Memac Ogilvy Promotes Yasser Hamdy To Lead Its PR Business

Yasser Hamdy, managing partner of the PR business at Memac Ogilvy

Memac Ogilvy has named Yasser Hamdy managing partner of its PR business, promoting an agency veteran to lead client operations and integrated communications across its regional accounts.

New role: managing partner, PR, Memac Ogilvy, based in Dubai
Brief: the agency’s public relations portfolio, and counsel to senior leaders on global, regional and government accounts
More than seven years at Memac Ogilvy in senior roles across Dubai and the wider Middle East
Markets covered: the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt
Earlier: senior positions at BLJ Worldwide and at Grey Group in Qatar

The Part Of Yasser Hamdy’s Brief That Matters

Government clients sit alongside global and regional ones in the remit, and in the Gulf that is the hardest half of the job. Public sector communications there runs on approval chains and sensitivities that do not transfer from consumer PR, and agencies win that work on people rather than on credentials decks.

Seven years inside one agency across four markets is the specific qualification for it. Promoting from within, rather than importing a name, is the low-risk way to hold accounts where the relationship is the asset.

Four Markets, Not One Region

The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt are routinely described as a single region and behave nothing like one. Media structures, regulation and the pace of decision-making differ enough that a campaign approved in Dubai can be unusable in Cairo.

Someone who has worked all four has the thing a regional PR lead is actually short of, which is a reliable sense of what will not fly where, before it is presented.

Why The Timing Reads The Way It Does

Hamdy has framed the appointment around the region’s influence and relevance on the global stage continuing to grow. Stripped of the phrasing, Gulf clients are increasingly buying communications aimed outward rather than inward, at international audiences and investors.

That is a different discipline from domestic reputation work, and it is where a network affiliation earns its keep. Whether Memac Ogilvy’s PR arm converts that into share is a question about resourcing rather than about positioning.