Brand building and integration top Leo Burnett Group MENA planning meeting

More than 22 representatives from the group's nine regional offices and four specialized companies, including brand agencies Leo Burnett and Black Pencil, Arc digital and CRM and MS&L public relations, took part in the four-day annual strategy meeting.

During the four-day meeting, Farid Chehab, chairman and chief creative officer, Leo Burnett MENA, focused attention on the importance of pushing Leo Burnett's creative excellence to new heights, with the group's goal nothing less than wins in 2005 at Cannes and the Effies.

"This will reinforce the positive impact that our superior creative work has on building iconic brands and, first and foremost, supporting our clients' businesses. A review of the most recent creative work from the network confirms that we are on the right track. As we strive even harder, the focus of our creativity should be on 'ideas', rather than just creative executions. By 'ideas' I mean those enduring one-word concepts around which you can build a campaign, promote creative integration and inspire award-winning ads."

Raja Trad, chief executive officer, Leo Burnett Group of Companies MENA, said, "We also discussed further mechanisms for combining the power of our integrated communications competencies with our passionate focus on building belief in our clients' brands. The result is we can better help our clients reach their business objectives. However, true integration is not about launching new companies with different competencies, it is about bringing all of our different competencies to bear in a harmonious, integrated, mutually reinforcing way in the service of the brand," Trad added.

The attendees discussed a range of topics, including geographic expansion; the setting in place of structures to manage the tremendous growth coming from new business across all offices in 2004; the challenges of 2005 and beyond; the continued commitment to rethinking things, rejecting "business as usual" and challenging the way things are done, and the strategic importance of employee training, to nurture creative, intelligent, striving and innovative staff, the group's only real asset.