Gerety Talks with last year’s UAE Agency of the Year. Tuesday, February 6th
Gerety Talks with Joe Abou-Khaled, Atiya Zaidi and Ali Rez from Impact BBDO. In 2023 they were awarded with UAE Agency of the year.
Agency & Production Company of the year by country is chosen by the local juries from the portfolio cut and requires a single film no longer than five minutes in length and includes up to three pieces of work from the past 12 months. Impact BBDO were awarded for their portfolio Cut entry that included the following spots: Election’s Edition for AnNahar Newspaper; Schoolgirls Newscasters for EBM and Despair no More for TENA.
Ali Rez
Chief Creative Officer MENAP
Impact BBDO Group
Named Creative Person of the Year twice by Campaign magazine, Ali Rez is the most awarded creative leader in the Middle East, and currently leads creative output for the IMPACT BBDO Group across the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan region. Rez’s work has been instrumental in Impact BBDO being named the No.2 Agency In The World on the WARC report, while winning 29 different Agency of the Year accolades in 2022 and 2023 for bringing tremendous business success and creative excellence to the Group, and positive impact to social causes.
Rez has won more than 900 international accolades in his career spanning four continents over 20 years, which include Grands Prix at all the major shows including Cannes Lions, Clio, OneShow, Loeries, Effies – awards which have led him to be ranked No.1 ECD in MENA and APAC on several creative rankings. In 2023, he was the first jury president ever at Cannes Lions to represent the Middle East.
Moving from California, Rez currently lives in Dubai, where he is an avid mountain biker. Besides lecturing at Oxford University, Rez has exhibited at Tate UK, spoken at Tedx, and has traveled to 139 countries.
Joe Abou-Khaled
IMPACT BBDO
Regional Executive Creative Director – MENA
Born, raised and based in Beirut, Joe leads a big chunk of the agency business in the Levant, the GCC and Africa. He has a diverse work background covering fully integrated multilingual campaigns across the MENA region.
With more than 20 years’ experience at BBDO, he has won awards across most categories and major festivals, including 3 Grand Prix at Cannes Lions in the last 4 years.
Today, Joe is ranked #1 ECD in MENA by the One Show 2023 Global Rankings and #14 in the world by the Drum World Creative Rankings 2023.
Atiya Zaidi
Chief Executive Officer/Chief Creative Officer
BBDO Pakistan
Atiya is a creative who loves to create. She has over 20 years of experience in the advertising industry working on an array of local and international brands. Winner of the first ever Glass Lion at Cannes Lions 2023, for Pakistan, she is also the first Pakistani woman to be selected for Cannes Lions See it Be it program, D&AD’s Rare creative program and also the Pitch magazines’ 100 Superwomen list 2019. She also wrote a film which is available on Netflix.