Governments around the world compete to host the regional headquarters of global companies, and in media & entertainment that competition is intensifying. When the investment promotion authority of a fast-growing Middle East economy set out to attract the industry’s leading international players, it needed more than an investment pitch: it needed a strategy grounded in a deep understanding of how the industry works, where it is heading and how global media groups actually decide where to locate. We brought that expertise to the project, helping shape a focused, actionable strategy that the authority has since adopted.
Client Profile
Our client is the national investment promotion authority of a fast-growing economy in the Middle East, responsible for attracting foreign direct investment as part of an ambitious national transformation agenda. One of its priorities is to establish the country as a regional home for the media & entertainment industry, encouraging leading international companies to set up regional headquarters and operations there. To develop the attraction strategy, the authority engaged a leading global strategy consultancy, which brought nGülam Media into the project team as its media & entertainment sector experts.
The Challenge
The ambition was clear, but turning it into a winning strategy raised difficult questions:
Success also depended on a wide ecosystem of ministries, regulators, sector bodies and national media champions, whose policies, incentives, infrastructure and talent pipelines would ultimately make or break the country’s proposition. The strategy had to be as clear about these enablers as about the companies it aimed to attract.
The Solution
We joined the project as senior media & entertainment experts, working alongside the consultancy’s team and the authority’s leadership throughout the engagement. Our contribution centred on:
- Deep Sector Expertise: More than two decades advising consulting firms, public agencies and media groups on media & entertainment strategy, regulatory frameworks and incentive design, including extensive work on media projects across the Middle East, gave the team an insider’s view of the industry and its decision-makers.
- GrowthBridge™ Applied to a Nation: We used our proprietary methodology to treat the country as the proposition and global media companies as the customers: segmenting the industry by sub-sector and value chain, prioritising where to compete, defining a differentiated value proposition and building a targeted go-to-market towards the companies that mattered most.
- Leveraging Our Extensive C-Suite Network: Our relationships with senior executives across international media, technology and telecom groups allowed us to pressure-test the proposition against the way location decisions are really made, and to ground the target list in the companies’ actual regional plans.
The result was a strategy that combined analytical rigour with practical industry knowledge: focused on the right segments, aimed at the right companies and explicit about the enablers the country would need to put in place.
Implementation Process
The engagement unfolded in five stages:
- 1
Industry Mapping and Prioritisation:
- – Mapped the media & entertainment sub-sectors and the production, post-production and distribution segments of their value chains, integrating the disruptive trends reshaping each of them.
- – Assessed every segment against alignment with national strategies, investment potential, job creation and ecosystem impact to select the priority areas.
- 2
Target Company Identification:
- – Identified the leading multinationals in each priority segment and mapped their current regional footprints and expansion plans.
- – Built a prioritised target list with a clear rationale for each company.
- 3
Competitive Positioning and Value Proposition:
- – Benchmarked the country against established regional and international media hubs on the factors that drive location decisions.
- – Defined a differentiated value proposition for each priority segment, going beyond incentives to market access, talent, infrastructure and ecosystem.
- 4
Enabler Assessment and Roadmap:
- – Reviewed the critical enablers: policy and regulation, funding and incentives, service providers, technology infrastructure, talent and the innovation ecosystem, and identified the gaps to close.
- – Designed the targeted initiatives, their sequencing, ownership and KPIs to build a compelling and sustainable proposition.
- 5
Stakeholder Alignment and Adoption:
- – Engaged ministries, regulators, sector bodies and national media champions to validate and refine the strategy.
- – Supported the authority through to formal adoption and the hand-over of the roadmap and its KPIs.
Throughout, we worked hand in hand with the consultancy’s team and the authority’s leadership, challenging assumptions with first-hand industry experience and keeping the strategy anchored in what global media companies actually need from a regional base.
Results
The engagement turned a national ambition into a strategy the authority could act on:
- A Focused Attraction Strategy: A clear prioritisation of media & entertainment sub-sectors and value-chain segments, aligned with national strategies and adopted by the authority as the basis for its outreach.
- A Prioritised Target List: The international companies most likely to establish regional headquarters and operations in the country, each with a mapped footprint and a tailored rationale for engagement.
- A Differentiated Value Proposition: A credible positioning against established hubs, built on market access, talent, infrastructure and ecosystem rather than incentives alone.
- An Actionable Enabler Roadmap: Targeted initiatives across policy, incentives, infrastructure, talent and ecosystem, with sequencing, ownership and KPIs to track progress.
For the authority, the outcome was a shared, evidence-based plan that aligned government and industry stakeholders behind a single strategy and gave its teams a clear playbook for engaging the world’s leading media & entertainment companies.
This success story shows that attracting an industry is, at heart, a go-to-market challenge. By combining our GrowthBridge™ methodology with deep media & entertainment expertise and a C-suite network across media, technology and gaming, we helped a national authority define where to compete, whom to target and what to build.
If your organisation is shaping a sector strategy, an investment proposition or a go-to-market in media & entertainment, we’re here to help.
Contact us today to discover how our expert advisory services can turn your ambition into an actionable strategy.
