In this Q&A, Femi Taiwo, business director at Assembly Global MENA, shares his perspective on the evolving independent agency landscape and the data strategies driving growth across the region. 

Read on as Taiwo discusses how local market dynamics, cultural diversity, and rapid digitisation are reshaping how agencies approach audience insight and performance. He reflects on the role of independents in fostering agility and innovation, and explains how smarter use of data -  anchored in regional nuance - is helping brands create more meaningful connections and measurable results in an increasingly competitive market.

The Independent Advantage

Indie agencies often pride themselves on agility and on "zigging when others zag." From your perspective, what gives independent players the freedom or confidence to take that alternative path, especially in such a data-driven landscape?

At the heart of the Indie model is agility, which in our industry translates to speed and boldness. Whether stated expressly or not,  as holding companies scale, decision-making can naturally become more cautious. That imbalance is where Indies thrive - they can turn around contracts faster, be more ambitious with fee structures and remuneration models, and they can adapt much more quickly to a changing landscape.

In an Indie world, data is freely available for all of the agency to use and leverage for an unfair competitive advantage. Whether it’s win rates, revenue or client feedback - it comes in quickly and can be actioned even quicker. Every pitch and project delivery is an exercise in real-time optimisation.

In many ways, the rules (read bureaucracy) that would make the Hold Cos pause, delay or stop don’t exist because freedom at an individual level is granted within the Indie model - and the rules are light and simple.

 Don’t harm the agency, and make sure the commercial model makes sense are the only guidelines you need. From there, the data will always help you find the confident path forward.

Data Strategy Differentiation

How do independent agencies balance the need for robust, enterprise-level data strategy with maintaining flexibility and creative instinct? Are there specific approaches or frameworks you see working particularly well for Indies?

The great leveller, and competitive advantage, about data strategy is that it is built on the foundation of your people - if there is a high data literacy in the organisation, the data strategy will be robust and scale to any client of any size.

It’s really about harnessing the thinking of the people - how they understand, use, execute, and communicate data. It’s a bit like the adage about innovation being everybody’s job. While it’s within my remit to lead the data strategy function and deliver impactful outputs for our clients, flexibility and creativity come from being able to bring a central idea to a broader group of experiences, ways of working and world perspectives.

The approach/framework isn’t too far from what you might expect in a creative agency process:

The business objective

What is the big idea? What has the client briefed? What is their main objective (hint: it’s not clicks, impressions or CTRs)? What will get the CMO/CTO/CDO a promotion?

The business problem

How is the client describing their problem? How are their team(s) describing the problem? What have they tried so far that has/not worked? What can we do differently with those solutions or with new ones?

The data insight

What can we learn from publicly available data - earnings calls, competitor annual statements, government data, press releases, etc? Where is the uncommon data point? What can our Business Intelligence/Data Analyst teams mine to arrive at a leading indicator of success (or root cause of the Business Problem)? Is the data strong/frequent/accessible enough for us to bet our success on it?

What’s the big idea?

If we were to sum up the objective and problem in the context of the data insight, what kind of "movie trailer" would we produce?

What would be the tag line for our movie?

The greatest flexibility Indies tend to have is either a deep understanding of a specific industry -  Assembly’s core strength was built in luxury retail, which created an unfair competitive advantage vs others - or an outsider perspective.

For Assembly, very few industries were as dynamic and difficult to get right - consistently - as retail commerce, so once we mastered it, the other industries could only stand to benefit from that depth of knowledge.

Cultural and Market Nuance

MENA is a region of sharp contrasts, rapid digital transformation, alongside deeply rooted cultural behaviours. How does this dynamic influence how Assembly Global and independent agencies think about using data creatively, rather than just analytically?

With the acceleration of AI adoption, especially in a time where the Big Tech platforms are working to automate everything, I believe using data creatively is not just a MENA challenge - it is a global problem.

The greatest benefit we experience in the region from the rapid change of pace is the ability to observe what hasn’t worked elsewhere and design for a better, more refined and efficient model. It means that we can see where the loopholes and shortcomings are then create a different version to rapidly test & learn from.

The cultural behaviours are mostly felt in ways of working than they are in data availability or usage. With a lot of large LLC companies in the region, getting reliable data on company performance is not as easy as it would be in the West, so we, like other Indies, have to start with what the client has at the point of engagement.

Data strategy in MENA is about working backwards from a perspective of "anything is possible" and then grounding that in the reality of a client’s business. At a national and regional level, each nation has a "vision" and that sets the tone for all parts of society so although things may look like they are rapidly shifting from the outside, on the inside we have a tether and a set direction of travel which makes it easier to think creatively, and get buy in from clients, within the framework of the visions.

The Future of Indie Data Thinking

As AI and automation become mainstream in media strategy, where do you see the next opportunity for indie agencies to differentiate in their approach to data, whether through human creativity, ethical transparency, or regional innovation?

The UAE is the home of AI. It is embedded into everything from traffic control to garbage collection and even government services like contactless border controls so AI and automation have been mainstream here for a long time.

We already have Human-Machine Collaboration (HMC) icons - a visual classification system to support transparency by helping the end user quickly identify where outputs have been shaped by machines that were launched last year by HH Sheikh Hamdan to solve the ethical transparency question - they help identify and classify content across a spectrum of human-to-machine created.

I expect Indie agencies to create further distance between themselves and the traditional hold cos in their speed of execution. Automation and AI, when handled responsibly, will generate significant time savings, which can be applied to how quickly contracts can be reviewed and signed, POs scanned and issued, and workflows automated to get reporting and business-critical information in the hands of the right people.

In the short term, I expect Indies to win the battle for insightful use of data by being able to ship prototypes out faster, find the product-market fit sooner, and iterate when the inevitable failures occur. In the long term, they will need to leverage this speed for scale. Getting access to more data will allow them to find more signals, which will lead to better solutions.

Fundamentally, the data literacy of the people will dictate the winners and the losers. Those who know how to leverage modern tools with an analytical mindset will drive innovation. Those who rely on outdated datasets, even with AI tools, will risk their competitive position and revenue.