Top brands share insights on shaping talent in a tech-leaning landscape

Campaign ME

29-04-2025

This April, Campaign Middle East hosted more than 150 industry professionals at its Campaign Breakfast Briefing: Talent & Technology, featuring a morning packed with insights from top brand and agency marketers, and ending on a panel on shaping talent and teams in a tech-leaning landscape.
Moderated by Campaign Middle East's Editor, Anup Oommen, the panel comprised of Mariam Farag, VP – Corporate Communications at DAMAC, Ashfaq Bandey, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Mashreq, Wassim Derbi, Head of Marketing, Communication & Training, Hyundai UAE and Ahmed El Gamal, a Senior Director – Marketing in hospitality.
Discussions unveiled several concerns surrounding talent within the marketing, communications and advertising industry within the region. Prominent themes to note included shifting from traditional hiring models to a more skills-based approach, the need for continuous and rapid upskilling, the importance of organisational culture and leadership and the challenges in transparency around succession planning.
The following article summarises the key learnings from the panel and encapsulates the essence of what the industry in the region must do to stay ahead of the game as new technologies become further integrated into daily practice.
Shaping talent and teams around skills instead of experience
Panelists across the board agreed that traditional hiring models based on industry-relevant experience no longer holds a candle to the rapidly changing marketing landscape of today.
'I believe that marketers can market anything, products, services, anything,' said Hyundai UAE's Wassim Derbi. He made the case that with the right training, a marketer that is passionate about their craft can perform well in any sector, irrespective of the industry they have prior experience in.
Mashreq's Ashfaq Bandey backed this idea and said, 'Traditional hiring models are showing serious deficiencies when it comes to current work environments.'
According to him, these models were built for predictability and stability, failing to keep up with the pace of disruption the industry is currently witnessing. 'Roles are now evolving much faster than job descriptions can keep pace with,' he said.
The way forward requires a paradigm shift from traditional role-based hiring to skill-based acquisition. 'You need to be hiring based on potential and adaptability and not simply just education relevant experience and qualifications,' said Bandey.
Shaping talent and leadership require an open attitude to upskilling and adaptability
As the panel progressed, another key point emerged on how adaptability within leadership plays an equally important role in creating a holistic work environment.
Bandey cited a McKinsey study that finds that suggest that there's not enough talent in the region. 'The current demand for a digital skillset in areas like AI and advanced analytics exceeds almost four times the supply that exists,' he said, referencing the study. He urges leaders to invest in the talent they already have in these situations.
DAMAC's Mariam Farag also suggested that an openness to learning is of paramount importance. 'What I don't compromise on is attitude,' she said. According to her, the 'greatest CV on Earth' and a top education doesn't hold a candle to an attitude to learn fast and constantly come up with solutions and not problems.
To her, an ideal candidate for a job as demanding as communications is 'someone that is open to learning, excited about brand building, authentic storytelling, crisis management, content creation, digital transformation and completely available to agility and to flexibility.'
Ahmed El Gamal, a Senior Director in Marketing for a major hospitality brand also suggested that leaders should allow for employer upskilling during work hours. 'We should start learning at the same speed a prompt can be generated by AI,' he said.
During the panel he put forward a two pronged approach to enable learning at the workplace. First, a focus on the culture of the organisation: 'Have an attitude of learning and failing fast. If you're not experimenting and failing fast, I think that is where there is a gap,' he said, advocating for mentorship from inside and outside the organisation.
The second element includes micro-learning. 'If companies start introducing micro-learning tools like Duolingo, on a day-to-day, to get information in, and refresh your skills and start to apply them when the time is right, it would go a long way,' he said.
Transparency around succession planning
The panel concluded by focusing on succession planning, particularly examining whether the industry carries it out ethically.
'Succession planning usually is not transparent and this creates a negative feeling where you become insecure about your job,' said DAMAC's Farag. She emphasised the importance of loyalty within a team or department, and claims that it's detrimental to a work environment to have internal chatter about successors when a person is still sitting at their desk, completely unaware.
Hyundai UAE's Derbi also built on this discussion and said that the task of succession planning should fall onto HR and talent acquisition and that these decisions should not involve senior management. 'Succession planning is very political and always comes with a hidden agenda,' he said. 'I've seen situations when a CEO departs and suddenly all succession planning gets shelved.' He chalks this down to the human nature of picking based on preferences, and not on whether the person has the right skills or qualities to fill the role.
'So if succession planning is to be driven properly, it needs to be planned by HR and not by senior leadership,' he said.
Farag also suggests transparency to aide this process. 'You need to implement proper SOPs, and make processes transparent,' she said. 'Your team needs to be able to function without you while you're absent.'
Shaping talent and teams in a tech-leaning landscape may sometime seem like navigating an extremely challenging situation. However, the final panel at the Campaign Breakfast Briefing: Talent & Technology aimed to do its part to break down these barriers and put forward actionable suggestions that increases trust, productivity and the quality of work.
With transparency, an attitude to learn and a commitment to the craft, the region holds utmost potential to continually evolve towards best practice. To watch the full event, click here.