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Posts Tagged ‘advertising’

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Heavyweight Haddad

In Advertising, Communicate, Dubai, Marketing, Profile, Published journalism on November 22, 2010 at 11:24 pm

JWT’s regional boss talks about stepping down. And agency biology

Originally published in Communicate, November 2007

In the training gym of regional advertising, Roy Haddad is a gruff, experienced sparring partner – the sort of adversary younger pugilists can learn from. He sways and bobs and weaves as he talks, rolling back in his chair, fidgeting with energy.

Haddad delivers his answers, insights and analysis in sharp jabs. He says what he has to, then stops. Asked what agencies he worked for before he founded Tihama Al Mona International, which eventually became JWT, in 1981, he parries the question. “You want me to promote the competition? Forget it.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Cash for Tash

In Advertising, Communicate, Dubai, Published journalism, Television on November 22, 2010 at 11:15 pm

In the crowded Ramadan TV market, sponsorship can cut through the clutter

Originally published in Communicate, October 2007

As the barrage of 30-second spots battering Arab eyes builds up during Ramadan, canny advertisers are turning to sponsorship as a way to penetrate the barricade.

“The main arsenal of an advertiser remains a 30-second slot,” says Mazen Hayek, group director of marketing, PR and commercial at MBC, the Arab world’s leading broadcasting group. “Having said that, sponsorships are becoming increasingly important, and we have around 40 sponsors on our grid during Ramadan.”

Media agency Starcom Mediavest Group started Ramadan sponsorship with brands like Masterfoods’ Galaxy Jewels back in 2000. Buying packages that include TVCs, “brought to you” credits, mention in trailers, logo shots going in and out of breaks and more, Jewels has positioned itself as a seasonal staple and a standard gift to offer hospitable family, friends and neighbors.

“Ramadan is the month of giving, when you visit lots of people,” says Alex Saber, Starcom’s group commercial director in the region. “And when you visit people you have to take something with you.”

PLANNING AHEAD
Television viewership more than doubles during Ramadan. “And it’s a concentrated viewership,” says Saber. “At 6 p.m. you have to be at home, behind the dinner table, with the TV on, whether you’re watching it or not. … TV is part of the culture.” After breaking their fast, people rest and pray. Then the visiting begins. “After 10 p.m. people visit each other. And they keep eating and snacking with the TV on,” says Saber.

This year, while food and beverage brands are still hungry for airtime, telecom advertisers are also saturating screens, according to Saber. “STC [Saudi Telecom Company] has been sponsoring Tash ma Tash for the last two or three years,” he says, referring to MBC’s long-running smash-hit Ramadan comedy starring Abdullah Al Sadan and Nasser Al Qasbi. “And the way sponsorship agreements happen, next Ramadan STC will have the first right of refusal.” Tash ma Tash, which has been running for 15 years, always directly after iftar, commands in excess of 50 percent audience share.

Historically, Arab broadcasters have kept Ramadan programming under their hats until the last minute, releasing details of their shows as late as the week before. But last year, spurred by heavy competition in the pan-Arab market, major stations began releasing their synopses eight weeks earlier. This year, says Saber, information started coming out in late June.

Last year, Lebanon’s LBC tried to make a dent in MBC’s dominance, going head to head with a competing version of Tash ma Tash, made by the man who directed the show’s first series. LBC’s “original” Tash ma Tash flopped. “Ramadan last year was a first experience for us,” says Sana Iskandar, LBC’s media relations manager. “This year we were more prepared and we were able to release the grid to advertisers much sooner, several months in advance, as soon as we had decided on the programming.”

This year LBC is pinning its hopes on another fake ’tache: the one worn by a Saudi woman forced to impersonate a male taxi driver in the comedy Aamsha Bint Aamash. It might not come close to MBC’s ratings, but it offers a cheaper alternative for potential sponsors looking for an ally and a captive audience.

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Bates and switch

In Advertising, Communicate, Dubai, Profile, Published journalism on November 22, 2010 at 11:12 pm

As Bates Pan-Gulf rebrands as BPG, the agency’s always-on-the-move CEO Avi Bhojani tells Communicate about multitasking

Originally published in Communicate, October 2007

Avishesha “Avi” Bhojani doesn’t like standing still. In his school days he was a keen runner, and has been dashing between companies since his first start-up ad agency got off the blocks in his homeland of India in 1985.

His latest initiative, as part owner and CEO of Bates Pan-Gulf, has been overseeing the Dubai-based agency’s rebranding as BPG. This project has given Bhojani – who was trained in design before shifting to business and deal-making – a rare chance to get his hands dirty.

