Ali Rez, Chief Creative Officer at Impact BBDO, was awarded the Creative Leader of the Year honour at Campaign Middle East’s Agency of the Year Middle East awards in December 2024.
This award aimed to recognise Creative Directors or Chief Creative Officers who have overseen the best work through 2024. The judges shortlisted the finalists and chose the award winner based on the individual’s contribution to staff development initiatives, particularly their involvement in nurturing young talent, and how their work has contributed to the role or image of advertising in the region.
Impact BBDO’s Rez shared his thoughts after lifting the Creative Leader of the Year trophy for the second consecutive year at Campaign Middle East’s Agency of the Year Middle East Awards.
What does winning this award mean to you?
It means that I’m very fortunate to be working with the best in the region: the best creative team, the best brand partners, and the best possible leadership.
Can you share some strategies that contributed to your success?
This is a shared win, so the biggest contributing strategy to its success is the environment that nurtures and keeps the creative spirit at Impact BBDO aflame. Other than that, it’s the team’s philosophy to continuously produce bold work.
What is your proudest moment from 2024 and what’s your key takeaway from it?
There are a couple of very proud moments in 2024: the first is receiving the MENA Network of the Year award at Cannes Lions for the sixth year in a row. This speaks volumes about how consistently Impact BBDO produces the best work in the region – there is no bigger show to validate this. Our key takeaway from this is to keep creativity at the forefront of everything we do.
The second memorable moment of 2024 was the launch of the global campaign “Bring Your Impossible” for the UAE, one that every single person in the agency took immense pride in. This was a brilliant example of an incredible collaboration between an agency and a brand that resulted in spectacular work.
Has the business case for investing in creativity and disruptive strategies strengthened in 2024?
As the cliché goes: more than ever. With increasingly homogenised content, and a rapidly growing rate at which material is consumed, it is going to be more and more imperative to rely on creativity and disruption to break through and stand out. The basics have always been the same.
How do you envision the demand for cost, speed, and quality being balanced in the months to come?
I believe this question has been asked at every major juncture of advertising, and somehow it always balances out. AI needless to say is going to be a major player in creating efficiencies in the months to come, but quality will always find a way, regardless of the challenges put up against it. One just has to be committed to delivering quality.
How can marketing be a force for good and what will it take for brands and agencies to truly make a difference?
Authenticity and relevance. To truly make a difference, brands and agencies will need skin in the game and be completely involved. There is business value in this approach too – all sorts of data confirm this. We have had a tremendous run finding the golden intersection of doing good while bringing enormous success for the brand, these two things work together perfectly.
