The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council - a global group of 5,000 senior executives controlling more than $125 billion in marketing spend - is expanding its reach and presence in the Middle East and North Africa with a new advisory board and assessment of marketing credibility and effectiveness in the region. The geography includes more than 20 Arab-speaking countries and some 200 different nationalities across diverse countries, cultures and population groups.
CMO Council Advisory Board members include senior marketing decision makers from 3SC Technologies, Al-Futtaim Automotive Division, Almarai Company, Bloom Properties, Citibank, Etihad Airways, GBS Group Holding, HSBC Bank, Jumeirah Hotel Group, MTN, One97 Communications, Saudi Telecom, Schlumberger Information Solutions, Sony Ericsson, and Western Union. Chairing the MENA advisory board will be Mohammed Al-Tajer, Vice President & Cluster Marketing Head for the Global Consumer Group of Citibank in the MENA region.
"We have assembled a highly experienced group of senior practitioners in the MENA region," noted Al-Tajer. "We plan to have a very active and engaged team that will help develop CMO Council program initiatives, authority leadership platforms and advocacy positions. In particular, our group will forge close links with the academic community so we can influence and shape the marketing curriculum to better prepare students for a more digital, analytical and multi-channel marketing environment," he added.
The first meeting of the MENA Advisory Board was hosted by CYVIZ in Media City, Dubai on October 12. A number of important initiatives were mapped out for implementation in 2010:
* Address key issues facing marketers in the region; leverage the knowledge and expertise of veteran marketers to advance insights and competencies.
* Work with universities on creating programs that will improve the quality of marketing/business graduates.
* Improve thought leadership in the region through the encouragement of the marketing professionals to produce related studies.
* Reach out to business schools and enroll as many marketing professors as possible in the CMO Council Academic Liaison Board.
* Create opportunities for board members to speak and represent the CMO Council on university and college campuses, as well as at professional conferences and summits.
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have long been considered a region of opportunity, but one that is challenged by cultural and religious complexity, volatility, and political uncertainty. With a gross domestic product approaching $1 trillion, an expected GDP growth rate of just under six percent, and a population of over 313 million, there are bright prospects for growth and market development, reports The World Bank Group.
The 16 countries in the Middle East have nearly 42 million Internet users and Arab-speaking countries in North Africa, including Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Sudan and Tunisia, already make up half the top 10 digitally connected markets in Africa with over 27 million Internet users.
The CMO Council is conducting a benchmark Rate the State of Marketing in the Middle East audit to gain insights and views from senior managers at MENA companies. It has already surveyed more than 200 multi-nationals on their Perceptions & Intentions in the region. Initial findings have been shared with advisory board members and are attached.
Discussions and interactions at the inaugural board meeting included:
* Putting the MENA region on the global marketing map; growing knowledge and understanding of the region's enormous potential, sensitivities and nuances.
* Addressing and satisfying the diversity of nationalities (over 200 in Dubai, alone), ethnic groups, and religious norms in the region.
* Accommodating the huge disparity between different socio-economic groups, plus migrant worker and multi-lingual considerations.
* Finding good regional marketing partners and sourcing, cultivating and keeping new talent.
* Need for a rigorous training program in tandem with local universities to produce marketers that have relevant skills and the right strategic and business mindset.
* Deficiencies in media reporting and lack of accurate and available audience numbers and circulation figures in the region.
* More effective use of market data and customer analytics for decision support and marketing effectiveness.
* Better integration of people, process and technology; addressing big gaps between business requirements and IT capacity to address it.
* Need for better interaction and integration between IT and marketing groups; oil and gas companies tend to be the best at this.
* Trust as an essential ingredient in doing business in MENA. Personal credibility tends to be more important than company credibility, which, in turn, is more vital than product credibility.
* Relationship marketing requirements in the region require longer go-to-market cycles and more patience in gaining momentum and uptake.
* Strategies for penetrating closed and conflicted markets in the region - Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan, Tunisia, etc.
* Understanding how governments and para-statals work is vital. The big concentration of market power with large holding companies and conglomerates.
* New marketing technologies and new ways of doing business are being embraced, but more slowly in the region.
* Censorship and regulation are factors that have to be accommodated and understood, as well as factored in to business and marketing practices.
* The need to adapt and customize products for the varying requirements of the region; too few multi-nationals have products developed exclusively for the localized market.
* Strong areas of competence in the region include experiential, event-driven marketing, mobile messaging and multi-cultural communications.