EPISODE 007: Agata Zukowska

Agata Zukowska spent 15 years in London advertising, across Bloomberg, Samsung Ads and British Telecom, before deciding she had "one more big adventure in me" and moving to Dubai. This episode goes out the week that marks her three years here, and she is precise about when the region rewired her thinking: "week one". All the experience and skills she brought could not simply be applied. Decisions are made differently, relationships are built differently, and her answer was to "check my own privilege", be present, be patient, listen, and offer real value. She is honest about the cost of that adjustment too: "the first few weeks were tough. I'm not going to lie." Her biggest entry mistake is the one this series keeps circling: applying what worked somewhere else and not understanding why it fails here. Her explanation is the best I have heard, because it starts with pride. Whatever our backgrounds, there is pride in being part of this community, so "we don't want to be treated as an afterthought". Telling the market "it worked in place X, just do it" gets you nowhere, and even proving the product works is not enough if you "pop in twice a year and say, hi". Her phrase for the alternative deserves a place on every market-entry deck that will never be shown: "it needs to be built for me now". And it is plural. Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are not one conversation, and Saudi needs its own strategy entirely. She has a story from years back about a US HQ asking why she advised against advertising in English in Sweden, since Swedes speak English: "yes, they do. That's not the point." What could only happen here is speed. Where she was used to five, six, seven stakeholders and procurement, the right story in the right room means "from conversation to going live in a matter of days and weeks", and unusually the boldest innovation often "comes from the top", from very big companies and government bodies rather than startups. That access changes how you sell. Her advice for the C-suite meeting: "throw away that PowerPoint". They want a real conversation and a relationship; the numbers matter, but they arrive "in an email later". On audiences, she thinks outsiders misread the region completely. It is mobile heavy, you can run "your entire life on WhatsApp", and the consequence is blunt: "we don't want to be spammed, but we are quite spammed in this region". Building from scratch today, she would put data and transparency tools in from day one, because the region "missed the desktop era" that drove those tools elsewhere. She launched a DMP at British Telecom the week GDPR was enforced, and she is clear that privacy innovation in Europe happened because "laws were passed that forced us to do it". Here, with first party data and loyalty schemes this rich, she would have "everything consented" before the law arrives. Five years out she sees the region becoming "a little bit of a hub", building its own solutions, adapting global ones properly and eventually exporting them. She thinks "data will be the next big thing" and that this market will do it very well and very quickly. Then the caveat that makes the optimism credible: "I'm just not sure if we're ready yet." Quick-fire: • MENA advertising in one word: forever evolving • Most overrated buzzword in ad tech: AI • Most underrated opportunity in MENA ad tech: data and CTV • Relationships or technology: relationships, should be both • One skill ad tech professionals in MENA must develop next: CTV and data