Marketing firm Conceptual ERA eyes regional expansion

The UAE is known for its flexible and empowering legislative environments for conducting business. Attracted by the UAE’s regional and global business opportunities, Conceptual ERA, an Egyptian marketing and advertising agency, recently opened its offices in Dubai.

Helmed by Ehab Hassan and Athar Hassan, Conceptual ERA, aims to provide the market with unique marketing solutions such as public relations, events, exhibitions, content, social media, and video – graphics and production.

Hassan relocated to Dubai to broaden the company’s projects portfolio and enable its 35-member team to compete globally, backed by Dubai’s supportive business environment.

Closer interaction with regional and international clients

“Despite having many years of experience and a huge portfolio back home, we decided to move as we wanted closer interaction with our regional and international clients. We worked with several key players in the Gulf market, providing them premium off-site services at competitive prices. However, with increasing demand for our services, we decided to relocate to Dubai to showcase our capabilities in serving regional and international clients while highlighting our creativity and agility in making unique marketing campaigns.”

“Our services are quite diverse,” said Athar Hassan, who is also the projects and operations director of Conceptual ERA. “Our move to Dubai was simply the natural evolution of what we have been doing for years. A market or a region cannot bind our creativity – it needs to be expanded through interaction with other cultures and regions to elevate our creative thinking and idea projection.”

“Social media has become the most effective way of promoting any brand, not only in Egypt but regionally and globally,” explained the operations director.

“We have over 93 per cent of the population carrying smartphones with direct access to social media platforms, in addition to the fact that most brand recommendations come from users or clients who used the brand and recommend it to other clients by simply sending a link of a post or a video of this brand that they liked so much.”

But the social media playing field is quite competitive, and high-quality content has proven to be extremely important in distinguishing a brand, service, product, or even a person in an ecosystem full of noise and disruption. This is why the Conceptual team works on a mix of elements to deliver a more powerful impact for their clients.

“We focus on learning, developing, improving, and even creating new concepts that we predict will impact the market and cause the positive disruption clients seek.

“The client spectrum we previously worked with gave us an amazing experience in speaking the language of each industry’s target audience. This gave us the edge to setting concepts and ideas to approach targeted segments and clients,” she added.

Key offerings

Conceptual services establishments, corporations, SMEs, private businesses, and startups. Given the client’s size and goals, a diverse client base pushes its staff to adapt to different visions and mindsets. “This is a point of strength for the agency,” added Ehab Hassan, who is also the MD.

“When you say you provide a service, especially in marketing and PR, it’s not a silo separate from other services. Instead, they complete each other. This allows us to look into different mindsets and ways of thinking, picking concepts and ideas from one industry and adapting them to another to give our clients that edge and help them keep up with the competition,” the MD explained.

“It is a lot of hard work, but we learn so much with each meeting and interaction with our clients, and this gives clients the sense of relief that someone out there is putting in time and effort to learn what they want and how to develop it to suit their operational and expansion goals.”

According to Naoual Kate, managing partner of Conceptual ERA, moving to Dubai has given the company enhanced exposure to clients from diverse cultures and backgrounds. “We pride ourselves on being out-of-the-box creatives. We do not copy or imitate but rather look for the unique elements in each client’s business lines and USPs to create the best campaign to help them shine in the market. This requires us to connect to clients worldwide, and Dubai presents a great opportunity due to its diverse population structure.

“There’s also a need to adapt to global best practices with the industry moving towards the use of AI in content creation – a challenge that we think can be a great opportunity, if managed properly, to cut down production times and deliver to clients at a much faster pace.”

Clients and growth

Conceptual ERA works with clients such as Zoho, Gold’s Gym, Magnom Properties, Freshworks, Sarwa Financial Holding, Soulotel Hotel Group, ManageEngine, Bank Audi and many more.

“The move to Dubai came with its own set of challenges. We need to adapt and work faster to meet changes in consumer behavior and trends and also have to focus on client needs in a rapidly changing market.

“The competitive landscape is more complex and diverse, not to mention the scale of clients we work with in Dubai. Yet, we view this as a major and key opportunity for us to grow and put our experience to the true test. Some might view it as a challenging move. Still, we are confident in making a big and markable impact in the UAE and wider Gulf markets,” added Hythem Abdellatif, managing partner at Conceptual ERA.

The Dubai office is the first step in Conceptual ERA’s expansion plans. The agency plans to open its office in Saudi Arabia in the upcoming quarter, followed by offices in other countries.