A pioneer in the Middle Eastern and North African advertising industry, and key figure there for nearly four decades, Ramzi Raad is to be given a major award.

The organisers of the 3rd Dubai International Advertising Festival are to present Raad – who is chairman/CEO of TBWA\RAAD Middle East – with the prestigious 2010 Dubai Lynx Advertising Person of the Year Award.

The Advertising Person of the Year Award honours someone who by their efforts, energy and dedication, has lifted the presence and profile of the region within the international advertising, marketing and communications community, at a national or regional level.

    Raad (pictured) graduated from the American University of Beirut and began his advertising career in 1967. In the following 12 years, he helped expand the first Middle East regional agency network, firstly into Kuwait and Bahrain. Then, with the eruption of the Civil War in his native Lebanon, he was the first Lebanese ad man to move to the Gulf, where he settled in Dubai in 1975. In 1982, he moved to Paris and two years later transferred to London. In 1986, he returned to Dubai where he is still based.

In 1988, Ramzi was voted president of the UAE chapter of the International Advertising Association (IAA) and during his presidency, the first Advertising Awards Program in the region was launched (1990). The first meeting for the IAA World Executive Committee in the Middle East was hosted in Dubai, and the Chapter led large delegations to the IAA World Congress in Sydney, Australia (1988) to Advista Arabia in Cairo (1989) and the Asian Advertising Congress in Lahore, Pakistan (1989). He was then named vice-president/area director of the International Advertising Association for the Middle East and Africa in 1991.

Raad is a founder of the GCC Advertising Association, the Middle East Research Forum and the Middle East Advertising Agencies Association. He has lectured on Middle East Advertising in London, Zurich, Sydney, Lahore, Cairo, Bahrain, New Delhi and Mexico.

He founded TBWA\RAAD Middle East in September 1999, which quickly entered the Middle East Ad Agencies Top 5 League, with a network of agencies in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Jeddah, Riyadh, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Algeria and Morocco. The network he leads also encompasses Ketchum Middle East (PR), and Tequila Middle East (CRM).

Terry Savage, chairman of Cannes Lions, who with Motivate Publishing are joint organisers of the festival, said: "Ramzi has been, and continues to be, an instrumental figure in the development and growth of the advertising and communications industry throughout the Middle East and North Africa. We are delighted to pay tribute to his dedication and success."

Raad added: "I am extremely humbled and flattered to be acknowledged by the Middle East ad industry with this award, which I consider only partly personal, as most of the credit goes to my TBWA colleagues who have earned this honour along with me. I am so pleased that this comes to me on the tenth anniversary of TBWA\RAAD, confirming that we have fulfilled the TBWA mantra to ‘Change the Rules of Arab advertising’ – something I had promised to do, and we have done it in record time.

"To me, this is less about my own 40 years in the business and more about the exciting momentum and where it will take us. As a region, we are at a pivotal point in time, and I look forward to seeing what our young ad talent will show the world, the further our region steps into the international spotlight."

Raad will receive his award during the Dubai Lynx ceremony to be held on March 17 at The Palladium in Dubai. 

The Dubai International Advertising Festival will be held March 14-16 at The Palladium, Dubai, UAE.