By Integrating culture by intent, companies can create a strong sense of identity and purpose, foster employee engagement and loyalty, and ultimately drive performance and success.
Several positive impacts on building companies include stronger employee engagement, improved collaboration and teamwork, increased productivity and innovation, resilience and adaptability to name a few.
BPG kicked off its ‘Integrated by Intent workshop’ at the Fairmont in Ajman with a packed audience and focus on topics such as human-centric marketing, media transformation and principles of great partnerships to name a few.
Here are some of the highlights:
Avi Bhojani, Group CEO at BPG Group, said: “Whether you’re working in media, PR, advertising, branding or whether you’re working on a client versus others, we’re trying to make sure that we’re able to create winning teams, and we’re able to integrate seamlessly. We need to start trusting and respecting each other and our practices. The reality is that people like to work with people they can trust. And if we can build that relationship, bingo.”
Darius LaBelle, President at BPG, said: “I think it’s important to talk about two layers we have in the service business of CX. We have CX where we’re talking about our brand’s customers. That’s one level of CX, and probably the end of the funnel. But there’s another level for us. As agency people, which are our own customers, we need to act, behave and deliver CX to our customers, who are our marketing managers and our CMOs and others.”
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Sasan Saeidi, Chief Executive Officer- Wunderman Thompson New York & Global Client Leader- Coca-Cola, said: ” Expertise and client-centricity. I think these are important points that add to integration. One is client-centricity relationships. Authentic relationships, because if you have a great relationship with the clients, integration happens.
“Today’s marketing is all about three things. One is about perspective, which is to evolve and not stay in the past. It’s all around having a different perspective to move on. Inspiration to bring people and brands together to solve big problems. We have a lot of issues around the world, whether it’s famine, starvation or war, there’s a lot of issues that marketing and creativity can solve. And humility, always be humble, always act and work with empathy because there’s so much value in that.
Always start with delivering an exceptional brand experience. It always has to be a balance. We call it the magic and logic element. Nike is one of the best examples that I have seen through their transformative journey. The brand shoots out to address some of these social and community issues.”
Sunil John, Founder & Former President – Middle East at ASDA’A BCW, said: “Sometimes PR follows, sometimes creative leads, sometimes creatives follow and media leads. It doesn’t matter who leads. It’s somebody who has the sector experience and somebody who has the relationship. I think that’s where integration really works.
“The market’s changing, media is changing. There is a need for us to reinvent ourselves. We can make a difference. Scale doesn’t matter. That’s the truth of the matter. You know you can collaborate with so many different people and so many different agencies to come together.”
Mariagrazia De Angelis, Managing Director at Landor & Fitch MENA, said: “A great partnership has a positive impact on the client’s business, as well as our own business and creative reputation. But a partnership is only advisable if the desired outcome is bigger than what we can achieve individually. There are tremendous business opportunities for agencies offering integrated services and collaborating to achieve great results for clients.”
Ravi Rao, former CEO of GroupM MENA, said: “Traditionally, media agencies offered clients data- and tech-led solutions. However, there is a perceptible shift today with doubts whether this agency model is relevant for future needs. A significant number of clients plan to consolidate media, creative, data and technology requirements with a one-stop solution, blurring lines between teams and pushing media agencies to be more creative in their approach, whilst still riding on data-based solutions. This will further stimulate demand for integrated solutions.”
