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The Middle East is a part of the world that  isattempting to strike a tough balance: managing rapid economic and social development while preserving local traditions and respecting religious beliefs.

The advertising industry faces many challenges as expatriates move around (and in and out of) the region, creating an ongoing shift in the demographics and population of the Gulf.

How can the industry maintain creativity while keeping in touch with social changes and respecting beliefs, traditions and values? The general rule has long been that, as long as creative agencies do not directly confront ruling parties, religious beliefs, social traditions, or moral values in a damaging way, they enjoy a big chunk of freedom and considerable space for creativity.

But still, advertising must carefully reflect cultural acceptability among the different sectors within a multinational society. It’s a big challenge, and several parameters must be taken into consideration.

LOCAL LAW. To work effectively in any market, creative agencies first need to do two things: stick to legislation, and make sure that they don’t offend their public. Either could ruin a campaign. As far as regulations are concerned, some countries in the region have clearly published laws, though admittedly these are often open to interpretation. In the UAE, for example, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority states that: “Marketing communications and practices shall not induce, encourage or validate any behavior that is inconsistent with the social, cultural, moral or religious values which apply generally within the UAE. Material which is generally not acceptable includes, but is not limited to, offensive language, violence, sex, nudity, sexual violence, humiliation, violation of human dignity, discriminatory treatment or language, derogatory treatment of religious subjects and values, with particular regard to the sensitivities of Islam, and the use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco.” 

In other countries, the industry can find itself bound by wider social norms. In Saudi Arabia, for example, the General Presidency of the Promotion of Virtues and the Prevention of Vices is the committee in charge of monitoring compliance with the Shari’a (Islamic laws and values), and identifying what requires censorship or correction. For example, there’s no actual law forbidding women to drive in Saudi Arabia, nevertheless the Hesbah (the common name of the committee) implements this norm.

Such guidelines are not necessarily well defined in legal text, but for people working in the marketing industry acceptable behavior is very clear. Ali Azarmi, managing partner of production company Joy Films UAE, can quickly list the main rules applied in Saudi Arabia off the top of his head. “Woman’s hair and face should not be seen at the same time,” he says. “She should not be seen to appear with males to whom she is not immediately related. No naked flesh is to be shown. She should appear with her hijabat all times and should look decent and not seductive or sensual. And so on... There are other rules for men as well as for certain actions, music, etcetera.”

This may cause a headache for some, but not everyone sees it that way. Babu Subramaniam, chief operating officer of DDB Gulf, says, “We do not see these [guidelines] as restrictions but view them as parameters and our challenge then becomes how to be creative within those parameters.”

SENSITIVE SELL.Assuming the work is legal, the challenge then becomes reaching consumers without offending them. An unpublished study conducted in May 2009 by Nada Al Karimi, a graduate student in Mass Communication at Middlesex University of Dubai, showed that the level of tolerance towards advertising in the UAE depended on the following criteria: the product advertised, the concept of the advertisement, and the media used to propagate the commercial.

The research was conducted on a representative sample of 100 Emirati citizens, divided equally among males and females between the age of 18 and 50. Interviewees were asked to rate advertising concepts on a scale of one to six, with one referring to “extremely offensive,” and six referring to “not at all offensive.”  The responses suggested that a concept contradicting religious beliefs is considered extremely offensive. The next most offensive concepts were sexism and racism, sexual connotations, indecent language and cultural insensitivity. In short, the Emirati consumer’s main concern is his or her faith, and advertisers need to take this fact in consideration, says Subramaniam. But, “If a piece of communication is well thought through, based on quality information and insights of the target segment, chances are, a lot of the local sensitivities will have been automatically addressed by the process,” he says.

THE GREAT DIVIDE. Bechara Mouzannar, regional executive director for Leo Burnett, believes that most of the time creative agencies develop one version of their ads for satellite TV and another version for local TV. For example, one ad may feature a woman wearing a veil for local TV, and another version may feature the same woman without a veil to air on satellite.

“Today, there’s nothing you can forbid anymore because of satellite and the Web, where governments don’t have real power,” he says. “In fact, in three years from now, traditional media will stop making money, and 80 percent of the total spending will be online, where brands have more freedom to interact with their consumers.”

Subramaniam believes that, nowadays, viewers have segmented their viewing habits between satellite and local TV channels, both in terms of what to watch, and what they find acceptable to watch. The study by Al Karimi shows that viewers are more tolerant to satellite TV content than they are to local TV; the majority of the interviewees rated offensive concepts and products as more offensive in local media – radio, TV and press – than on satellite TV.

So consumers are more tolerant when they consider the medium alien to them, and perhaps when it seems something over which they have no direct control. But, according to the study, when a product is advertised in a manner that is offensive to religious beliefs and values, consumers tend to boycott it, whether it appears on satellite TV or in local media.

According to Subramaniam and Mouzannar, the main changes in advertising trends are being caused by the wide expansion of satellite TV and the proliferation of the Internet. They are creating a window for local societies to see different cultures – cultures less attached to their traditions. Combined with immigration, this is leading to the creation of a hybrid society with diversified cultures, all of which are trying to find a common ground on which to coexist.

In any case, according to Azarmi, the industry’s creativity is still impaired by advertisers preferring to do something common and general even if unnoticed rather than risking creating something controversial.

“The relatively small experience of marketing managers in the region limits their objectives to trying to avoid any possible mistakes,” he says. “And this is why they refer to safe concepts. The change does not come from advertisers or from creative agencies. The change is the fact that locals are becoming more open to the fact that they are now part of a multinational society.”

THE STEREOTYPICAL RESULT.When an advertising agency’s main objective is not to make a mistake, there’s much less chance of it standing out. The odds of an advertiser going for something different are dramatically shorter, and the result is a tendency towards generic stereotypes: the modern woman with the modern veil (in contradiction to the black veil) playing the role of the good housewife, taking care of the children and looking beautiful for the husband; or the good family man, with his white traditional dress, acting as the shepherd, taking care of the family, enjoying his wife’s cooking, delighted by her beauty.

“The issue isn’t really what they wear and how they wear it,” Azarmi says. “The issue of the lack of identity is that in the effort not to offend anyone, these plastic characters are created to represent real life people who don’t exist anywhere. It ends up insulting the intelligence and dignity of the audience, and everyone in fact except the marketing manager who has found his or her comfort zone in the mediocrity of banal advertising.”

Ultimately though, Mouzannar says, that is the whole challenge. “To be very creative without antagonizing the morals of societies,” he says. “Why trigger tension and start unnecessary debates? Advertisers go to agencies because they want to reach the audience and not to cause mass anger.”

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