Khamis Al Muqla IAA President Bahrain Chapter told the audience during Ramadan Ghabgha of IAA that in addition to revenues loss Bahrain also forced to quit from the race of being host many global events.
However, Al Muqla hoped that with the concerted efforts Bahrain would be able to come out of this crisis and emerge even stronger.
“Our advertising business was the first to suffer from the impact of the regional and local crises. Our business is the first indicator of the economy, politics affects the economy and the economy affects advertising. This is evident from the PARC figures as there is a 22% drop in the advertising expenditure for the period Jan-June of this year. Local sources predict an even higher percentage drop. The Ramadan month has seen some improvement and we hope the rest of the year will improve even further,” he added.
“Bahrain also lost many major events during the year starting with Formula 1. We also lost the holding of the 2012 IAA World Congress.
“The good news however comes from Batelco, who are celebrating their 30th anniversary and are bringing us together after quite some time.”
He congratulated Batelco CEO Bahrain Rashid Abdulla on Batleco’s 30th anniversary.
“Batelco is an integral part of the modern Bahrain and a provider of telecommunications and media services to our industry. They are of course a very active advertiser. We are very pleased to see Batelco’s 30th anniversary campaign with great slogans ‘A passion for connecting Bahrain’ and ‘Bringing our nation together’. This is precisely what we need to achieve for our country and our nation. Our industry has to play a role in fostering unity and we need to start with ourselves by bringing our industry together. There are no doubt many issues to debate and address during these challenging times, which will require the involvement of everyone in this industry be it advertisers, media, agencies and Government authorities. We should also invest more in advertising and marketing communications during this period.
“The IAA Bahrain chapter is the right platform to explore the future of our industry and to explore the role of our industry in supporting our nation and our country. We are very pleased to know that new members are joining the IAA. We have a big hope in our new members and in our new generation to revive our industry and we hope to see some of them in our new Board which will be elected towards the end of the year.”