Advisory Board Members
Mr. Tarek Miknas
CEO – FP7McCann Middle East, North Africa & Turkey:
Half Lebanese, half Turkish and a nationalized Bahraini, Tarek was born into advertising and has been actively in the industry since he graduated with a Communications Degree from California State University, Fullerton in 1997.
Directly after graduating, he started his career in Advertising as an Art Director at McCann New York. Six years later, he joined FP7McCann in Dubai working his way through Account Management, Growth and Corporate Communications
In 2006, the opportunity to open a new agency with three others became a reality and LOWE MENA came to life. He and the team were able to carve out a unique, relevant space in the market winning 9 Dubai Lynx Awards within their first 11 months of operation. They quickly grew the business from 4 people sitting on beanbags to 96 at its peak within four years and expanded from Dubai into 3 new markets including Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Morocco within that time frame.
On September 26th, 2010, He was selected, to head up the FP7 Network as CEO for the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey. Since then, the agency worked its way to become the Most Effective Agency and Network of the Year at the MENA Effies for the last consecutive eight years and earned the title of most Effective Agency of the Year, globally three times over the last five years. FP7McCann today is among the top 3 agencies in any market that it operates.
In addition to FP7McCann, Tarek currently runs 4 additional agency networks; Momentum, McCann Health, Craft and Commonwealth. He serves on the MCN Board of Directors and its Executive Committee. In terms of industry associations, he is a member of the Tik Tok Creative Circle, the International Advertising Association (IAA) and the Advertising Business Group (ABG). Outside of the world of Advertising, he serves on the board of Promoseven Holding which is a diversified holding company based in Bahrain. He is also a member of the External Board in the Facultyof Communications, Art and Science at the Canadian University of Dubai. And finally, he is also a Board member of Smart Life, a UAE based NGO created to support blue collar workers.
Mr. Najib Bencherif
Najib Bencherif has had a long and distinguished career in the media industry, spanning more than three decades.
He was actively involved in many ambitious projects, including the launch of the BBC Arabic TV in 1994, and Al Arabiya TV channel in 2003, in addition to the evaluation of the Palestinian TV output at the request of the EU in 2012.
Najib was also involved in numerous workshops, seminars, conferences, as a media expert and senior trainer, organised by Euromed, IREX, AFP Foundation, Thompson Foundation, BBC Media Action, etc.
Being an internationally recognised media expert, he was part of several consulting teams dispatched in various developing countries by several media institutions including BBC Media Action, Thompson Foundation, AFP Foundation, etc. The aim was to help improve the professional standard of local journalists and instil a new media culture based on freedom of speech, accuracy and impartiality.
During his long professional career, Najib gained a great deal of valuable field knowledge and experience in the countries where he operated including Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc.
In his capacity as Director of Assignment at Al Arabiya TV channel, managing more than twenty bureaus and over forty correspondents, he also ran an internal project aimed at training young journalists from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain, UAE, etc.
Last but not least, Najib led a team of experts that promoted media freedom in Morocco in conjunction with the CMF (Centre for Media Freedom). Following five years of continuous field action and lobbying, the teams’s efforts were eventually rewarded with the introduction in the Moroccan 2011 Constitution of article 27 on « the right to access information ».
