Recently at one of our events a well known Turkish marketer was talking about their branding strategy for the Middle East. Having worked in the Middle East for over 5 years I believed his presentation was top notch, especially for all those companies that want to crack the lucrative Middle Eastern Markets.

For those that have never worked in the marketing industry in that region his presentation may have seemed a bit sexist, traditional and conservative. Wrong!

The first rule of post recession marketing is that your global marketing strategy should always be adapted to the regional markets. What has brilliantly worked in Serbia or Poland or even in the United Kingdom will definitely not work in the Middle East. Trust me on this.

So, as a brand what do you need to be aware of before you decide to break into the Middle Eastern markets:

1.   Choose a country

The Middle East is a region, not one country. Each country in the region has its own local traditions. If you ask me you should first test your products in one country and then think of going regional. Depending on your product UAE and Dubai is a good place to start. Although Dubai is considered the least conservative of all Middle Eastern markets and very much differs from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it is still the trend setter in the region. If your product makes it there, you are a step closer to cracking the other markets. This is one of the reasons why most of the big global brands have their regional headquarters in the UAE. Another great thing about the UAE is that most big PR and marketing agencies are also headquartered there so you will greatly benefit from local expertise. On top of this most of the regional TV stations also operate from Dubai or Abu Dhabi so your advertising campaigns will be seen across the region.

2.  Understand the local culture

The Middle East has its own culture where certain traditions and values need to be respected. Those that think the region is too conservative should definitely be left aside off your Middle Eastern expansion strategy. At the end of the day our job as marketers is not to judge the region or impose our own thinking but simply to make money there.  And the only way to make money there is to tailor your product to the region’s culture. Take MTV for example. In the US and Europe MTV is full of reality shows, profound language (although beeped) and lots of nudity. Now MTV is a cool brand so they still have to keep their coolness. They cannot go all the way conservative because that is simply not their brand. So what did they do? They emphasized on how cool Arabic music can be! For their launch they created these video spots where they concentrated on the importance of Arabic music but at the same time sold their concept of a cool brand.

See the result:

 3.  Understand the needs of local consumers

In order to understand the needs of local consumers you need to segment the different layers in the society. There are three main groups that are your potential markets in the Middle East:

  • Local population (In the UAE only 20% of the population is local, the rest are expats. This is actually one of the reasons why sometimes a product that can be huge in the UAE will simply not work in the Kingdom)
    • I would put here as a sub group the new up and coming locals that have studied abroad and are greatly influenced by western culture.
  • Expat population (these are westerners that temporarily work in the region. The myth is that they drive Ferrari and Porsche and live in huge mansions. True to a certain extent but not very much after the financial crisis)
  • Asian – mainly Indian, Philippino and Pakistani (Certain percentage are very well off but the bigger percentage is low paid workers that work in construction and retail)

(Now, all of these groups can be segmented into male and female and age etc. As a marketer you know how that goes. )

The first issue you may face is who do you target to? Do you target locals? Expats? Asians? Well, it depends on your product. Of course each product will have a certain target group depending on the price range etc.  Let’s do some industry specific examples.

– If you are a cosmetic company you need to have a clear segmentation of what target group your product is targeting.
Have you heard of Fair and Lovely? It is the number one whitening creme in the world. A lot of Asian and Arabs are using it to get their skin whitened. To a westerner their commercial may seem absurd but whitening crèmes are huge in the Middle East. If you work in cosmetics, you should definetly think of a whitening crème concept.

When it comes to food, each target group also has different food tastes but you should always concentrate on the needs of the family and how food keeps the family together.  You know having dinners together etc. My advice is that if you are a food and beverage company you target the local Arab population. Eating habits do not differ a lot from one country to another so you are safe. Of course you need to have the right product! Cadbury has done some amazing branding strategies in the Middle East: