Blue Barracuda will take big bite

Dubai: Nothing less than a sizable chunk of the Middle East's digital advertisement billings will do for Horizon Holdings as it introduces its dedicated set-up — Blue Barracuda.

The network expansion programme was unveiled this week.

"Blue Barracuda is now fully integrated with Horizon Group in the Middle East and the next few months will witness rapid team expansions," said Lee Brett, general manager of Blue Barracuda Dubai. "Over a period of time, our intention is to develop teams specific for our client needs across the network."

The new addition will provide services in digital strategies and campaign planning, ad space monitoring and buying, retail as well as ‘full-service' execution.

The Blue Barracuda enterprise, incidentally, represents an imported initiative for the regional communications major. Founded in 2002, Blue Barracuda, which has headquarters in London, was acquired by Draftfcb in May. The latter's Middle East interests are aligned with the Horizon Group and it was a given that the Blue Barracuda would make its way here.

"The local and international integration of the agency has been underway for the past few months now," said Brett.

Before the Blue Barracuda integration, the Horizon Group had a digital marketing solutions offering, albeit one which constituted a ‘small percentage' of its total billings.

"We now offer more integrated advertising and marketing solutions; the launch in the Middle East is a natural progression of our agency's newly acquired strategic capability to deliver benchmark campaigns for clients."

Projected spike

All of the leading advertising and communications agencies in the region have been topping up this side of their portfolio to meet the projected spike in client spending in the digital space.

So far, spending patterns have been clocking some good growth numbers in the last two years, but off a very small base.

At the same time, the highly complex and executed digital campaigns are still a rarity in these markets. That this will change in the near term is what agency networks are betting on.

Survival

"All existing and emerging communication tools will continue to exist; however there will be more integration amongst them as there are no longer any more ‘lines'," said Brett.

"Traditional practices, shopper marketing, digital communications, social media and mobile will keep on converging in a manner that none will be able to survive without the other.

"More and more clients across the Middle East are now looking for ‘smart' digital agencies that can offer strategic and integrated solutions to complement their 360-degree communication platform.

"We have now developed a structured digital team which effectively positions us as an integrated advertising and marketing solutions agency in the region."

According to Horizon officials, the advertising industry expects a better performing last quarter in the GCC.

Other market sources confirm a slight pick up in September with the banking, fashion and technology sectors seeding the increased spending.

The last quarter should also see the automotive sector hitting its stride in a big way to back up the 2012 model year launches that are already under way.