As the Middle East undergoes rapid transformation, communication has become a defining factor in how organisations navigate the region's complexity, which spans regulatory changes to rising stakeholder expectations. No longer constrained to being a downstream function, it now actively shapes how businesses position themselves, make decisions, and build trust in an increasingly high-stakes environment.
Ahmad Itani, Founder and Chief Advisor, and Tariq Al Sharabi, Executive Advisor at Cicero & Bernay (C&B), share how this shift is redefining the role of communications in the Middle East. Based on their work across the region, they discussed the increasing demand for strategic counsel, where global companies go wrong, and how communication is influencing real business outcomes.
What complex communication decisions have organisations in the Middle East had to navigate in recent years?
Tariq Al Sharabi: The biggest shift I've seen is how communication is now at the centre of how companies make decisions. Five years ago, most of our conversations with clients started with "we need coverage" or "we need a campaign." Now they come to us with "we're not sure how to position this" or "we need to work out what to say before we say anything."
A lot of that comes down to the environment we're all operating in. Our clients are managing pressure from multiple stakeholder groups at the same time, and how they communicate through that has become a strategic priority.
On top of that, regulatory and policy changes across the region are accelerating. Governments are introducing frameworks around AI governance, digital economies, and investment ecosystems. The UAE's National AI Strategy 2031 and Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 reforms mean organisations have to articulate long-term commitments, which is a very different conversation from promoting a recent launch.
And then there’s credibility. The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer shows that while many countries are experiencing a crisis of institutional confidence, the UAE stands out as one of the highest-scoring nations surveyed, with 82 per cent of respondents trusting the government and 76 per cent trusting business. But that comes with high expectations. People here expect companies to lead, and for our clients, that means each message carries more weight.
So when we talk about complexity, it’s really about helping businesses think clearly in a landscape where the stakes around what you say, when you say it, and who you say it to are much higher than they used to be.
Global companies often talk about “the Middle East” as one homogeneous market. Where does that assumption break down from a strategic comms perspective? How does this understanding affect business outcomes?
Ahmad Itani: It breaks down almost immediately. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are neighbours, but anyone who has worked across both markets knows that how people consume information, what they respond to, and what earns their trust are shaped by very different cultural and regulatory realities.
Saudi Arabia is in the middle of one of the most ambitious transformation programmes in modern history. The appetite for new ideas and partnerships is enormous. But many international companies still walk in with a one-size-fits-all regional strategy. That's a fundamental misread. The organisations succeeding there have taken time to understand the national vision and communicate in a way that shows they're here for the long term.
The UAE operates at a completely different pace. The media environment is more open, international connectivity is deeper, and expectations around speed and innovation are very high. And then you have markets like Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait, each with its own set of pressures and opportunities. When you treat the region as a single market, the work ends up feeling generic, and the relationships stay at a surface level.
This has real business consequences. The ones running a single regional playbook tend to burn through their budget without building the credibility they need to grow. We've seen it repeatedly. The comms strategy is often what determines whether a market entry becomes a genuine partnership.
What kinds of business decisions are now reaching communication advisors that traditionally sat elsewhere in the organisation?
Ahmad: The simplest way I can describe it is that the people we're talking to have changed. Ten years ago, our main point of contact was a marketing director or communication manager. Today it's the CEO, the general manager, or the head of strategy. When that happens, the question changes completely. Last month, we were helping a client rethink their market entry. The month before that, it was a leadership transition that needed careful handling. This is strategy work, and the fact that it's reaching us says something important about where the industry is heading.
Tariq: What I would add is that the type of decision has changed as well. A client going through a restructuring isn't just asking how to approach it. They're asking how to talk to their own people, how to frame the investor narrative, or how to make sure three regional teams with very different contexts are telling a coherent story. That kind of job would have gone to a management consultancy or a law firm not long ago.
The area that's grown more than any other is employer communication. Companies are competing for talent in ways they've never had to, and the internal story matters as much as the external one. That's where trust is won or lost. And once it erodes inside, the outside narrative falls apart very quickly.
Ahmad: This is happening everywhere, by the way. Gartner's latest research found that CEOs now expect their communication leaders to think and operate like business leaders, to help solve problems across the enterprise. That matches everything we're experiencing in this part of the world. The clients who demand the most from us strategically are the ones growing the fastest.
How do you see communicators taking on these new remits and integrating them with long-established processes?
Tariq: It's messy, honestly. And I think we should be upfront about that. The demand for communicators to be involved earlier and more deeply is real, but the structures within most organisations haven't kept pace. You still have procurement processes designed for buying media placements, not strategic counsel.
What I've found works is proving value on a specific problem before asking for a permanent seat. You help a client navigate one difficult restructuring well, and the next time something sensitive comes up, you're the first call. That's how the relationship evolves.
As demand for strategic counsel grows in the region, how do you see the comms agency model evolving?
Ahmad: The traditional agency model is already outdated. Most agencies in this region still operate on a retainer-plus-deliverables structure that was designed for a world where the job was media relations and content production. That world is shrinking.
Clients used to pay us to secure coverage for them. Now, the most valuable thing we do is help them decide what to say, or whether to say anything at all. That's a fundamentally different service, and it requires a fundamentally different kind of team. You need people who understand business strategy, regulatory environments, and stakeholder dynamics. A traditional PR background alone won't get you there.
Advisories will thrive in this region over the next decade, ones that price for thinking, build multidisciplinary teams, and are willing to walk away from work that doesn't require strategic depth. That's a difficult transition for an industry that was built on volume. But the opportunity is enormous.
What’s a recent communication challenge that required particularly complex stakeholder navigation? How did this showcase the industry’s shift toward advisory-led firms and changing client relationships in the region?
Tariq and Ahmad: We've had to guide clients through tough economic stretches where the business had to restructure, cut costs, or quietly step back from public commitments. The communication challenge in those moments went beyond explaining what's changed. It's about making sure the people who matter still believe in the company’s direction.
Our job was to resist the pressure to react and instead create space for the client to properly map out their exposure. Who are we actually speaking to? What does each group need to hear? What can we credibly say? Sometimes the answer was a public statement. Other times, it meant staying quiet and making sure the reasoning was solid in case it was ever challenged.
That's a long way from media relations. That's real-time counsel on decisions that shape how an organisation has been perceived for years.
Ahmad: And these are the moments that reveal what kind of relationship you actually have with a client. When someone calls you at midnight asking whether they should respond to something that broke hours ago, they're not looking for a holding statement.
They need someone who already understands their business, their stakeholders, and the sensitivities well enough to give direction without needing a briefing first. That's the difference between an agency on retainer and a genuine advisory relationship, and it's not something you can build overnight.