Ensuring financial health

Ensuring financial health:  KBS Communications is a UAE-based marketing and communications firm that specializes in projecting UAE national values onto a global audience. Managed by one of the most experienced and respected local operators Kawthar Bin Sulayem, the company guarantees strong market penetration for any brand. Their key goal is to strengthen relationships between corporations and their clients in the Arab world. The CEO, Kawthar Bin Sulayem, opens up about her work.

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Growth

Without a doubt, every year our relationship with Formula 1 teams and their sponsors continues to develop and improve as they realise the potential this region offers in terms of exposure, sponsorship and stakeholder engagement. Everyone is now keen in doing more activities to benefit their positioning in this region, we’ve also seen great improvements in their methods of engaging local media — this really helps develop the sport.

I would definitely say that Formula 1 teams themselves could be a bit more open and supportive to new projects and opportunities in the region.

As a PR and marketing agency, we measure the overall impact of our work with Formula 1 by the amount of exposure and engagement we can secure for our clients, either by making people interested in the sport or its associated businesses and stakeholders. For sure, we’ve seen significant growth in this area as well.

The field

While motorsport has always been in the UAE, the culture and understanding of high-end single-seater racing are somewhat new. We’re starting to see signs that the prestigious motorsport series is starting to become more common than not. The UAE and GCC community need a lot of attention and work from organisers, hosts, media, Formula 1 teams and sponsors for a “trickle-down” effect to take effect. For example, the UAE hosts many international sporting events, but ideally, we would like to see more involvement with the local community than coverage of just the event itself.

The financial health of some of the Formula 1 teams obviously casts a bit of a dark shadow over the 2014 season, but we’re very optimistic for the overall long-term perspectives of the sport and the opportunities it presents in the region.

I would definitely say that Formula 1 teams themselves could be a bit more open and supportive to new projects and opportunities in the region, which will help them be represented better in this part of the world. Each year, we see some teams that just come and go without doing much brand positioning or engagement.