I have worked across global markets — from agency floors in Beirut to boardrooms in Dubai, and transformation programs spanning 85 markets. But few places have felt as urgent, ambitious, and consequential as Saudi Arabia does today. What is happening here is still underestimated by many outside the region.
Saudi Arabia is not simply adopting technology. It is accelerating change with unusual clarity of purpose. For those of us working at the intersection of marketing, customer experience, digital, and AI, that creates both pressure and possibility. Expectations are higher. The pace is faster. And the opportunity to build something meaningful is very real.
When I joined Petromin in 2024, helping launch Saudi Arabia’s first automotive agentic AI solution. It was built as a bilingual WhatsApp based AI agent, designed to support customers in Arabic and English across aftersales needs — from service queries to loyalty support and urgent assistance. What mattered to me was not the novelty of the technology itself. It was whether customers would actually find it useful when convenience, speed, and clarity mattered most. That, to me, is the real test of innovation.
This is not a market waiting to be persuaded. It is already moving. Consumers here are digitally fluent, brand aware, and increasingly unwilling to accept slow, generic, or fragmented experiences. They expect brands to keep pace with the country around them. The old model of broad segmentation, mass broadcasting, and hoping something lands is no longer enough. What replaces it is more demanding: relevance, personalization, responsiveness, and design that begins with real human behavior.
That is why I believe one of the biggest misconceptions in global conversations about AI, is that the hard part is the technology. It rarely is. The harder part is trust.
When organizations introduce AI into customer facing environments, the resistance is often not technical. It is emotional, cultural, and operational. People do not push back on technology because it is new. They push back when they do not understand its value, when it feels impersonal, or when they suspect it is being deployed for efficiency at the expense of experience. The breakthrough happens when you design for the human first and allow the technology to serve that design — not the other way around.
From brand work at Red Bull to building digital centers of excellence at Nissan and later leading broader transformation work across customer experience and marketing. Data without empathy quickly becomes noise. AI without purpose becomes performance. The brands that stand out are not always the ones with the most advanced tools. More often, they are the ones using those tools to remove friction, solve real problems, and make people feel understood.
Saudi Arabia is forcing the industry to confront this at scale. The pace of transformation here — economic diversification, rising consumer expectations, rapid digital adoption, and a cultural shift — leaves very little room for complacency. Brands cannot drift. They cannot rely on templates imported from other markets and expect them to resonate. In Saudi Arabia, translation is not localised. Real localization requires cultural fluency, language sensitivity, and a genuine understanding of what matters to people on the ground.
That is one reason the #SheDrives campaign remains one of the most meaningful pieces of work in my career. Launched at the historic moment women in Saudi Arabia gained the right to drive, it was never just a campaign to me. It represented a shift in culture, identity, and visibility. It went on to receive international recognition, including a Cannes Lions Gold award, but what stayed with me most was not the trophy. It was the response from women who felt seen, respected, and included in a national moment that mattered. That, to me, is the standard marketing should aspire to: not just impressions, but impact.
Looking ahead, I believe the next few years in Saudi Arabia will be shaped by three forces. First, the rise of truly Arabic native AI — not translated systems or imported models with surface-level adaptation, but solutions built with Arabic language and cultural nuance at their core. Second, the evolution of agentic AI in customer experience. We are moving beyond static recommendation engines and basic automation toward systems that can help customers navigate decisions and actions in real time. Third, the growing importance of ethical branding. Consumers, especially younger ones, are paying attention. They want transparency, relevance, and brands that respect both their data and their trust.
This matters deeply to me, which is one reason I stay closely involved in global AI and customer experience communities. I believe innovation and governance have to move together. If innovation moves without guardrails, it loses trust. If governance moves without ambition, it slows progress. The real challenge for leaders now is to build both into the same conversation.
Saudi Arabia is not waiting for others to define what that balance should look like. It is building its own model — one shaped by local ambition, consumer expectations, and a clear desire to lead rather than follow. Those of us who work here also carry a responsibility: to make sure the future we are building is not only technologically advanced, but commercially useful, culturally aware, and human at its core.
The future is not being drafted somewhere else and imported into this market later.
