Lara Mansour, Vice President – Brand, ADNOC GroupEvery morning, a marketer opens their laptop and asks themselves: “What am I really building here?” As we embrace 2025 as the UAE’s Year of Community, this question echoes louder than ever through our industry’s corridors. We’ve mastered the art of optimisation, conquered the realms of AI, and are predicting consumer behaviour with uncanny precision.
Yet in this race for technological supremacy, something profound keeps calling us back to our very roots.
The UAE’s Year of Community invites us to strengthen bonds, preserve our cultural heritage, and foster meaningful connections.
We have all been there – a room full of seasoned marketers falling silent as a creative shares a campaign concept that has the power to touch our very soul. It wasn’t the AI-generated insights that stopped conversations mid-sentence.
It was the simple, powerful truth at its core: a story that understood our people, our values, our shared dreams. In that moment, everyone remembers why they chose this path.
The Year of Community arrives at no better time, reminding us that beneath the algorithms and analytics lies marketing’s eternal truth: we are in the business of human connection. This isn’t about rejecting technology in any way – it’s about rediscovering its true purpose and using it to benefit humanity.
Our industry stands at a defining moment. The skills gap we face isn’t just technical – it’s much bigger than that. While we need professionals who can navigate AI tools, we also desperately need storytellers who can transform data into narratives that honour our heritage while embracing our future.
‘‘The algorithms can wait. Always remember to prioritise what makes your heart beat.”
This is where the Year of Community becomes our moral compass, guiding us to strengthen bonds while preserving the cultural essence that makes marketing so uniquely powerful. All the while, driving progress in everything that we do. Whether developing campaigns for global brands or local initiatives, this balance becomes critical.
We’ve seen how AI can optimise reach and engagement, but it’s the cultural insight that transforms a campaign from effective to unforgettable.
Think of our majlis traditions, where stories flow as naturally as breath, where wisdom passes between generations like precious heirlooms. This is the spirit we must bring to modern marketing – using technology to create a collective and safe space for authentic connection, but not to automate it completely away.
Our next generation of marketers shouldn’t just be data scientists; they must be cultural guardians, emotional translators, bridge builders – 100 per cent heart and soul.
For agencies as well as marketing departments, this means fundamentally reimagining how we develop talent. We need programmes that teach both the science of AI and the art of human understanding. Mentorship initiatives that pair digital expertise with cultural wisdom. Success metrics that value emotional resonance alongside click-through rates.
These programmes must be more than just training sessions – they should be incubators for a new kind of marketing professional. One who can harness the power of AI while maintaining the cultural sensitivity that makes marketing unique.
The Year of Community offers us a moment to reset and rebuild. To create marketing approaches that use technology not as a replacement for human insight, but as an amplifier of our natural ability to connect, understand, and inspire. It’s also our chance to develop professionals who are as fluent in cultural nuances as they are in coding.
This is more than a moment of change – it’s our true calling. Every brief we answer, every story we craft, ripples through our society’s fabric. The real question isn’t about what AI can do, but rather what we choose to do with it. Are we creating campaigns that simply reach people, or ones that truly touch them?
The very future of UAE marketing lies not in choosing between innovation and tradition, but in their sacred union. Together, we can pioneer an approach that’s technically brilliant yet still deeply soulful, global yet authentically Emirati.
To any marketer who has ever questioned their purpose: your instinct for human connection is your greatest strength. In this age of AI, your understanding of culture, your emotional intelligence, your ability to touch hearts – are the very foundations of marketing excellence.
The algorithms can wait. Always remember to prioritise what makes your heart beat. Because, in the end, our success won’t be measured by only the sophistication of our AI tools, but by the depth of the meaningful connections we create and the communities we build.
By Lara Mansour, Vice President – Brand, ADNOC Group
