Head of Communication
Caritas Lebanon
Total years of experience :26 years, 4 Months
Planning and implementation of all communication strategies and activities, ensuring full visibility to all international projects and donors, maintaining the true image of Caritas Lebanon in order to relay its noble mission to the local and international communities.
Rallying through communication the international partners, diaspora and donors around Caritas Lebanon's cause, its country's needs and ensure reach of sufficient funding to keep spreading its message of hope through assisting the needy to lead a decent life.
From creating campaigns, events, monitoring and analytics, to content creation, production supervision and internal communication linking all the organization's departments and activities.
- Organizational/Services/Brand/Product communication strategies, creative platform, consumer behavior, demographic and psychographic profiling of end user, covering geographic reach, ethnicity specifics, traditions and values behavioral considerations (the HOW, the WHEN and the WHY services should be used/adopted).
- International trends and challenges analysis leading to integrating the product within consumers’ lifestyles, embracing rituals, breaking taboos, gender, race and religious equality and consideration.
- Brand problem underlining, product adaptive analysis and solutions proposition. Competition analysis, brand proposition and corrective measures undertaking, part of the Brand’s crisis management to endorse favorable shift towards product usage.
- Communication channels and content management, ensuring reach and acceptance of Brand/Product proposition and value formation.
Revisiting and creating Business Models, organizational structures, baseline analysis, flow charts and brand offering, value proposition and go-to-market communications strategies.
- Consultancy projects for USAID under Chemonics and Berytech for various Lebanese companies, for their organizational structure, business models, financial evaluation, marketing and communication development, content creation, online and offline strategic communication, safety and quality certification, international expansion, equity investment calls, market studies and research.
- Consultancy contract under UNICEF for the development of their Hygiene and Emergency Kits products creation, design and communication, throughout the production process with the (GIL Youth Alumni Program) for the teams capacity building for production and outreach development.
Market research, sales & marketing strategies, creative brand positioning, media strategy, market and consumer behavior, competitive analysis, art direction and production, sales tactics planning and implementation. Ensuring ROI and potential customer validation for diverse clients; to name a few:
- Regional Tourism Ministries, leading regional gold manufacturing brand, Lebanese Ministry of Economy and Education, Leading Food Manufacturing Brand, Regional University based in Kuwait, Saint George Hospital (Lebanon), the Hospitality industry (regional 5 stars hotels chains), Lebanese Banking industry, Real Estate industry, FMCGs.
- Elaborated market strategies, based on thorough research of clients’ situation analysis, product/brand immersion, clients’ KPIs and expansion goals, competition screening, regional and local challenges, brand identity, brand positioning and brand equity.
Established and led the full fledged advertising and communication agency. Supervised the communication and creative teams.
Created all communication strategies, including brand positioning, brand architecture and developed advertising plans across all communication platforms.
Launched clients campaigns and documented their success through professional statistics companies in a 6 months post evaluation study:
- Raised the awareness and market shares of our client Creditbank from 4.3% to 8.3%.
- Creditbank ranked 2nd in “Excellent” opinion rating, together with BLOM Bank, knowing that 1st rating was granted to Banque de l’Habitat.
- Creditbank's branded ad likeability was extremely positive with 68% of population who liked it.
- The ad scored extremely well on attributes such as “very different from other ads” and “told something new about Creditbank”.
Increased visibility, awareness and brand likability for clients, conducted successful product/services launches, met client's targets and helped clients reach and exceed targeted figures.
Composed, led and presented all clients' successful pitches and proposed 360 degrees communication solutions.
Supervised creative outcome and production of campaigns.
Led client relationship management and coached agency and client's executives to align with communication strategies and thinking.
Grew the agency's team and business.
Prepared and taught the courses part of the university curricula. The courses are:
- Strategic Planning
- Advertising Analysis
- Media Strategy
- Communication
Head of Masters thesis for Advertising students.
Composed, wrote-up and presented pitches for clients who do not work with Ad Agencies, such as:
- Lazurde (1st gold manufacturer in KSA)
- KSA Ministry of Tourism
- Qatar Football Association
- Lebanese Ministry of Industry
- St. Georges Hospital
In charge of the agency's portfolio of internationally aligned accounts as well as locally acquired such as L'Oreal, Garnier, Nestlé Waters, Sanofi Aventis, LG Electronics, Oral-B, Crest, Renault, TSC Supermarket Chain, hansgrohe etc.
My role spans from making sure tasks are taken care of in a timely manner, in an efficient and professional background.
In charge of strategic planning for existing accounts, leads directly to initiating the accounts handlers of all levels to the thinking involved in the communication business nowadays.
Business development: I led all the pitches for the agency (literature, research and presentation), reaching the Creative Strategic Platform, that makes the creative department's work possible.
Scored a 5 from 7 successful pitches in a first for Publicis who stood 3 years unsuccessful with new business acquiring prior to my employment.
- Developing the Marketing and Communications plans, creating awareness to the establishment.
- Organizing the Job Fairs, Ensuring media exposure to the Board Members (TV talk shows, free PR coverage, etc.).
- Establishing the ground rules for the graduation ceremonies, establishing and booking media plan.
- Enhancing brand image of the establishment, creating higher value and increasing the enrolment numbers to exceed forecasted expectations.
Started as Creative Director, handling a regional portfolio. Upon increasing the client's number, I moved up to manage the agency, keeping an eye on the client's strategies and creative work.
Acquired new business in different product ranges, and increased the number of employees.
Handled the following accounts:
Guerlain, Pierre Cardin, Hermes, La Prairie & Caron (perfumes, cosmetics), Pagani pasta, Celia milk, Amphora edible oil, as well as packaging and branding for the local Amatoury factory (cosmetics, perfumes and shampoo).