Dany Aouad, Managing Director – Saudi Arabia, TBWARAAD.TBWA\RAAD Saudi Arabia’s Dany Aouad on rising client expectations, building stronger account talent, and why Saudi brands need to embrace real disruption and set trends.
How have Saudi client expectations changed in the last two years?
The Saudi market has accelerated tremendously, and so have client expectations. The shift from traditional advertising services to tech-enabled, data-driven, culturally intelligent partnerships is no longer a differentiator. It’s the new normal.
Clients now expect agencies to blend creative excellence with analytical rigour, cultural wisdom with strategic vision, all delivered with real-time operational agility. They want partners who can capitalise on trends before it peaks, pivot a campaign overnight, and do it all without sacrificing strategic depth. Digital is no longer just a channel, it’s the foundation of every strategy. Social, programmatic, mobile-first, Al-driven targeting: these were once “nice to haves”.
Today, they’re table stakes.
What are the key ingredients to creative Saudi work that is on par with global work?
The talent is here, the cultural insight is rich, the ambition is real, and our clients are hungry to push boundaries. The formula isn’t complicated: pair genuine cultural understanding with smart strategy, invest in exceptional people and production, and commit to both innovation and craft simultaneously. That’s when the magic happens.
We are not here to imitate global work, that’s the easy route. Our real competitive advantage is finding a creative voice that is unapologetically, authentically ours. Saudi work earns its place on the global stage not by chasing trends elsewhere, but by setting them from here.
The industry needs to do more to support…
The next generation of account talent. When I started as an Account Executive in 1996, the role was the nerve centre of the agency. You were expected to understand everything: creative, production, media, strategy. It made you sharp, versatile, indispensable. Today, that role risks becoming a coordination function.
And that’s a loss we can’t afford. Account executives must be developed into strategic consultants, professionals who bring business intelligence, market analysis, and proactive ideas to every client conversation. It’s our responsibility as agency leaders to invest in them and build their multidimensional capabilities.
Because when they grow, so do our clients, and so do we.
Brands need to be braver about …
Disruption. Real disruption. Not the word, the act.
At TBWA, Disruption® isn’t a rallying cry. It’s a rigorous, proven way of identifying the conventions holding a brand back and breaking through them with clarity, boldness and meaning. And right now, in Saudi Arabia, the opportunity to apply it has never been greater.
Vision 2030 is rewriting the rules of this market at extraordinary speed. New sectors, new audiences, new cultural codes. The brands that will own the future here are the ones willing to challenge their own assumptions, to stop asking “what has always worked?” and start asking “what has never been done?”
By Dany Aouad, Managing Director, TBWA\RAAD Saudi Arabia.
