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DUBAI: Creative advertising network TBWA and its parent company Omnicom are looking forward to increasing their presence in Saudi Arabia, said Troy Ruhanen, global CEO of TBWA.

“We are committed to truly building a future there (Saudi Arabia),” which includes working with more local clients and promoting Saudi talent, he said during a recent visit to the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates Emirates.

Starting January 1, 2025, Ruhanen will serve as global CEO of the newly formed organization Omnicom Advertising Group, which brings together the group's creative and advertising agencies and networks BBDO, DDB, TBWA, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Zimmerman and others.

As he prepares for the new role, Ruhanen said he is eager to explore the (Saudi) market from both perspectives: TBWA wants to close out the year and Omnicom Advertising Group wants to explore opportunities for next year.

As a sign of its commitment to the Kingdom, Omnicom announced in June this year the establishment of a regional headquarters for the Middle East in Riyadh, bringing together ten Omnicom agency brands, including BBDO, DDB, TBWA, OMD, PHD, Hearts and Science and Fleishman Hillard.

Currently, TBWA has a mix of local and international talent in Saudi Arabia, partly due to global clients because “there are people who are more familiar with those global clients right now,” Ruhanen said.

However, he added that the network plans to “build a very locally informed, local leadership base.”

“We know this is our destiny and it’s just a matter of making sure we plan ourselves and get to the right place.”

TBWA has several proprietary platforms and entities such as Backslash, which describes itself as a cultural intelligence entity; NEXT, a global innovation practice driven by analytics and strategy; and the Collective AI Platform to harness the power of artificial intelligence for employees and customers.

Launched in June, Collective AI is a suite of generative AI services based on partnerships with companies like Microsoft, Adobe and Google.

“AI is not intended to be an answer machine,” but “a catalyst for original thinking,” Ruhanen said.

The platform has been built by injecting various strategies, case studies etc to make it a “more informed practice”, he said.

Regarding AI adoption, Ruhanen said that there are some “mature companies” that understand the current limitations of AI, such as regulation and privacy, and there are others that “want to talk about how they do all of these things. “all at once.”

TBWA's priority is to protect its customers while experimenting within legal boundaries to see what is possible, he said.

The discussion about AI tends to be dominated by the idea of ​​efficiency and speeding up the creative process, which is the wrong view, he said.

He added: “It's about enabling a better, more accurate and more informed way of working that gives us the best space to develop our creative minds and develop original solutions that no one has ever seen before.”

“It can’t be about an efficiency mentality; It has to be about a growth mindset.”

Addressing concerns about AI's threat to human talent, Ruhanen recalled a 1994 article in technology magazine WIRED titled “Is advertising dead?” There have been several such articles over the years that have examined the role of advertising and agencies in an increasingly digital world.

However, advertising agencies have “grown tremendously” over the past three decades, he said.

AI will not replace human talent or creative agencies, but will “transform the way we work and the skills we need,” meaning there will be a shift “from a service mindset to a much more strategic mindset.” said Ruhanen.

“A lot of people predicted what the future of this business would be, and they were completely wrong for many years,” he said.