Man with a plan

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Master motivator: Dr Javidi learned business strategy from Wal-Mart’s Sam Walton.

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Heavyweights: Catevo has a number of big-name clients under its belt.

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If you're going to seek advice, then you might as well go to the best. In the early 1980's, a young Iranian-born PhD student went to work with the executive team at US retail giant Wal-Mart. Within a matter of days, he was spotted by the late, great Sam Walton - Wal-Mart's founder and one of history's most celebrated businessmen - and the rest, as they say, is history.

"One of the greatest lessons that I learned from Mr Walton, was the saying that ‘None of us is smarter than all of us'," recalls Dr Mitch Javidi. "At the time he showed it to me, given that English is not my first language, I really didn't understand it and so used to chase him, asking what it meant. I just wasn't used to a sentence starting with a negative!"

Twenty five years on from his exceptional introduction to the world of high-level business strategy, and those nine words have proved to be the last negative in Javidi's glittering career. The President and CEO of PR and marketing consultancy The Catevo Group, grasped his opportunity with both hands, learning hard and fast alongside the Wal-Mart legend.

"In my young days I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time," Javidi suggests, self-effacingly. "I learned from the master, and it was good to sit there and just listen, as my mind then was not thinking as a strategist's should."

The Iranian-born Javidi did not take long to tune into the Wal-Mart wavelength, and employed Walton's wisdom throughout his time with the retail giant, and then throughout the following two and a half decades of top-level strategic consultancy.

"The bottom line was that it's all about people, and it's all about teams," he says. "Through all my experiences over the years, I have really come to appreciate that, and that's what I promote at Catevo."

Early this year, US-based Catevo began operations in Dubai to serve clients across the Middle East and Africa. From its regional headquarters in Dubai Media City, the group will serve a long list of clients - including GlaxoSmithKline, AT&T, Cisco Systems, IBM, Boeing, John Deere and Johnson & Johnson, among many other blue chip companies - with strategic business services.

"One of my own personal strengths is in business intelligence, and rather than rushing into the market, we've done our homework carefully," reveals Javidi. "We started last November, setting up the operations, putting people in position, studying the market here and studying our competition.

"I think that some of the offerings in public relations and communications that are being offered to the client tend to be at the ‘commodity' level, with limited strategy in mind," he continues. "Our research shows that a good portion of that market is ready for some innovative new ideas, and a new way of doing things."

Javidi is convinced that Catevo can raise its market share to 5% of the Middle East marketing communications sector within the next two years. He is bullish, and insists that there is slack in the region's PR sector that represents a golden opportunity for the company.

"We think that we can go after 5% of the market because clients out here are ready for a change," he argues. "They are looking for something different - more dynamic, more innovative, more intelligent, and with more utilisation of integrated services."

If Javidi is right, then Catevo will have entered the Gulf market at just the right time. Industry analysts estimate the Middle East public relations market will exceed US$100m by the end of 2007, with an annual growth rate between 15-25% year-to-year. Moreover, Javidi suggests that one discipline could prove particularly lucrative for the firm.

"I've been looking at what type of work is being done, and what kind of trend analysis is being done, and I think there is a huge opportunity in market research here," he says. "I don't think the region is getting good market research results, and I think a lot of data is just based on how things look, and a few interviews.

"In the UK, the US or Japan, market research is vitally important and primary research is too," Javidi continues. "An area that I think Catevo can bring forward is good, solid market research that is based not only on secondary data, but also on primary data.

"We're going to offer good capabilities - including focus groups, perceptual studies, and behavioural studies - to help develop organisations, and enable them to use that information to build a clear strategy for the future."

Catevo's meticulous research has uncovered obstacles as well as opportunities. In Javidi's opinion, PR is "not highly received" in the Middle East region, and so potential clients must be persuaded that PRs should sit "at the same table" as CEOs.

"We need to educate the clients that strategic communication has an impact on the bottom line," he says. "All the businesses that are growing here are really taking for granted that a crisis is not going to happen. But when it does, crisis communication will be like having life insurance.

"Typically people tend not to see crisis communication as a PR activity, but in reality it is: you have to plan for it and then when the crisis happens, you have to deal with it and inform people," he continues. "Historically that has been the trend in PR - if you go back 30, 40 or 50 years in Western societies, it was the same way."

Javidi believes that the migration of international companies to the Middle East will bring with it a business culture more accustomed to PR activities. Essentially, companies that are used to having strong PR and communications representation will come to this market and demand the same.

"Across the region, governments have campaigns underway to educate people around the world about what their goals and objectives are," he says. "In the meantime, what you don't want is an unexpected crisis to have an impact on everything that has been accomplished."

Javidi believes that some newcomers to the Middle East have fatally underestimated the challenges the region presents. Unlike Catevo, they have rushed to market, and condemned themselves in the process.

"I think some businesses have come to this area because they heard the word ‘growth', and they really did not do their own market intelligence," he says. "They came to the market, realised how difficult it was, and didn't have the financial backing - so they failed.

"With us, we knew that we would have to take our time, that we would get one chance to position our brand," he adds. "We knew we would need time to build networks here, and fully understand our competition."

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