Intermarkets was the first advertising agency to establish a real regional presence around the Middle East, and this attracted most of the global agencies to appoint it as their affiliate. The list included JWT, Lintas, Ogilvy & Mather, FCB, Univas, Van Brunt & Company, Standard Advertising and Hakuhodo.
Foote Cone & Belding (FCB) partnered with Intermarkets to service British Airways (BA), which used to fly to Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain, where our involvement was restricted to booking media, which we handled in parallel with Pan Am and Swissair. None of these airlines seemed to mind our involvement with other carriers.
In September 1982, we were officially informed that FCB had lost the $28 million BA global advertising account, which they had been handling since 1948, when the airline was still called BOAC. Shortly before BA’s ad agency review was concluded on the 14 September 1982, the government-owned airline underwent a corporate re-organization instigated by Sir John King, the airline’s new chairman. Lord King was appointed to this position by the prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who’s coming to power as the head of the Conservative Party was largely attributed to the creative efforts of an advertising agency named Saatchi & Saatchi. The agency had been established by two brothers, Charles and Maurice Saatchi, the sons of an Iraqi Jew who worked in watch repair, which explains the family name. Saatchi & Saatchi was at the head of a British move to compete with the Americans, who had been in control of the advertising industry since the Thirties.
One of the two brothers, namely Maurice[1], was a regular reader of Harvard Business Review. In 1983, he happened to read an article in the magazine written by a Harvard marketing professor called Ted Levitt, which said: “Companies must learn to operate as if the world is one large market – ignoring superficial regional and national differences. The globalization of markets is at hand, with that, the multinational commercial world nears its end, and so does the multinational corporation. The global company will shape the vectors of technology and globalization into its great fecundity. It will systematically push these vectors towards their own convergence, offering everyone simultaneously high-quality standardized products at optimally low prices. Companies that do not adapt to the new realities will become victims of those that do.”
Maurice Saatchi treated Levitt’s words as gospel and flew to Cambridge, Massachusetts, hoping to acquire Levitt’s expertise with Saatchi money. Almost immediately, Saatchi & Saatchi began implementing the Levitt theory of marketing. In March 1983, a team of BA executives led by Lord King gathered at Saatchi & Saatchi’s headquarters in Charlotte Street, London. Also in the room were Maurice Saatchi and Bill Muirhead, the account executive who was introduced as the person who would lead the BA account if won by the agency. Muirhead was restless to see BA’s reaction to his discovery of an important fact that the airline, which had been flying to more international destinations than any other airline in the world, had failed to exploit. This was translated by the agency team in the form of a universal slogan – “The World’s Favorite Airline” – which was presented as Saatchi & Saatchi’s single creative route on that day. This led BA to choose them.
At the time rumors claimed that FCB was the victim of a political stitch-up, in which the BA account was gifted to the Saatchi brothers by Margaret Thatcher for their help in bringing the Tories to power in 1979[2]. Also, that the UK’s national airline should not remain in the hands of an American ad agency. Saatchi & Saatchi moved forward fast, seizing on another observation – unraveled by Bill Muirhead – that put into focus the fact that British Airways carried more passengers across the Atlantic each year than there were inhabitants of Manhattan. That led to a Spielberg-inspired TV commercial being created by the agency and being labelled by Campaign magazine as one of the best ads of the 20th century, helping the re-birth of British Airways as “The World’s Favorite Airline”.
“Manhattan Landing” and its $25 million media campaign in the UK, the US, Canada, and Australia, did more than boost the image of BA. It enhanced the reputation of Saatchi & Saatchi and Ted Levitt’s credo of global advertising.
In the Middle East, Intermarkets was asked to prepare an inventory of all the BA advertising material it had in its possession, and to hand it back to the client after all its outstanding invoices had been settled. While we were working on compiling such material from our network agencies, we received the surprise news that Saatchi & Saatchi did not have a presence in the Middle East, and this led Lord King to suggest keeping the same agencies that BA had been using in the Middle East and India, where the new global agency had to quickly fill the gap in its network. At that stage, we were called to a meeting at Saatchi & Saatchi in Charlotte Street, London, to introduce Intermarkets and explore avenues for cooperation. I accompanied Erwin Guerrovich and Nahi Ghorayeb on this visit to the UK’s emerging shrine of world-class creative excellence, which had started to threaten the American big boys’ dominance of global advertising.
On arrival at the Charlotte Street office, we were asked to wait in the ground floor reception area. My eyes instantly strayed over the framed ads hanging around the spacious hall. Obviously the ‘Pregnant Man’ ad, which the agency had produced in 1970 for the Family Planning Association, commanded center stage. Next to it was the Conservative Party’s “Labor Isn’t Working” poster.
After a short wait, we were received – in one of the fourth-floor conference rooms – by Alban Lloyd, chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide, Bill Muirhead, the global director on the BA account, and Jeremy Sinclair, the agency’s executive creative director. The three took turns in presenting to us Saatchi & Saatchi Compton Worldwide. Lloyd passionately stressed the goal that the two brothers had set: to become the largest and most significant advertising agency in the world. Jeremy Sinclair showcased some of the campaigns that made the agency famous and created a great deal of hype towards the awaited ‘Manhattan Landing’ TVC. Muirhead then took the floor to explain the BA situation, and their own plans for supporting the new management on overhauling the flagship carrier. In his presentation, Muirhead focused on the globalization of markets and where his agency and the airline had been inspired by the theories of the well-known Harvard Business School professor, Ted Levitt[3].
Then we introduced Intermarkets and our region, with Guerrovich summarizing the network’s vision and history, Ghorayeb highlighting our airline experience, and I briefing the attendees about the current business. Our introduction invited a long list of questions, as the Middle East was an unknown region to our hosts. In the brief about Intermarkets’ current portfolio, we all noticed Lloyd’s interest in our P&G experience, and the pleasant surprise of the three when they learned that we were handling Pampers and Ariel. Another surge of interest was observed when I shared my work on Toyota with the team. The meeting was adjourned with a decision that we were to expect their visit to our offices soon.
[1] Conflicting Accounts – Kevin Goldman – Pages 70,71 & 72
[2] Campaign UK September 12, 2013 (BA‘s Advertising Journey)