Campaign Middle East sat down with PHD UAE’s managing director, Elda Choucair to discuss the agency’s unprecedented regional growth and how the UAE team has been working on building “the agency of the future” over the past four years. The interview examines the agency’s journey of expansion over the past four years, mentioning the recent series of new business wins in 2015 alone, which include the National Food Products Company (NFPC), Pizza Hut and SC Johnson. It also touches on the agency’s difficulty in sourcing the right talent who are up to the challenge of building a different type of agency. “It was never the priority that PHD (Omnicom Media Group)should be the biggest. The priority was and is to be the best,” says Choucair.
“There was always a lot of emphasis on digital,” continues Choucair, who has been at the helm of the agency since 2008. “The other part was building a culture that embraces collaboration, that embraces innovation. A culture where everybody realizes their job is not to do planning or to do buying or to do admin or finance. Their job is to make PHD a winner. It was always a bigger purpose and their job was to deliver on that purpose. So what you see today is not by luck”
