider only partly personal, as most of the credit goes to my TBWA colleagues who have earned this honour along with me. I am so pleased that this comes to me on the 10th Anniversary of TBWA\RAAD, confirming that we have fulfilled the TBWA mantra to ‘Change the Rules of Arab advertising’ something I had promised to do, and we have done it in record time.”

The 3rd Dubai International Advertising Festival and accompanying Dubai Lynx takes place from 14-17 March.

‘There is no UAE film industry’

By Tim Smythe, CEO of Filmworks

The question is ‘does the UAE really have a film industry’? At present, if we don’t take into account the television industry – because unlike most countries, there is really no crossover between the film industry and the television industry – to declare that we have a film industry entails continual work, whether generated locally or whether facilitated for an international market.

What actually exists in the UAE is a film industry that caters to television advertising and therefore cannot be deemed a proper industry because it is solely dependent upon the number of television commercials filmed in the country. The industry decreases or increases based solely upon this factor. So, while production values have grown quite high in the UAE, for this to continue will require the creation of an industry that is not purely reliant upon advertising. Otherwise, the trend for local productions to travel will continue to follow the best production values versus pricing.

For there to be real development and progress what is needed is the creation of a sustainable film industry. To create a real film industry requires the development of local films and the facilitation of international film on a continual basis, which results in a steady flow of work that creates employment opportunities, attracts experienced crew and offers possibilities to train and develop local crews.

In the past six years Filmworks has only been involved in producing three notable films, with a few other production companies involved in some others. This hardly constitutes an industry. During the same period of time we have been involved in more than 40 feature films that could have come to the country but didn’t, of which some really high profile studio films were turned away. This has resulted in an international loss of confidence in bringing productions to the UAE, coupled with limited funding for local filmmakers, which has led to negative growth for our industry.

In reality, a country can only develop a sustainable local film industry if there are enough cinema screens and a large enough population for a film to recoup its investment in its country of origin – both from cinema and second tier releases on TV and DVD. As with many countries throughout the world, this is not a possibility. Therefore these industries are subsidised through government incentives directed towards subsidising local production and incentivising international production. This is very common throughout Europe.

This is done for two main reasons. Firstly, to ensure the continuation and development of local culture, and secondly – and just as importantly – a healthy film industry contributes greatly to the GDP of a country. It needs to be noted that every dollar spent through incentives can translate to up to a $5 return on investment for the local economy. This is the main reason that nearly every country with an existing feature film industry has incentive programmes.

At present there are some positive indicators coming out of Abu Dhabi, but until there is a structured road plan that focuses on both key factors of developing local talent (this can include expatriate talent) and incentivising international production,
the opportunity for the development of a viable local film industry remains bleak. While one must recognise that there are
developments like Dubai Studio City, Imagenation in Abu Dhabi and the recent Al Noor Film Fund in Qatar, it will take far more than this to create and sustain a film industry for which we can all be proud of.

Until then, we need to continue to do the best with what we have, because no matter what, it is still possible to make films. It
is not a matter of handouts in order to get films made, but it is a different matter to discuss the creation of a ‘film industry’ versus the making of films.

So, to all directors and producers, persevere and you shall succeed as long as your work is good and you are committed. And for us in advertising, production values rule so keep improving your production standards and the future for 2010 should not be so bleak.

WPP and VCCP make next round of Emirates pitch as independents join the fray

The field of major players in the Emirates global advertising pitch has been whittled down to a final two, but the brand has unexpectedly invited unnamed independent agencies to participate in its final round.

“We are progressing to the next stage of the pitch for a global lead agency with WPP and VCCP. In addition to these two agency groups, we have invited selected independent agencies whom we felt would be able to provide a fresh view on our requirements, to participate in the pitch process,” said Emirates. “We are planning to complete our evaluation by March. As stated previously, we are seeking a lead agency to create a new global brand campaign for the airline that will impact all touch points. For our existing global agency network, it is business as usual.”

The pitch has been underway since June of last year and has seen Publicis, Omnicom and the Interpublic Group knocked out in its earlier rounds. Emirates clarified that even though the networks of some of its regional partners – Impact BBDO and Leo Burnett – were no longer contenders for the lead agency, it did not necessarily mean they had no future role.

This is not the first time that the pitch process has taken an unexpected turn. In the early stages Emirates handed its UK advertising account to VCCP’s London office without a pitch. UK-based VCCP also has an office in Abu Dhabi.