Ideas Insights Connections

Head over to the Dubai Media City Courtyard (Building 7), meet with fellow attendees over a cup of coffee, make new connections and find a comfy spot to enjoy the content.

Crafting Sustainable Tourism Narratives in MENA

The Middle East has mastered spectacular moments. What it's engineering now is far more enduring, built not on one-off activations alone, but on cultural depth, strategic intent, and lasting resonance.

From Qatar's FIFA World Cup to the Red Sea International Film Festival, Abu Dhabi F1, and Riyadh Season, the region's most powerful moments are evolving into tourism legacies, where cultural authenticity has become the defining luxury marketing differentiator, and where emotion drives loyalty as much as infrastructure drives arrivals.

Grounded in proprietary research Transforming Moments into Tourism Legacies, this exclusive MCN panel convenes industry leaders to decode the strategies, partnerships, and experience frameworks building destination identity beyond the calendar.

Where Creative Ambition Meets Real Decisions

Based on insights from the global CMO Barometer (800+ senior marketing leaders), this session turns industry trends into a live conversation at Dubai Lynx. Three key trends shaping the year ahead are introduced one by one – and then put to the test.

For each trend, a brand decision-maker and a creative are invited from the audience to take the “Hot Seats” and respond in real time. Expect honest reactions, different perspectives, and lively debate as ambition meets business reality. Designed for both marketers and makers, the session brings the audience into the action – making global insights tangible, relevant, and grounded in real decisions across the region.

Brands Should Take Public Stances on Social Issues in the Middle East — vs. — Brands Should Stay Neutral to Avoid Cultural and Regulatory Risk

In a world of brand sameness, distinctiveness is essential. In this session, Olaf van Gerwen of Chuck Studios joins Arafa Ahmed, CMO of KFC Middle East, to reveal how KFC developed “Boneless Bounce” - a new Culinary Identity rooted in product truth and behavioural insight. When dropped, KFC’s boneless chicken bounces. When eaten, people bounce too - - an instinctive expression of enjoyment.

The talk explores how this simple truth became a scalable creative strategy, connecting product, emotion and brand meaning. Learn how Culinary Identities move beyond aesthetics to build recognition, consistency and long-term brand equity.

In this session, MassiveMusic presents how they defined and created the sonic identity of leading Saudi bank BSF to deliver a unique, coherent, and brand-first ecosystem of sound that directly speaks to the brand's premium audience. Find out how sound can be used strategically to reach a niche audience and build brand value across campaigns and experiential, and how to balance local culture and global ambition in music through creative and strategic processes.

In this session, MassiveMusic presents how they defined and created the sonic identity of leading Saudi bank BSF to deliver a unique, coherent, and brand-first ecosystem of sound that directly speaks to the brand's premium audience. Find out how sound can be used strategically to reach a niche audience and build brand value across campaigns and experiential, and how to balance local culture and global ambition in music through creative and strategic processes.

The content game in MENA is being rewritten - and this time, it’s on our terms.

Not with vanity metrics or viral luck, but with culture-first creativity, regional truths, and audience obsession.

From influence-built brands to multi-market storytelling, content in the region is becoming less about where it lives and more about what it stands for. MENA’s new generation of creators, strategists, and brand leaders are blending insight with entertainment, humour with heritage, and algorithms with authenticity.

This McCann Content Studios panel, brings together the region’s next generation of storytellers, strategists, and media leaders to explore how content is evolving — and what it means for brands preparing for the future.

Hosted by one of the region’s leading influencers, this session explores how personal branding has become a defining force in the MENA creative industry. As influence shifts from institutions to individuals, creative leaders are building authority beyond their job titles and shaping narratives that extend into culture. The discussion examines how personal branding intersects with industry credibility, why influence today belongs as much to people as to brands, and how founders, creatives and CMOs can position themselves as thought leaders. With rapid fire insights on visibility, positioning and monetising expertise, the session reveals why owning your narrative is now a strategic creative advantage.

Sit back as our panel of senior leaders put the spotilight on what's the best way to build and scale a brand that's rooted in national heritage.

A candid, fast‑paced session where Ali Rez unpacks the failures that shaped his creative leadership. In an industry that celebrates wins and hides everything else, he opens the vault on the campaigns that fell flat, the pitches that imploded, and the decisions that went sideways. Through these unfiltered stories, he reveals the turning points, mindset shifts, and hard‑earned lessons that ultimately strengthened his work and leadership across MENA. This is a conversation about resilience, creative honesty, and the power of owning your missteps as fuel for growth because the failures we bury often teach us more than the successes we celebrate.

Is AI everything we think it is? Are we aware of the pitfall that impacts the messaging of brands?

Creative fatigue is the silent epidemic of our industry. Tighter deadlines and vaguer briefs have turned brainstorming into a broken record, the same ideas repackaged in different fonts. But what if the method, not the mind, is the problem? In this keynote, Hiba Hassan introduces the Mind Wandering Ideation Method (MWIM), a cognitive science-backed framework that works with the brain’s natural rhythms instead of against them. Developed through her published research, MWIM replaces forced ideation with structured mind wandering, producing unique concepts in under twenty minutes, with zero burnout.

The Future Forecast brings together five sharp perspectives in a rapid‑fire format designed to spark provocation and possibility. Five speakers. Five minutes each. One big prediction about the forces reshaping our industry. Topics:

• The Future of Media & the Attention Economy
• AI‑Powered Creativity & Automation George
• Culture, Identity & the New Global Consumer
• The Creator Economy & the Evolution of Content
• Gaming, Esports & Immersive Entertainment