“More often than not, I am perceived as the guy clients want to meet at the highest level for deals,” he says. But on company rebrandings like this one, “I am the brand manager.”

WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Like Bhojani, BPG has never been static for long, having gone through a series of reinventions and name changes since it was launched in 1980.

First came Pan-Gulf Publicity, which Bhojani joined towards the end of 1991 when it was still “a classic, old-school agency.” When the company was helping set up Dubai Shopping Festival and needed a PR arm, he started to create a handful of strategic business units within Pan-Gulf: Pan-Gulf Advertising, Pan-Gulf Public Relations, Pan-Gulf Direct and Pan-Gulf Strategy.

Then, in 1998, the former global advertising holding company Cordiant Communications Group bought a minority share, and the new joint venture took the name of one of Cordiant’s flagship agency brands, Bates Worldwide. Bates Pan-Gulf was born. The joint venture inherited globally aligned clients like British American Tobacco and Cussons.

In 2003, global ad giant WPP aquired Cordiant, and Bates in the UK and North America were merged into JWT. The name Bates began to disappear, remaining only in Bates Asia and here in the Middle East with Bates Pan-Gulf.

Last month the agency rebranded again as BPG, leaving the titular legacy of American advertising executive Ted Bates, who died in 1972, to a single initial. “Think of it as Bates Pan-Gulf 2.0,” say the advertisements.

Are more changes in store? Global ad giant WPP now owns 40 percent of BPG, and chairman Martin Sorrell has already told Communicate he wants majority stakes in all his Middle East partnerships. Bhojani is not prepared to talk about if and when this might happen.

HOT ON DATES, GOOD AT GOLF
Bhojani is one of those people who can rattle dates off the top of his head. He can put a timeline to most events in his life. He can tell you when he left one job, when he entered another, when he brokered one deal, when another was announced, with the ease of reciting a multiplication table learned by rote.

His organization travels with him. He is a walking ad for the Nokia Communicator, for instance, with his phone/e-mailer/mobile office by his side constantly. He admits one of his vices is multitasking. “I respond to e-mails while I’m in the car. I take calls and SMSs. … Multitasking has become a way of life,” he says.

Presumably accompanied by his PDA phone, Bhojani plays golf – but only to unwind. “I normally book myself two rounds of golf a week. … I play to reduce my anxiety. So I’ll only play nine holes. I don’t play 18 holes, so I never track my handicap. Because I play basically to destress, I don’t want the stress of trying to beat myself. I just want to take it easy.”

For a man who thrives under the pressure of business, the golf course seems to be one of the few places he eases off. That and going to the gym.

“In my earlier years, I was an athlete. I was a competitive person, a runner. From 100 meters to 3,000 meters I had my school record. It’s funny, because [normally] either you’re a sprinter or [a long distance runner]. But I was 100, 200, 400, 800, 1,500, 3,000 meters. When I was 15, I was very good at that.”

But these days, he leaves the competitive spirit to the boardroom, working out only to stay fit – not to beat his rivals.

BACK TO SCHOOL
His main passion in life, now, is starting new businesses. “I like building businesses,” he says. “I like building ideas. So I tend to be very passionate about what I do. That’s how I multitask.” He makes sure, though, that his side projects don’t get in the way of BPG.

For example, a few years ago Bhojani started a school. He admits the idea was more his wife’s than his own. Now in its third academic year, Dubai International Academy is located in Emirates Hills. “We’ve got 1,420 pupils,” he says. “It’s a school of choice. … This school has been designed from a parent’s perspective.” Both his sons attend DIA.

DIA is popular with Dubai’s comparatively small Dutch and Scandinavian communities, with Bhojani describing it as “a community school for communities that are not numerically large enough to create their own school.”

He adds, “Quality education does not have to be the most expensive education. … We are perhaps the only international school that did not raise fees this year.”

Teaching the international baccalaureate curriculum, the school caters to “internationally minded people.” Sounds like Bhojani himself, who seems at home anywhere – even as one of the few non-Lebanese nationals heading up a major Middle East agency.

THE “WRONG” NATIONALITY

He talks openly about being the odd man out in the Lebanese-dominated Dubai advertising scene. “I speak French,” he jokes. “But that doesn’t qualify me.”

When he lists his proudest moments – “the things that have given me the biggest high” – one date he includes is June 1993, when Pan-Gulf won 11 out of 23 prizes at the IAA advertising awards. “We just walked away with everything,” he says. “And as the ‘wrong’ nationality.”

