The leadership teams of Grey Group and hug digital have completed a partnership tour across their Middle East offices.

The roadshow, which included visits to Riyadh, Cairo, Beirut and Dubai, follows the acquisition of a majority stake in hug digital by Grey Group in August. In each city the teams met agency staff, key clients and representatives of the media.

Founded in 2009 by Oussama Jamal (Chairman) and Tim Baker (Chief Executive Officer), hug digital is one of the largest and fastest growing digital agencies in the MENA region. Prior to its acquisition by Grey Group it had offices in Egypt, Dubai and India only. Now it is to work with Grey’s offices across the region.

“2017 was a very historic year for Grey. We celebrated our 100th year across the world, became future facing as a company, and advanced our leadership position in the MENA creative and digital space by acquiring the best digital company in the region,” said Nirvik Singh, Chairman and CEO of Grey Group Africa, Middle East and Asia Pacific.

The four-city tour culminated in a bespoke digital event called The Crunch, which was held at the Media One Hotel in Dubai and designed as a relaxed and intimate digital forum and industry get-together.

“The purpose of the regional tour was to meet all the Grey offices following hug’s acquisition by Grey Group. To get to know the people we’re going to be working with, and working out how the integration between hug and Grey is going to work,” said Mr Baker.

The Crunch is to be a regular annual event and will include four 10-minute presentations.

“I grew up in an industry that was all about watching, listening and reading. “Today the industry has changed, consumers have changed, and while people still watch, listen and read, they also share, swipe, like, rank, augment, personalise, shop, click and broadcast. And as the consumer and technology have come together unfortunately our industry hasn’t. So today that ends with The Crunch. It’s all about us getting together as an industry, about listening, about sharing, and talking together,” said Mr Singh.