Mercedes production in Dubai

Saudi Arabia's car market grew 3.7% in 2025.

The UAE saw 5.4% growth, reaching over 270,000 new cars.

Across the Gulf, well over a million vehicles a year. And Mercedes has been growing at double-digit rates in the region.

The durability and prestige are still alive and strong in that part of the world. As anyone who has visited knows, cars are a strong part of daily life, a pillar of your activity.

Cars are not prosecuted in the area.

And it makes sense that the same way you spend money in your home (where you spend a third of your life), you spend money in your car, where you may spend three to four hours a day.

We pitched OMC at an event last year. We sold our vision for the GCC: FXMM as a bridge, international top talent (photographers, directors, and so on) with solid local support.

The creative was ambitious, the budget challenging.

Convincing Tim Adorf to embark on this adventure was the key to success. We needed someone who could be at 45 degrees in the desert and still be strong, calm and focused.

We shot in two different Mercedes locations, in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The job was to make it look cool, realistic and premium. We had the famously dangerous AI layouts to work from, the kind where if you try to replicate too closely, you get burnt.

For the video, the time was insufficient, but the assets were created and delivered. In the end, they had to live on minor channels, no storytelling, just a bit of movement.

The experience was formative. It found us in a great spot of learning, understanding what and how next time would look.

Then war happened and business stopped a bit.

Now, in May 2026, it feels as if things are back to normal. We will be in Riyadh from the second half of the month for further meetings. And yes, we will be back. Maybe with a bigger story to tell.