And his agency goes it alone now as one of the few WPP agencies in the region lacking an international brand badge,unlike Grey Worldwide, JWT MENA, Memac Ogilvy and Team Y&R. “We are blessed with the delightful absence of aligned business,” he says, adding that despite WPP’s ownership stake, BPG sees no reason to model itself on a sister or parent company. Those companies that share a name and an ethos with a wider brand “need to adapt ideas and concepts, but they don’t need to innovate.”

It’s a bit like Dubai, he says. “Why has Dubai become such an entrepreneurial hotbed? Because Dubai was blessed with the absence of hydrocarbons.” Likewise, without a roster of clients gained only by dint of affiliation with a global network, BPG has to work from scratch. It’s one of the many things that have set Bhojani apart.

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On the record

In Communicate, Dubai, Marketing, Published journalism on November 22, 2010 at 11:06 pm

It pays to be superlative as Guinness World Records prepares to publish the second edition of its trivia trove book in Arabic. Can brands cash in?

Originally published in Communicate, October 2007

The region in general, and the UAE in particular, claims a lot – the world’s tallest building, the fanciest hotel, the largest man-made marina, the biggest inflatable bottle. So it is perhaps surprising that of the 48,000 official records set since 1954, only around 120 belong to the Middle East and North Africa.

Now companies in the region are working with Guinness World Records to give themselves something to shout about. It seems being No. 1 is good business, whether a brand has sponsored more football teams than any other or unwrapped the biggest box of chocolates.

“Arab people are proud people,” says Myriam Hoballah, regional project director for Guinness World Records. “And I believe they are the right people to enhance Guinness’s brand. Why? Because they are so positive about these ideas. They like the fun part and the showing off.”

MANY CLAIMS
Al Waseet International, a Kuwaiti company best known for its weekly free classifieds publication, represents Guinness World Records in the region and is ready to help companies looking for a record to break.

The company also plans to launch the 2008 Arabic version of the Guinness World Records book at the end of this month in Abu Dhabi, the world’s richest city.

Many of the claims made by Dubai businesses of being the biggest, the best and the first are never validated. “Most of [the region’s claimed records], I am sure, are not listed as Guinness World Records,” says Hoballah. “This makes a big difference. Guinness World Records is the records institution to validate a record that you set. If you don’t go through Guinness World Records guidelines and are not certified as a Guinness World Record holder, it is not a record.”

She explains how the relationship with marketers often works. “A lot of companies have understood the importance of breaking records,” says Hoballah. “For example, I might have a company that wants to do something for a new product launch in order to grab more attention in the market, and they want to link into breaking a record. Or when a company wants to rebrand, again it makes sense.”

AMBITIOUS SPIRIT
Al Waseet advises companies free of charge on which records can most easily be broken, and it can lobby for a company to appear in the book, provided it actually breaks a record or sets a new one deemed worthy of inclusion by the book’s editors in London. Customers can also order special branded editions of the tome, which can be printed – with a special cover and dedicated pages – before the next public edition is even out.

The company charges fees for organizing branded events based around record-breaking feats. Further income comes from book sales, merchandise and the special editions (though no companies from the Middle East have ordered any of those yet).

In a region with an ambitious spirit, the most mundane record can draw admiration and emulation. Gargash Enterprises, a UAE-based car dealership, for example, set a record for the largest procession of Mercedes-Benz cars in April, when the owners of 153 C-Class Mercs turned out for a parade around Dubai.

Now Mercedes in Syria are interested, says Hoballah. “They heard about what they did [in the UAE] and they might go for it. So it might become a competition.”
Another one in competition is the world record for creating the biggest football. In November, Doha Bank took the prize with a diameter of 9.07 meters.

But, when they took their eye off the ball, telecom company MTN Sudan overtook them, showing off a 10.5 meter inflatable on August 26.

Regional records: a marketing tool?

World’s largest box of chocolate bars: A giant carton of Kit Kats weighed in at 1,700 kilograms during Dubai Summer Surprises 2005.

World’s tallest unsupported flagpole: 126.8 meters, in Amman.

World’s most expensive phone number: The identity of the Qatari bidder who paid $2.75 million at a charity auction in May 2006 was kept secret, but he can presumably be contacted at +974-666-6666.

World’s largest same name gathering: 1,096 Mohammeds gathered in a Dubai park, also during Summer Surprises 2005.

World’s largest kite: 25.47 by 40 meters, flown by Abdul Rahman and Faris Al Farsi in Kuwait.

