Multi-billion dollar advice from Rambling Hal to all bloggers on casualPR

Attention bloggers, here is an interesting multi-billion piece of advice from Rambling Hal as she tells us more about herself and her blog, check it out!

Exclusive interview with Sha3teely on casualPR

Interesting interview with Sha3teely on casualPR, worth checking it out

Exclusive interview with Mazen Al-Ali on casualPR

Check out the interview with Mazen Al-Ali on casualPR; he blogs, he sings and he shoots some nice photos check it out!

Exclusive interview with Hala Taha on casualPR

Check this interesting interview with Hala Taha on casualPR!

Exclusive interview with Moey on casualPR

I ran an interesting interview with Moey on casualPR, check it out!

Exclusive interview with Amre Husseini

Amre Husseini, Director of Publicis Graphics Jordan and Founder of Madison Holdings (Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, Oman, Kazakhstan and Sudan) tells us about his group’s growth and expansion.

Q. Kindly provide a brief intro about yourself.
I’m 33 years old, I am the director of Publicis Graphics Jordan, a company that was established on April 15, 2001. I am father to two daughters, Aya 6 and Haya 1, about 22 kilos overweight and not working enough to get back in shape. I graduated in December of 1994 with 2 majors, business administration / marketing and economics from Southern Oregon University and my first experience in advertising was on the media sales side with Capital Cities first in Oregon and then in California.

Q. Tell us about Publicis Graphics Group in Jordan, and your proudest achievements?
Publicis Graphics Group in Jordan consists of 2 companies, Publicis Graphics (the brand agency) and ZOptimedia Jordan (the media buying unit), both entities have the exact same partnership structure, being owned 51% by Publicis Graphics Holdings, 40% by Haytham Khaled Dahleh and 9% by myself. Publicis Graphics Jordan, as noted earlier was established in 2001 and ZOptimedia was established in 2003. Both are considered among the top two agencies in their respective categories as per IPSOS STAT monitoring figures.

My proudest achievement? Is family. On a personal front my proudest achievement is creating a family with the love of three women, (the third being my wife) and making sure that I provide for them a secure and comfortable lifestyle. On a professional front it is also family. 6 years ago Publicis Graphics started as 4 people and today between Publicis Graphics and ZOptimedia we are a family of 80 persons and don’t get me wrong its not the growth that I am most proud of, it is the maintenance of that family and open door spirit that I love!

Q. You’ve succeeded in building up a multi-discipline group in Jordan, now including eWorks, Madison Events and others. Is that a sign of the market maturity?
First to clarify a misconception that has been created in the market, Madison Group is a separate entity from Publicis Graphics and ZenithOptimedia and neither entity owns shares in the other, they are just “affiliated” or “aligned” for use of a better word. Madison Group is owned by 2 private investors in addition to Haytham Dahleh and myself. Madison Group is the owner of advertising related entities in Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, Oman, Kazakhstan and Sudan. Madison entities in Jordan include Madison Events (our new baby), Headline Public Relations Jordan, EWorks Jordan and soon Brand Dialogue Jordan.

The creation of these entities was based on the rapidly maturing Jordanian market and the demand for specialization. The marketers of Jordan are getting more demanding and they are requiring greater emphasis on specific tools of their total marketing communications requirements and for that reason we specialized. Therewith you can allocate the category specific talents to handle the detailed and specific requirements of the client, either independently or more commonly holistically; wherein you get all the entities working together to create a holistic marketing communications solution for the client.

Q. What’s your view on the levels of creativity of Jordanian ad agencies, compared to the region?
I am very proud of the fact that I am one of the few that still believes in the abilities of the Jordanian creative talent. It is for that reason that I have insisted on having Jordanians leading our creative force at the agency. Some may argue that bringing in the foreigner will help develop Jordanian talents, but my personal experience allows me to disagree with this argument as my ten years in the local industry have shown me that the foreign and experienced talents tend to prefer to take the credit for themselves and tend not to share and develop the young Jordanian creative minds working for them.

That being said, I think we are at a healthy position, creatively in Jordan. The challenge to me isn’t to the agency to be more creative, the challenge to me, (excuse my aggressiveness) is to the client; to allow the agency to be more creative. Each of Jordan’s leading agencies have in their own way allowed for their creative departments to be regionally and internationally exposed and our creative people are drooling at the opportunity to push the creative envelope and only need clients to loosen the grips while resting easy that agencies will respect culture, tradition and the need to have communication that delivers a clear cut message.

Q. You’ve spearheaded the expansion of your advertising services into neighboring markets, including Oman, Sudan and others through Madison Holdings. Tell us more about that.
As stated before, this is not a PG exercise, this is just 4 independent investors who have seen an opportunity in emerging markets, under the Madison name. We are quite confident that we can export Jordanian marketing talent, rather than importing foreign talent into Jordan and guess what: We are succeeding, we are a no BS agency and don’t like to beat around the bush to get clients, we’d rather go into foreign markets define the problem, understand the market and make recommendations that we are accountable for.

This process has been very successful for us in numerous non Jordanian markets and Madison is expanding today and we are committed as we grow to develop those who join us and work with us. Madison employees have an average age of 28 and that tells you that the success isn’t based on years of experience it’s based on talent.

Our upcoming expansion is taking us further into Africa and very soon we will be trying our luck in already developed markets.

Q. What’s next for Madison Holdings?
In Jordan, next comes Brand Dialogue, our brand activation specialization with numerous CRM tools and specialists that will make for a very interesting offering to clients. Regionally (with a huge smile on my face) developed markets are our next target, we know we have a different offering and we are confident that when we go up against the big boys we will be able to distinguish ourselves quite well, obviously this does not belittle our current expansion into emerging African markets.

Q. Anything else you’d like to add?
First off, bravo mediaME, for creating an interesting platform for industry specialists to share, discuss and find useful information. I think that what we are seeing on mediaME today is exactly what our industry has been yearning for for quite sometime.

Finally, I just want to add that to me its never been about who’s number one and who’s number two its always been about (A) how passionate my family at work is and (B) how comfortable my family at home is. Many pass rumors in Jordan about the growth and / or downsizing of our agencies, and I think what’s killing them all is we keep growing and bringing on new clients who are sick of other ways of thinking and really want people who not only understand the brand, but more importantly are passionate about it…thanks!

I did this interview with Amre back when I used to work for mediame.com