Business & Money | Thursday 4 May, 2017 4:06 am |

Mindshare, which is part of WPP, is a global media agency network helping clients to make collaborative and adaptive decisions across their paid, owned, and earned marketing in real-time. The NEXT Markathon, themed “Building Brands for the NEXT Economy,” explored the ways that top brands can stand out by creating value for customers at home and abroad. WPP served as the event’s main sponsor and Mindshare as a strategic partner, helping to share experience and skills to make the event a success.

The forum, which took place March 26th-28th at King Abdullah Economic City in Jeddah, asked around 250 local business professionals and students to complete briefs and answer industry challenges over the course of two days. On the second day, the top three responses were awarded prizes. The following day was a festival of knowledge-sharing, with exciting key speakers from senior-level industry professionals, including select experts from WPP, GroupM, and Mindshare.

WPP was selected as a Challenging Sponsor for the cutting-edge event, offering expertise and feedback for attendees, and Mindshare served as a Participating Sponsor, sharing information about the agency’s services and assisting teams of attendees in answering their challenger brand briefs.

“Partnering with WPP and Mindshare was an excellent experience for our attendees,” says Khaled Tash, the event’s organizer. “Both teams used their out-of-the-box approach to problem-solving to inspire teams to find agile brand solutions with a modern twist.”

“It was exciting to participate in the first edition of this new and interesting industry event, where we not only had the opportunity to showcase our services to clients, professionals, and students, but also network among new talent that might work beside us someday at Mindshare,” says Mindshare MENA Chief Growth Officer Mazen Fakhoury.

The full forum livestream is on KAEC's YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/hk9Qq0GxnRw