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A patient pioneer

In Advertising, Communicate, Dubai, Profile, Published journalism on November 22, 2010 at 10:59 pm

TBWA/Raad boss Ramzi Raad relishes the road less traveled. He talks to Communicate about potholes and partnerships

Originally published in Communicate, September 2007

Ramzi Raad is set on uncovering new paths. In his youth he hiked all over Lebanon, discovering caves and trails, taking Boy Scouts to interview villagers about their superstitions, and exploring and documenting the countryside. Now the CEO of TBWA/Raad sees the agency he founded as a chance to break the rules and cover uncharted ground in advertising.

When he founded the Lebanese Potholing Club, Raad would delve into the caves of his native country, marking them so that others could follow and share his discoveries.

“I was with an old friend recently,” he says, “remembering when we ran short of carbide for our lamps. We had gone in and slept inside a cave system, and it was on the third day we ran short of carbide, so we had to rush back.

“You know, as you’re going in, you’re discovering. So your path is very slow. You have to mark all the time, and you have to remember where you are marking. And if you get into a hole with many entrances, you have to make sure you mark the one you came in through. Luckily the way out is much faster, because it’s all marked.”

Professionally, too, Raad has come through situations where time and options were limited. When he was executive vice-president of Intermarkets in Dubai, he initially worked with numerous international agencies before Intermarkets joined forces with Saatchi & Saatchi in 1982. By the time Saatchi decided to set up alone in the region in 1986, the only agency left for Intermarkets to affiliate with was TBWA.

Although his choices were limited, Raad is keen to emphasize that Intermarkets’ ties to TBWA were not a last-ditch attempt at international respectability. “When my colleagues started asking, ‘Why did you pick TBWA?’ I told them it was partly because I was forced into a situation, but more importantly it was because TBWA represents where I would like to be, because of a number of factors.

“It’s a truly multinational agency where you can grow, and you’re not worried that you cannot become more than a senior person in the Middle East because there’s a hierarchy of Americans or French or Brits on top who have been there for a longer period.”

STARTING AGAIN
In 1991, TBWA ended the affiliation with Intermarkets. Raad left the agency later that year. He eventually reestablished the relationship, launching TBWA/Raad in 1999.

“I was fifty-something years of age,” he says. “And people said, ‘Ramzi Raad has become cuckoo, he is losing it, he is starting again. Who has the passion to do that?’”

For an agency run by a suspected madman, TBWA/Raad hasn’t done badly. Today, its roster includes Etihad Airways, CNN, Standard Chartered Bank and Nissan, and it was shortlisted at Cannes this year for its “Tears in Lebanon” campaign for the Trillion for Lebanon charity.

Raad is immensely proud of his agency. His work, he proclaims, is about “the young agency, not the old man.” Youth and innovation are words that continually crop up when he discusses his agency and its work.

When Raad launched TBWA, he says, he took on board their motto of the time: “Change the rules.” He says you can see how his agency is different by looking at the accessibility of its management.

ALL FOR ONE
“We are a small group of people,” Raad says. “We’ve built an agency with no walls. This is how we started, because each one of us is part of this bigger team and we are all going to work for you and you’re going to see us. My promise is that no matter how much we grow, you will continue to see us.”

Perhaps Raad’s preference for an open-door, all-involved team atmosphere stems from his introduction to the industry. While he was studying Arabic literature at the American University of Beirut, Raad took up a part-time job as an account manager at the Publicite Universelle agency. When he graduated, he joined full-time. “I did it all,” he says. “I was the account handler; I was the idea generator, working with the creative people. I was even the photographer. I still keep my portfolio. I’m so proud of the work.”

One of Raad’s employees describes him as “a kind and patient man,” although Raad admits this might be changing. “I’ve started losing my temper more,” he admits. “Because of age. But I have always been accommodating, teaching people who make mistakes rather than punishing them. And forgiving them too. Because my great belief is that in every human there is a good side and a bad side, and a good manager is the manager who takes the good side in every individual, polarizes it and makes it bigger. That’s what I’ve always done.”

Raad may believe in leading the way, but he likes to take the path less traveled. When Communicate asks what his failures have been, he answers, “We could have grown bigger, much bigger.” A man of measured speech, he weighs each word carefully. “We should have sobered up to the reality that good work alone will not win you the business every time. I will say, to be polite, that we underplayed the personal [relationships] aspect. But in all honesty, I did it consciously.”

One day, Raad intends to return to his home country. “I am from central Lebanon, from the mountains. We have a very nice family house there, which is like a fortress. It’s totally wrecked, though, and my dream is of starting work on it and repairing it.”

However, as TBWA/Raad outgrows its offices – there are plans to move into larger premises in Downtown Dubai – and wins such coveted pitches as MTV Arabia, Raad’s retirement seems a long way off.