{"id":215,"date":"2018-12-26T20:11:13","date_gmt":"2018-12-26T20:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stage.omg.com\/mena\/omd-menas-nadim-samara-in-search-of-flawless-execution\/"},"modified":"2024-09-19T19:09:39","modified_gmt":"2024-09-19T19:09:39","slug":"omd-menas-nadim-samara-in-search-of-flawless-execution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/omnicommedia.com\/mena\/omd-menas-nadim-samara-in-search-of-flawless-execution\/","title":{"rendered":"OMD MENA’s Nadim Samara: In Search of Flawless Execution"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published by Arab Ad<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nadim Samara has taken on the mantle of chief executive for OMD across the entire MENA region. He talks consistency of product and the importance of purpose with ArabAd.<\/p>\n

The office may be the same but the role has changed significantly. Nadim Samara, once the khaki jacket toting chief executive of OMD UAE, has swapped the UAE for MENA, bringing a new level of accountability and pressure to his professional career. Not that you\u2019d guess from talking to him, such is his affability and composure.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have that four-letter acronym in your title you\u2019re responsible for them,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t want these four letters to be just a brand. I want to own them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Samara stepped up to the plate in early October, tasked with leading a network of 15 offices and managing more than 200 clients. His challenge? To drive the network\u2019s transformation and to better respond to current and emerging client needs.<\/p>\n

Much of the hard work on a UAE level has already been done. The agency\u2019s service offering has been strengthened, a new breed of talent brought in, a new agile structure created, and expertise in tech, analytics and performance has been scaled up. The end result has been the creation of what Samara describes as a business performance company, not a traditional media agency. The job now is to roll that out regionally and to ensure consistency of service.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe purpose of this appointment, or this role, isn\u2019t a fix-it job. It\u2019s a grow-it job,\u201d says Samara, who is sitting comfortably in his Dubai Media City office. \u201cThat\u2019s important for us to understand. There are no market weaknesses: there are market opportunities and there\u2019s a network opportunity first and foremost.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of priority, it\u2019s the consistency of the product, it\u2019s the consistency of the leadership team, and at the same time (which is an oxymoron) it\u2019s the specialisation of each market and the specialisation of each leadership team. I want to make sure that we have this intersection of consistency \u2013 to make sure that you get one version of OMD across 15 offices \u2013 and the bespoke mentality of each market. That character, that culture that comes out in a positive way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Samara is one of the industry\u2019s more likeable characters. He talks of pain and suffering as only a true\u00a0Star Wars<\/em>\u00a0geek would, referencing Yoda\u2019s terminology for training like a Jedi, and views data as sexy. He uses words such as extrapolate and talks finance with the best of them (\u201cWhen OMD is seen as the investment banker for brands, whether it\u2019s on the short or long term, you need to think like an investment banker\u201d).<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u201cIf you have that four-letter acronym in your title you\u2019re responsible for them. I don\u2019t want these four letters to be just a brand. I want to own them.\u201d<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He has been with OMD for 17 years, beginning his career as a media manager in 2002 and working his way up the corporate ladder via a five-year stint at OMD in the US. Since returning to the UAE in 2012 he has helped build OMD into an agency that currently sits second in RECMA\u2019s agency rankings for the Middle East and North Africa. For the first half of 2018 it was rated number one in pitch performance by Comvergence and has submitted gross billings of just over $1 billion to RECMA for 2017, up from $931 million in 2016.<\/p>\n

Challenges remain, however, not least the level and frequency of uncertainty in the market, while still being labelled a media agency is of concern.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more we are treated as an agency \u2013 we take something with the right hand, add our fees or subtract our commission, and then give it away with the left hand \u2013 then that\u2019s something that I think is going to make us obsolete,\u201d says Samara. \u201cThis intermediary role is something that\u2019s vague, that doesn\u2019t show value. The second you show you\u2019re providing value through a unique proposition and you have a vested interest in performing for a brand, which will also have an affect on your own performance, then you start to have a viable and sustainable role.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think that purpose is yet to be defined. It’s very important to talk about purpose, and when we sit in a pitch or a client meeting, I want our clients to know that our purpose is one and the same – which is to create work that works\u201d<\/p>\n

What does work?<\/p>\n

\u201cPersonalisation at scale,\u201d replies Samara. \u201cThe fact that personalisation at scale is a combination of creative and media is actually something that\u2019s working for our clients, and OMD\u2019s structure is designed for that. In fact, it is harder and harder to de-couple creative, technology, distribution, measurement, analytics and the many other disciplines within marketing.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd something that I have driven for a handful of accounts but should be scaled out is \u2018flawless execution\u2019,\u201d he adds. \u201cIt\u2019s something that I would love to be able to claim with full confidence, but we\u2019re not quite there yet. Every time the rubber hits the road it needs to be 100 per cent. But we\u2019re human, there are some errors, and we\u2019re in a very complicated infrastructure when it comes to digital. But we should get to a point where we have flawless execution.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

It’s very important to talk about purpose, and when we sit in a pitch or a client meeting, I want our clients to know that our purpose is one and the same – which is to create work that works.<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Samara is not alone of course. He is supported by Wissam Najjar, who leads OMD\u2019s offices outside North Africa, and Eric Bequin, who heads its luxury practice and the three offices in the Maghreb region. Samara himself reports to Elie Khouri, chief executive of Omnicom Media Group MENA.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a level of frustration that in 2018 AI is just an acronym,\u201d he says, discussing the need for further transformation. \u201cMachine learning \u2013 or ML \u2013 is just a term. That\u2019s the transformation that we should go after. Not specifically these two terms, that\u2019s just the tip of the iceberg, but there\u2019s a lot in that belly of the iceberg that is low hanging fruit.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example, ad tech solutions are now foundational to every investment made on measurable media, augmented with new focal areas, such as what we are labelling as \u2018CreTech\u2019 (technology that further enables creative and content solutions) revolving around dynamic creative optimisation, rapid response management, on-ground\/online real-time activation synergies, and so forth. Most of this is common practice. However, it is not systematically scaled to cater to the consumer demands each brand deserves. Now that our 15 offices are working in unison for 2019, it\u2019s a key focal point to further add to our integrated structure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that we\u2019re intersecting our business performance company mentality with our portfolio of integrated products, all under one roof and with one goal, is something that will help us grow,\u201d he adds. \u201cAnd I know that we\u2019re structured in a way that we\u2019re very resilient; we\u2019re very agile, and we\u2019re very integrated. And when you have these three things in you as part of you\u2019re DNA, then you come out on top.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published by Arab Ad. Nadim Samara has taken on the mantle of chief executive for OMD across the entire MENA region. He talks consistency of product and the importance of purpose with ArabAd. The office may be the same but the role has changed significantly. Nadim Samara, once the khaki jacket […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,65,63],"tags":[16,20,21],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-newsnews","category-mena","category-news","tag-mena","tag-nadim-samara","tag-omd"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omnicommedia.com\/mena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omnicommedia.com\/mena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omnicommedia.com\/mena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omnicommedia.com\/mena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omnicommedia.com\/mena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/omnicommedia.com\/mena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omnicommedia.com\/mena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omnicommedia.com\/mena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omnicommedia.com\/mena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omnicommedia.com\/mena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omnicommedia.com\/mena\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}