With the relaunch of its operations in Saudi Arabia, TBWA\Raad is not only looking for growth but to forge a reputation for incredible, disruptive work.
“You know why I’m here?” asks Dan Leach, the managing director of TBWA\Raad Saudi Arabia. “I’ve got so many open roles that I need to fill that one of the main reasons is talent. Yes, networking is a big thing, but the priority for me right now is talent and building the business from a resourcing perspective, and specifically Saudi talent.”
The two of us are sitting in the lobby lounge of the Crowne Plaza RDC, where, in the convention centre next door, the second edition of the Athar Festival is unfolding. Like every other agency in the kingdom, TBWA\Raad is struggling to find and secure talent in a rapidly expanding market, where advertising frequently plays second fiddle to the glamour of big tech or the lure of creative entrepreneurship.
“I want a Saudi team,” says Leach, previously TBWA\Raad’s managing director for growth in Dubai. “I don’t want to import people from the UK or Lebanon, but it’s tough. We’ve made a very conscious effort to hire either Saudis or people who have lived and spent a lot of time in Saudi Arabia and understand the culture and understand the people. What’s shifting slightly from a talent perspective is the emergence of a new generation of Saudi creative talent. I had two interviews yesterday with a content creator and an app developer. They were 18-year-old kids but I was inspired. They’re still at university but I was like: ‘Come work with us’. This new generation don’t think: ‘Who can I work for?’ But ‘what can I do?’”
Reda Raad, the agency’s chief executive, established TBWA\Raad’s offices in the kingdom back in 2002 and helped to guide the agency’s expansion strategy. Back then there were two offices – one in Riyadh and one in Jeddah. A partnership with Fullstop led to the creation of TBWA\Fullstop in 2017, but that affiliation eventually came to an end. Now Leach, who took on the responsibility of re-establishing TBWA\Raad’s independent presence in the country in March, is overseeing the growth of the agency’s operation in Riyadh, which will act as a hub to service the rest of the kingdom.
“There’s so much opportunity here. I’m having meetings every day, we’ve got RFPs coming in, and we’re working on amazing projects. Things are moving at 1,000 miles an hour. "
The office opened just before Eid al-Fitr, which gave Leach the time and space (through Eid and the summer) to “re-lay the foundations of who we are as a business and who we are as an agency” before the post-summer rush kicked in. At the time of writing, about a dozen people worked from the Riyadh office, with a presence in Jeddah and teams often on the ground in NEOM, one of the agency’s key Saudi clients.
“The ambition is to grow the business and grow as the kingdom grows,” says Leach. “There’s so much opportunity here. I’m having meetings every day, we’ve got RFPs coming in, and we’re working on amazing projects. Things are moving at 1,000 miles an hour. The challenge I now face is trying to keep up with the pace, and trying to make sure that we’re staffing up at the right levels, at the right pace, and we’re able to continue that high level of work that TBWA is known for around the world. It’s like building a plane and trying to fly it at the same time.”
None of this is made any easier by Riyadh itself. A congested, crane-filled city in the throes of exponential growth, it is home to an ever-increasing number of regional and international agencies drawn to the gold rush that is Saudi Arabia (see separate article). Leach himself has taken time to settle, readjusting to life on a sometimes chaotic frontier, but excited to “work on the kind of stuff that’s really going to define the future in the region and possibly the world”.
“We’re not new to the kingdom but, as a sort of a relaunch of the agency here, there is greater emphasis on me and on the agency to grow and to bring in new business. We’re quite lucky in that we’ve been operating in Saudi for years, which gives us an opportunity to grow and we can be quite considered about the sort of clients we want to work with. And if I think about what’s our strategy for growth, it isn’t just about bringing more clients. It’s about bringing opportunities to do disruptive work. And work that is going to be seen locally as powerful, but also globally as powerful.”
Interestingly, TBWA\Raad made a return to the awards scene by entering this year’s Athar Festival Awards, having stepped back from – or reduced its entries to – the likes of the Dubai Lynx and Cannes Lions in recent years. The day after our conversation, the agency picked up two golds in the best empowerment campaign and best transformation campaign categories.
“I remember two years ago, we had a big management meeting, and we were talking about what’s important to us as a business, what’s important to us as an industry,” explains Leach. “And we felt that awards were maybe overshadowing what was really important. And what is important to us is our clients. We decided to refocus. We changed how we operate to ensure our clients are front and centre.”
Has not entering awards had a negative impact?
“No, but such a decision certainly raises questions,” replies Leach. “But if you look at our track record, not from an awards perspective, but from a client retention perspective and client performance perspective, to us that’s what matters. And we’re quite comfortable as an agency not being on stage as frequently, as long as our clients are happier than they were the year before.”
Of the work that has been created since Leach’s arrival, two campaigns stand out, he says.
The first is NEOM’s Saudi National Day campaign, which was rolled out in September, and the second was the launch of the Nissan Patrol in Riyadh under the ‘Defy Ordinary’ brand platform. The latter, believes Leach, is representative of what’s possible on a global scale – a campaign that was originally born out of Saudi Arabia and has expanded worldwide.
“We came up with ‘Defy Ordinary’ as a local and regional brand campaign. That work is now being taken out to the world. That’s the sort of work we aim to do. We want to do work that lives here, because we want to work with local brands and build them up. But we also want to work with brands that are outside and want to come in – and brands that are here and want to go out to the world. There’s a lot of discussion about whether global agencies have the cultural understanding to bring brands into the kingdom. I would say yes, they do. But I also think a big part of the conversation is missing, which is that, with the growth and transformation of Saudi, there are opportunities for brands that traditionally only live in Saudi to go out into the world.”
"I just want to be known for doing the best creative work. Do I want to be the biggest agency? No. I want to have that reputation of doing incredible, disruptive work."
Nevertheless, attracting world-class Saudi talent remains a considerable challenge, as does the pace of transformation itself. Still, two-thirds of the way through his inaugural year, Leach is certain of what would make him happy come next March.
“I’m going to go back to the very first conversation I had with Reda when we talked about this,” replies Leach. “We talked about what sort of agency are we going to grow, and I said I just want to be known for doing the best creative work. Do I want to be the biggest agency? No. I want to have that reputation of doing incredible, disruptive work. It’s something that TBWA has done for decades around the world, and that’s really what I’m passionate about. I’m an ex-creative director, I love creative work, I’m not an admin person at all. Despite my job title, I’m not a management person either. I’m a creative person. And I want to look back on the year and go: ‘Wow, we created all of these great campaigns.’ That would make me happy.”
