JEDDAH, 25 September 2003 — Branding will be the subject of the upcoming Saudi marketing conference here.
“Developing successful brand strategies in Saudi Arabia” is the theme of the 3rd annual conference organized by the Middle East Marketing Forum at the Jeddah Hilton from Oct. 5.
The forum will feature keynote speeches from two international marketing and branding experts — Martin Lindstrom and Leslie de Chernatony. Local expertise and knowledge at the conference will be provided by Khaled Baghdadi, director of marketing support at Saudi Telecom Company, Fahd Hamidaddin, business team director for DMS in Jeddah, and Andreas Christopoulos, Jeddah-based Middle East managing director at Synovate, an international market research group.
Barry Gray, managing director of Gray Business Communications, told reporters yesterday that about 200 participants attending the conference would learn how to build strong brands in the Kingdom. “Presentations will guide people through market-specific strategies aimed at helping the development of brands into valuable, long-term corporate assets,” he said.
“We’ve seen the forum establish a solid reputation in just four years. This year’s focus on branding was deemed essential to promote the celebration and development of home-grown names,” Gray said. “For too long, the market has almost disregarded local names as being inconsequential; we believe that, in many cases, local knowledge means these brands are well placed to conquer the market.”
In his presentation Lindstrom, author of “Clicks, Bricks and Brands” will demonstrate how new and innovative strategies can be used to develop a brand on- and offline.
Chernatony, director of the Center for research in brand marketing at the University of Birmingham Business School, will demonstrate how brand success is the result of a six-step strategy in which a brand is developed from the CEO’s vision to evaluation in the marketplace. Chernatony heads a research team investigating the factors associated with brand success. The title of his keynote address is “From Brand Vision to Brand Evaluation”.
Baghdadi will present a case study of the recent re-branding exercise successfully implemented at the STC. Hamidaddin will outline strategies for building consumer brand preference in the Kingdom and Christopoulos will show how market research can help Saudi companies build their brand equity.
