The Arab crisis facing the Middle East’s public relations industry and what we must do about it

We’re facing a major issue, a problem that we have not had the courage to admit or face up to as a collective group. The challenge that we are facing is simple – we don’t have enough Arabs, particularly GCC nationals – working in the agency sector or with non-governmental corporations. For all of the growth in our sector, we’re still struggling to attract, let alone retain, Arabic talent in the communications sector.

I don’t mean to sound alarmist – after all, the last thing we need in the Middle East is yet another crisis – but the longer that this status quo continues, the more difficult it will be for us to reverse this trend. For a profession that is built on understanding those we are intending to engage in dialogue with, our lack of senior Arabic practitioners is an indication that we have some way to go before we can compare ourselves to our peers in other regions.

The lack of enough talented and experienced Arabic speakers in our industry has long had negative repercussions – at the most basic level the quality of Arabic-language communications is either poor or isn’t localized enough to meet the needs of the stakeholder groups we are reaching out to. The consequence of a lack of qualified Arabic communications professionals is that our industry will not have the experience and leadership it needs to gain a seat at the board.

If we don’t address the lack of Arab, particularly Gulf, talent in our industry, we will, in effect, become reliant on talent from outside of our region, and we will be caught in a catch-22 situation where we are unable to ensure that communications has a leadership role simply because we don’t understand our audience(s), and we’re unable to communicate effectively with them owing to our lack of cultural, linguistic and societal insights.

To date, the industry hasn’t done nearly enough in terms of reaching out to and working with the education sector. Rather than developing young talent from the source, so to speak, and shaping their careers, we’ve left communication students across the Gulf to their own fate. What has surprised me is the number of Gulf nationals studying communications-related subjects. As per my last conversation with the faculty there, the UAE’s Zayed University alone has 500 undergraduates in its communications department, most of whom are UAE nationals and female.

As a collective body, we have to better address our own sustainability. We need to do that by building better links with academic institutions in the region – most of which do offer communications subjects – and then bringing in student interns on a regular basis to learn hands-on about what we do and why our work is important to them as Arab nationals and Arabic-language speakers.

Already, a number of universities are bridging the gap to give their students real-life lessons for their undergraduates. One university in the UAE has reached out to me to ask about the possibility of their students developing a communications plan based on an existing campaign, to help students both develop practical experience and understand the concepts that they’ve studied in a corporate setting.

I’ve had the pleasure to meet and work with some world-class Arabic-speaking communications professionals during my decade in the Gulf’s communications sector. A number of my colleagues have won awards on a global level for their work, and I believe their success is due in part to their understanding of the region’s cultures and the Arabic stakeholder groups they are trying to influence. The more Arabs who enter the communications sector and work their way up on merit to senior roles, the stronger and more respected our industry will become.

But a change will not happen by itself. As a collective, we need to do more to Arabize the communications industry in the Gulf in a way that will benefit agencies, clients and employees. And I’d much rather we take up this challenge ourselves than a change is imposed on us by others.