Havas has appointed BETC CEO Bertille Toledano as President of Havas Creative Network and CEO of Havas Creative Middle East. She will lead the launch of BETC Middle East, unifying creative, PR and production under one brand, strengthening Havas’ AI-driven creative strategy while continuing her leadership role at BETC.
Havas has unveiled a major global creative leadership move with the appointment of Bertille Toledano — the longtime CEO of BETC — as President of Havas Creative Network and CEO of Havas Creative Middle East, signalling a decisive expansion of the group’s creative ambitions across one of the most rapidly emerging markets in the world. In her new role, Toledano will spearhead the launch of a full-fledged Creative Powerhouse for the region, bringing together creative, PR, customer experience, production, and experiential capabilities under the unified brand name BETC Middle East.
This represents a strategic transformation of Havas’ regional identity. Rather than operating as a multi-agency group, Havas is reorienting the ecosystem into one integrated creative superbrand — one that carries the powerful legacy of BETC, the Paris-born agency globally celebrated for some of the world’s most awarded campaigns. The move immediately elevates the Middle East within Havas’ global talent and innovation network and reflects the group’s determination to operate with stronger creative conviction and global coherence at a time when AI, brand storytelling and culture have converged into a single competitive arena.
Toledano joins the Havas Executive Committee in this expanded capacity and will report under the leadership of Donna Murphy, Global CEO of Havas Creative and Health Networks. The group describes her elevation as an intentional signal — creativity, long the group’s core business asset, is being formally positioned at the highest level of strategic influence amid the fast-evolving AI era. Yannick Bolloré (Chairman & Global CEO, Havas), Mercedes Erra (Founder of BETC), Murphy, and Toledano will now act in tandem to advance what Havas calls its ‘Converged.AI’ strategy — blending human creative talent with next-generation AI-enabled brand-building systems.
In the Middle East, Toledano will work closely with Alberto Canteli Suarez, Dany Naaman and regional leadership teams to accelerate scale, production power, cultural fluency and brand action-readiness in markets primed for growth. From luxury and tourism to sports, entertainment and government innovation, the region has emerged as one of the industry’s most future-facing arenas — and Havas is clearly positioning itself not just to participate in that future, but to help define its creative language.
Bertille Toledano will continue to hold her current leadership as CEO of BETC. Her dual remit is no coincidence — it is an intentional linking of Europe’s most creative powerhouse with the Middle East’s most dynamic market moment. Havas is betting on the strategic proximity between global excellence and regional opportunity — rather than running them as separate plays — and Toledano embodies that convergence.
Havas says the unification of its Middle Eastern agencies under the BETC Middle East identity marks far more than a name change. It is a commitment to world-class creative output, bolder production muscle and a highly international standard of brand orchestration, infused with local relevance and cultural intelligence. With Toledano at the helm, the company is signalling its confidence in the region not just as a growth market, but as a creative origin point for work that can move global conversations.
For Havas, this moment marks one of its most assertive creative restructuring moves in recent years. For the Middle East, it signals that the world’s top creative minds — not just its business operators — are now being actively embedded into the region’s growth story. And for Toledano, it is the beginning of what Havas calls a defining new chapter — one designed to shape the future of creativity, not just respond to it.
