Marketing Reality: Digital is not the future, it is now

This session was part of a series of guest lectures delivered by distinguished industry experts, who share their knowledge and real-world case-studies. Rakan, who is currently the general manager — Technology and Business Development for Global Media Insight (GMI), brought over 10 years in professional experience as a digital marketing professional into the MBA classroom. GMI is one of the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region’s largest independent digital marketing agencies that services clients including: Nestle, Sadia, Phillips, Samsung and Autodesk among others.

“If you want to begin to understand how digital marketing has changed the way we do business, simply ask yourselves how the Internet has changed the way you live first’ suggested Rakan to a capacity-packed lecture theatre. Today’s consumers are ‘more wired, more accessible, more dependent, more exposed, more demanding and more impatient,” Rakan said, noting that the Mena region’s 85+ million internet users, over 20+ million of whom are on Facebook present a tremendous potential and an equivalent challenge for its marketers.

He encouraged the class of future business leaders to think about the ‘tsunami wave’ of technological innovation that is sweeping across the business landscape changing, destroying and re-shaping everything in its path.

“A marketer today lives in a world of absolute, undeniable and uncontrollable chaos, running, struggling to just keep up,” said Rakan.