Mohammad Aljuhani, Senior Manager – Marketing & CommunicationsSafe marketing will most likely fail. It has slim chances to grab attention and cut through the noise. Successful marketing hinges on taking creative risks; calculated risks.
Over the past years, our Saudi market has been experiencing unparalleled growth led by the ambition of Vision 2030. According to Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Economy and Planning, the national GDP grew from $666bn in 2016 to $1.24 trillion in 2024, driving the growth of the marketing and advertising industry.
Similarly, advertising spend in Saudi grew from $2bn in 2017 to $3bn by 2022, according to the Riyadh Chamber, marking the highest growth in the MENA region for that period. Yet marketing effectiveness was nowhere to be found.
In 2025, the MENA Effie Awards held in Riyadh honoured more than 100 winners, but only four of them were Saudi brands. The 2024 Global Effie Index ranked regional agency offices among the top five most effective in the world, but none were Saudi-based.
‘‘High-end production and big media budgets should be used to accelerate a great idea, not mask a weak one.”
Are we, as Saudi marketers, directing our work towards business results, or towards creating safe creative ideas that barely drive business forward? We need to stop wasting resources on safe creative work and hiding behind high-end production and big media budgets that offer vanity success and peer validation but not business impact.
Vanity metrics and production costs do not measure marketing effectiveness. Using high-end production and big media budgets to cover up a weak creative idea, may force the audience to see our message, but will they remember it?
Or will it fade quickly through the clutter? It may be expensive and loud, but not effective. This is why high-end production and big media budgets should be used to accelerate a great idea, not mask a weak one.
Creative risk with finesse in marketing
Let’s take a step back and think of what our options as marketers are: We can either take risks on a novel idea or pick a safe creative idea that most likely will fail to deliver effectiveness.
Fear of job insecurity instinctively drives marketers to avoid creative risk. In a growing marketing and advertising industry, especially in markets such as the Middle East, every brand is fighting for attention. Safe creative work is a recipe to be invisible amid the clutter.
We cannot pursue creative ideas that we are comfortable with if we want to drive business results. We should pursue creative ideas that challenge us, and ensure they are executed with finesse.
However, taking creative risks is a skill. It takes skill to find and embrace original ideas grounded in consumer insight. Ideas that have high potential to grab media attention, spark audience conversation, align with the brand personality and values, and communicate the message in a clear and simple way.
Ultimately, this drives business results, if executed with craftsmanship and measured through a business impact framework.
Such skill needs to be developed and mastered gradually. Just like a pilot who needs to practise within a rigorous system before flying an aeroplane, we as marketers need to develop our skill to distinguish between rewarding risk and damaging risks.
That is finesse: the difference between gambling with our brand and taking calculated risks that drive positive business results.
Measuring creative through business impact
Creative finesse is measured through frameworks that focus on real business success, whether in sales, retail traffic or brand equity. To grow as a market, the way we define our marketing success needs to mature.
We need to measure success through the business impact we drive, not by how many media impressions we generate or by our production scale. We need to foster a culture where creative work that brings discomfort is seen as a signal of potential, not a threat.
A creative concept that does not make us feel a slight tingle of unease when we see it is probably not disruptive enough to break through the noise.
However, that unease must be paired with the discipline of effectiveness, by holding ourselves accountable and asking ourselves the fundamental questions: Is it novel? Does it spark conversations? Is it aligned with the brand? Is it grounded in consumer insight? Is the communication clear and simple? Does it drive business results? We must take our work beyond the marketing noise by mastering creative risks for real results.
This is not a gamble on our brands or our livelihoods. It is about becoming true experts who recognise that safe work will go unnoticed.
This is the same creative finesse that saw the Saudi General Entertainment Authority take home seven wins at Cannes Lions 2025.
By choosing effectiveness over vanity and calculated risk over mediocrity, we stop being mere spenders and become the real contributors to our Kingdom’s growth demands.
By Mohammad Aljuhani, Senior Manager – Marketing & Communications
