Unicorns Top The Agenda As Landor And The Marketing Society Middle East Team Up Once Again To Co-Host ‘Brand Conversations’

Landor, a global leader in brand consulting and design, co-hosted an exclusive event this week – ‘Culture as a Driver of Performance’ – in Dubai with The Marketing Society held at the city’s Capital Club exploring the interplay between organisational culture, branding and business success. The series entitled ‘Brand Conversations’ is a bi-annual series created to inspire, educate and engage leading marketeers in the UAE.

Speakers and panellists included Aura Lunde (Director of Organisational Performance at Careem), Pete Lysak (Head of Marketing and Digital at flyadeal) and Eissa Khoury (Executive Director of Culture and Engagement EMEA at Landor).

The event highlighted the importance of culture as well as its key components: principles; practices and rituals. Some of the data supporting the assertions included statistics indicating that companies who proactively manage their culture achieve 516% higher revenue growth over a 10-year period on average compared with those who don’t. Additionally, a recent report showed how 9 out of 10 executives cited culture as important, but only 12% of companies believe they understand how to develop culture to drive business performance.

Commenting on the topic, Mariagrazia De Angelis, General Manager at Landor, Dubai said: “What we have found increasingly is that successful business leaders recognise the importance of culture in driving performance, none more so than some of the successful unicorns we have here today. Conversely, on a practical level, very few businesses know how to build culture effectively. Hopefully the discussions at this latest event with The Marketing Society has gone some way in demystifying business culture as a concept as well as highlighted some practical steps that start-ups as well as more advanced businesses can take to driving impact in terms of culture within their respective organisations.”

She added: “Our research has shown that the most effective organisations embrace culture and this involves all aspects of their brand. Critical steps in that process are to ensure that businesses remain close to customers; create autonomous teams; delegate decision making; engender a culture of trust, and finally, that they set the organisational intent clearly. Additionally, what has become clear is that successful organisations instil common patterns of behaviour in their teams as well as the guiding principles that shape them, as well as the rituals that enforce them.”

Khaled Ismail, Vice President Communications – Europe, Central Asia, Middle East & Africa, Tetra Pak & Marketing Society Middle East Chairman, added: “It’s been a pleasure partnering with Landor on the Brand Conversation series. The conversation about culture was both insightful and rich with examples. I learnt that each company has its unique culture and startups may have different cultures traits than traditional companies, but people are people – if you don’t involve and engage them to live and breathe the culture, then there is no culture – there is just a poster on the wall with words on it. The Landor research with over 100 Unicorns across EMEA created a lot of food-for-thought for our members and we’re looking forward to reading the full report.”

Panelist Aura Lunde, Director of Organisational Performance, Careem added: “At Careem culture forms a critical part of our business – from how we operate internally, to how we recruit and retain talent. We know that a defined set of values allows us to have a common way of approaching sometimes complex decisions and it empowers our colleagues to move fast knowing that they are doing it in the Careem way. Measuring colleagues’ alignment with our values forms a core part of our regular performance reviews and examples of demonstrating behaviours that reflect them, is openly celebrated.”

Established in 1941 by Walter Landor, Landor helps its clients build agile brands that thrive in today’s dynamic and disruptive marketplace. In the Middle East region, some of its most notable clients include Dubai Airports, Etihad Airways, Alawwal Bank, NEOM, Riyadh Development Authority and SAGIA (Saudi Arabia General Investment Authority).

The Marketing Society is an influential global membership network for senior marketing leaders and dedicated to its purpose of empower brave leaders. The Dubai hub is the number 1 market outside the UK and they have created a community of 200 of the most senior marketers from across the UAE.