Review for Advertising in Mena Goes Digital

by Prof. John Sinclair

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Although a major world region, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has attracted little attention within the research literature on global marketing communication, least of all given book-length treatment.  This welcome work provides a comprehensive and authoritative filling of the gap.  While the focus is on the current era, in which marketing in general and advertising in particular are in a complex process of adaptation to the world of digital communication, this is set within a broader perspective on the development of the commercial cultures of the region.  

Because of her own background experience in the advertising industry, Allagui is able to bring an impressive depth of understanding and detail to her account of the structural transformation in the sector, and its modes of professional practice.  Equally, her academic background has given her the conceptual framework, intellectual insight, and empirical research skills that make the book a valuable contribution to scholarship.  This fusion of qualities is seen most evidently in a series of closely-analysed case studies she presents, notably of public service advertising campaigns.  

Of particular interest in MENA are tensions between broad cultural similarities across the region, versus national and other differences.  Allagui explores these from a marketing perspective with regard to humour, religious celebration, and the status of women.  In these chapters, and throughout the work, she demonstrates an exceptionally detailed knowledge of contemporary developments not only in the advertising industry itself, but amongst the advertiser clients, the legacy and digital media, and the behaviour of the audiences that they are all seeking.  

Professor John Sinclair, FAHA,
Honorary Professorial Fellow,
School of Culture and Communication, 
The University of Melbourne,
Victoria, 3010, Australia.