Campaign Middle East

Industry Snapshot with Accelerate ME Online’s Patrick Lahoud

Patrick Lahoud, Managing Director, Accelerate ME Online.

HOW IS THE AGENCY MODEL CHANGING, AND WHY?
Clients’ needs and expectations, just like consumers’, are changing. So in order to meet those expectations, we have no choice but to evolve and change in order to stay relevant.
Nowadays, we are leaning more towards delivering integrated and complex strategies to our clients that include earned and paid campaigns, influencer marketing, personalised content, offline activities, events and more.
Not to forget the new direction of continuously measuring and analysing data and results in real-time. We are deploying our efforts in detailed reports to see which channels meet our objectives the most, where we should invest more in our upcoming campaigns, and so on.

HOW IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH CLIENTS AND OTHER AGENCIES CHANGING?
The relationships between the brands and agencies are now more important than ever. We are more transparent and working-hand-in-hand in creating this synergy to enhance creativity, swiftness and effectiveness, all in favour of delivering the best results.

WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES FACING THE INDUSTRY?
To keep up with the ever-changing scene of updates, tools, platforms and everything in between, agencies are investing a lot of time in learning, while multitasking on several other projects.
Clients’ expectations are getting higher day by day, and keeping them is getting harder and harder. Although getting new clients is crucial to growth, our challenge lies in maintaining our existing ones.

WHAT ADVANCES ARE YOU MOST EXCITED ABOUT IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS?
The coming years will be more about personalisation, specially for e-commerce to provide better customer experience. Artificial intelligence taking over the digital world and the rise of programmatic advertising are also exciting advances that we have already started implementing.

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