Title: Managing Director, Havas Creative UAE
Years in the role: <1 year
Years in the industry: More than 20 years
Years in the Middle East region: 16 years
Other roles / board memberships: Former SVP of Growth, Havas Middle East; Leadership across new business, village integration and transformation projects
Power Essay: From gatekeepers to orchestrators – the new creative playbook
Creative agencies are stuck in the wrong role. For decades, they acted as the gatekeepers of creativity, deciding what got made, who got heard, and how ideas reached the world. But culture doesn’t work that way anymore. The most powerful ideas are born in collaboration: with clients who bring business truth; creators who bring cultural credibility; and communities who bring immediacy and scale. Agencies that hold on to the gatekeeper role risk designing for juries, not audiences. Those that thrive will learn to orchestrate, not to guard.
This is the trust gap clients feel today. Agencies promise collaboration but hold onto hierarchies. They talk about agility but deliver theatre. They celebrate culture but participate from the sidelines. Clients aren’t asking for more over-engineered decks or award-bait campaigns; they’re asking for ideas that are faster, sharper and built with them, not for them.
Co-creation is not a buzzword. It’s an operating system.
Agencies must become orchestrators: curating the right mix of voices and disciplines; designing the stage for collaboration; and scaling co-creation into a competitive advantage. This demands humility, openness and a willingness to let go of control in order to build relevance.
But orchestration can’t happen in a vacuum. It needs two conditions to thrive.
“Clients aren’t asking for more over-engineered decks or award-bait campaigns; they’re asking for ideas that are faster, sharper and built with them, not for them.”
First, financial health.
Over-servicing and under-pricing don’t fuel collaboration, they kill it. Fragile agencies can’t invest in the tools, people, or partnerships required for co-creation. Stability is not a constraint on creativity; it is what gives teams the energy and space to build it.
Second, commercial flexibility.
Rigid structures make co-creation impossible. Orchestration requires fluid teams, modular offerings and adaptive partnerships. Agencies must be able to scale up or down quickly, shift models mid-brief, and experiment with new ways of working. Flexibility isn’t a concession to clients; it’s the resilience that keeps creativity alive in disruption.
Together, these shifts form a new playbook for creative agencies: orchestrate creativity, protect the conditions for it, and build the structures that make it scalable.
In a world where AI can generate outputs in seconds, the value of agencies won’t be measured by how quickly they produce but by how well they orchestrate – blending talent, culture and craft into ideas that resonate. The agencies that survive won’t be those guarding gates or chasing validation, but those that clients trust to orchestrate ideas with speed, credibility and impact. That is the new creative playbook.
Highlight of the last year
As SVP of Growth, I helped drive Havas Middle East’s Village integration, strengthening collaboration across creative, media, PR and content. This approach unlocked new business momentum, securing high-profile wins and deepening client partnerships, while proving that integrated, client-centric models can deliver both commercial growth and creative credibility.
Rapid fire
What the industry needs to talk more about:
Credibility and trust.
What the industry needs to talk less about:
Awards obsession.
If you could change one thing in the blink of an eye, you would …
Have clients and agencies trade roles for a week.
What’s one thing about you that would surprise your team?
My passion for sports and health.
What mobile application can you not live without?
Pinterest.
What word / phrase do people remember you for using the most?
“Let’s be pragmatic.”
What’s one local / regional tradition that you love the most?
Being welcomed with dates and Arabic coffee, a simple but meaningful gesture of hospitality.
If you could choose any two people, currently alive, in the world to share a meal with you, who would it be?
Jose Andres, Chef and founder of World Central Kitchen, and Rafa Nadal.
What’s your top word of advice for Gen Z and Gen Alpha?
Nothing comes for free.
What’s your go-to comfort food?
Bread.
What’s your favourite ad from the past 12 months?
‘The Wait’ by Heinz.
