Hatem Salem

Why organisations work with Hatem Salem

• Operating perspective from running an integrated communication group across Cairo and Paris since 1991, including Media Hatem Salem, Brands & Branding, Act CSR, and Global Arabian Network. Few speakers on AI in marketing have built and led the full agency stack themselves.
• Practical fluency in MENA consumer markets that most Western marketing speakers do not have, useful for organisations looking at brand entry, expansion, or partner work across the Arab world.
• Track record of building owned platforms, including Cairo Fashion Week, Cairo Mobile Film Festival, Egypt CSR Day, the International Branding Conference, and the Blue Star Award. Useful for clients thinking about brand events as a channel, not a line item.
• Multiple Agency of the Year awards from the International Advertising Association Egypt Chapter, including for the Smart Village and Sharm El Sheikh public service campaigns. Concrete agency credibility, not a personal-brand claim.
• Current focus on neuromarketing and AI in advertising creativity gives buyers a speaker who can connect behavioural science, generative tools and brand strategy in the same talk, rather than picking one lens.

Biography highlights

• Chairman and CEO, Hatem Salem Communication Group; founder of Media Hatem Salem (1991), Brands & Branding (2000), Act CSR (2010), and Global Arabian Network (2014).
• Founder and President of Cairo Fashion Week, Cairo Mobile Film Festival, Egypt CSR Day, the International Branding Conference, and the Blue Star Award.
• Multiple Agency of the Year awards from the International Advertising Association Egypt Chapter and from the American University in Cairo.
• BA in Mass Communication, Cairo University; MA in Mass Communication, Press, Publicity, New Media and Cinema Science, Stendhal Grenoble 3.
• Former journalist and press correspondent in Paris covering European and Middle Eastern media for over five years.
• Has taught media, marketing, branding and advertising at Cairo University, the French University in Egypt, the British University in Egypt and the University of Grenoble.

Biography

The marketing function is being rebuilt twice over. AI is reshaping how creative, media and customer experience are produced, and the audience side has changed too, with attention more fragmented and brand loyalty thinner than at any point in the past two decades. Most organisations are still reasoning about this as a set of tool choices, when the real question is which parts of the marketing operation hold their shape and which get redesigned.

Salem has been running marketing and communication businesses through every prior wave of this shift. He founded Media Hatem Salem in Cairo in 1991, then built out an integrated group with Brands & Branding, Act CSR, and the Global Arabian Network, working across above the line, below the line and through the line channels for clients across Egypt and the wider Arab market. The group has earned multiple Agency of the Year honours from the International Advertising Association Egypt Chapter, including for the Smart Village and Sharm El Sheikh campaigns.

Alongside the agency work, he has built owned brand platforms that operate as commercial assets in their own right. Cairo Fashion Week, Cairo Mobile Film Festival, Egypt CSR Day, the International Branding Conference and the Blue Star Award all sit inside the group, giving him a working view of brand events as a channel rather than a marketing line item. Earlier in his career he worked as a Paris-based press correspondent covering European and Middle Eastern media, and held research and teaching posts at Stendhal Grenoble 3, Cairo University, the French University in Egypt, and the British University in Egypt.

His current work focuses on neuromarketing, AI in advertising creativity, AI in event management, and the future of media, cinema and social platforms. The connecting thread is operational: how generative tools, behavioural science and experience design change what marketing teams actually produce, and what stays human.

Key speaking topics

• Neuromarketing and consumer behaviour
• AI in advertising and creative production
• AI in marketing and customer experience
• Brand strategy in MENA and emerging markets
• Event platforms as brand assets
• The future of media, cinema and social platforms
• Corporate social responsibility and brand reputation

Ideal for

• CMOs, brand directors and marketing leadership teams rebuilding the marketing operating model around AI.
• Boards and executive teams of consumer brands entering or scaling in MENA and the Arab market.
• Heads of communications, customer experience and creative agencies working through generative AI integration.
• Event, sponsorship and brand partnership leads rethinking the role of owned platforms.

Audience outcomes

• A clearer view of which parts of the marketing operation are most exposed to AI redesign, and which parts hold.
• Working examples of neuromarketing and behavioural science applied to brand, advertising and event work.
• A practitioner read on the MENA market that most Western marketing voices cannot provide.
• A more concrete sense of how owned brand platforms function as a commercial channel.
• Sharper questions for CMOs and agency partners on AI in creative production, personalisation and customer experience.