At Campaign Middle East’s first Agency of the Year awards, Create Group took home the award for Digital Agency of the year.
We had a chat with Tom Otton, CEO of Create Group about the strategic importance of digital touchpoints.
Tell us about your journey to the award.
Over the last two years, we have focused on sharpening our integrated offering while pulling on a decade of delivery experience in content, social, web and data. In doing so, we refocused on our core strength of effectively bridging strategy and delivery at scale for global brands and government clients. Our foundational value of putting our team first has never been tested more than it has over the past three years but we firmly believe that our relentless focus on our community has allowed us to build a workplace that the best talent want to be part of – and our clients undoubtedly see value from it. Coming out of the pandemic, we really took the time to listen to what our clients needed. While it rapidly evolved, it allowed us to ensure we were adding real value when and where it was needed most. It also means that we found our market fit which resulted in growing our team from 75 to 200, opening two regional offices and becoming the strategic digital partner to many of the region’s most impactful players.
How will the award help your agency to navigate forward in the industry?
The award won’t change our focus but it certainly helps in benchmarking for potential clients and supports our goal of continuing to attract top talent from the local, regional and international markets. All the agencies work incredibly hard to deliver great work for their clients and whilst that is often the focus of awards, it is also great to see consideration for the businesses behind the work.
How are your customers’ demands changing?
The strategic importance of digital touchpoints for our clients has been rapidly increasing. Their demands on the type and quality of output have followed suit, which has changed our industry significantly. Simply put, more is expected of us strategically when we are talking to a nation or promoting a city to the world. There’s a need to be data-driven with insight-led creatives that instantly grabs a consumer’s dwindling attention span. In addition, we must be clear about how this ties back to communications and business objectives and we must have the data to show it.
Campaign Middle East celebrated the best minds in advertising, marketing and media at the Agency of the Year Middle East awards 2022. View all the winners here.
Campaign also runs Agency of the Year in the UK, Asia-Pacific and the US, and a global scheme, the Global Agency of the Year Awards, which is now open for entries.
