Have we made ‘local’ the answer before asking the question? There’s a new rule in Saudi’s marketing industry: local wins.
What we say and how we say it. Who we show. What we do. What we stand for.
It is no longer just a creative choice; it is an expectation. The agency has to be local. The talent has to be Saudi. The voice has to feel authentic, rooted and real.
And to be clear, this shift is not only valid; it is necessary. For years, Saudi was spoken about more than it was spoken from. Now, finally, the narrative is owned by the people living it.
Some of the most nuanced strategic thinking in the market today is coming from Saudi planners who are able to both live the culture and step outside of it. That combination is powerful and irreplaceable.
But somewhere along the way, we have quietly built a new assumption. That local equals better. Full stop. And that is where things get a bit uncomfortable.
Because if you look specifically at strategy, the discipline that is supposed to question everything, we might be overcorrecting.
Here is the slightly controversial question: Is some of the most interesting strategic thinking about Saudi today coming from people who did not grow up here?
Not because they ‘know better’ but because they do not know anything at all.
A good strategist is not defined by what they know. They are defined by what they are willing to question. And familiarity, while powerful, can also be blinding.
When you’ve lived somewhere your whole life, certain behaviours stop being behaviours. They simply become habit. You don’t interrogate them. You don’t unpack them. You don’t even notice them.
Why do people gather the way they do? Why is a mall not just a mall? Why does family presence change how brands speak? Why does subtlety sometimes outperform boldness? Why does humour land differently here?
A local strategist might instinctively know the answer. A curious outsider will ask ‘why?’ five times. In that gap between instinct and interrogation is where interesting strategy often lives.
But curiosity is the dividing line. Without it, outside perspective becomes a liability. An expat planner who lacks curiosity does not question the culture, they simplify it.
They flatten it into familiar shortcuts such as tradition versus modernity, old versus new, conservative versus progressive. They mistake observation for understanding, and stereotypes for insight. They see surface signals and call them truths. That kind of thinking is just as limiting as unchallenged familiarity, if not more.
This is not about expats replacing Saudis. That would be a terrible idea, and frankly, a step backwards. You cannot build meaningful communication in Saudi without Saudi voices shaping it.
But the inverse is also true. If everyone in the room shares the same cultural assumptions, you risk creating work that is correct but not insightful – safe but not sharp.
We have all seen it. Campaigns that tick every cultural box, feature the right faces, say the right lines and yet feel strangely flat. They over index on symbolism. They explain culture instead of revealing something about it. The work looks Saudi, but it does not feel observed. That is often a strategy problem, not a creative one.
Because strategy’s job is to find tension, and tension requires distance. It requires someone in the room to say, “Wait, that thing everyone is taking for granted, what if that is actually the insight?”
Sometimes, that person is the one who does not fully understand why everyone is nodding. Sometimes, it is the one who knows the culture deeply but chooses to question it anyway. The strongest strategy departments in Saudi are not the most local or the most international. They are the ones where both coexist, sometimes uncomfortably.
Where one voice says, “This is how it works.” And another responds, “But why does it work like that?” So, maybe, the conversation should not be about choosing between local and expat. It should be about resisting the idea that one perspective is enough.
The risk is not getting ‘Saudi’ wrong anymore; it is getting it right in a way that says nothing new.
By Roupen Markossian, Senior Strategist, Interesting Times
