Chapter 88\ Nine years of many changes

I remained outside of Dubai for nine years, during which time Intermarkets underwent a lot of changes in its maturity and growth. By 1986, the scene had changed, and many agencies had moved to the shelter of Dubai after running away from the Lebanese Civil War.

Impact BBDO came to Dubai from Cyprus and H&C Leo Burnett realized that it could not manage a regional network in Beirut, so it rushed to Dubai and opened Radius Leo Burnett. Akram Miknass came to the same conclusion, which led him to expand Fortune Promoseven’s Dubai office, making it the major coordinator of the agency’s regional accounts while he remained in Bahrain. Lintas had developed its presence and so had DMB&B, which was being represented by Tony Housseini’s Tamra. Éclair Kazan, after being taken over by the Saudi Tihama Group and changing its name to Tihama Al Mona International, moved from Sharjah to Dubai and carried the label of JWT. Even DDB became operational in the UAE via the Sharjah-based TD&A, managed by Ravi Rao. Intermarkets had a new general manager, Raji Al Hoss, who came from a film production background, having been the partner of Helen Malek in a production company called Panhel^[1].

The agency had moved out of Juma Al Majid’s head office building in Hor Al Anz to a more spacious office in another Juma Al Majid building on the Dubai – Sharjah motorway, overlooking Dubai International Airport. The agency’s new claim to fame became its popular TV commercials and their accompanying jingles. The agency’s national partner having acquired the dealership for Hyundai cars, his general manager, Mohammad Rashid Al Daour, called on Intermarkets to launch this new car brand, which came with a difficult-to-pronounce name. The agency called on Elias Rahbani again, who created a jingle that in no time at all became the most popular song in Dubai. The sale of Hyundai shot sky high in parallel.

While Raji El Hoss managed the UAE agency, I used the Dubai office as my base to oversee the regional network, which continued to expand with the addition of Yemen and Oman. One day, I was invited by the school of mass communication at Al Ain University to lecture to the female students about advertising in the Arab world. At that time, the university was still non-co-educational and on arrival at the university campus I discovered that I was to deliver my lecture to a video camera in an empty studio while the girls asked their questions via an audio sound system. As I finished and was packing up my papers, an Egyptian male secretary came dashing into the studio to tell me that my Dubai office had called many times since my arrival. I stepped into the dean’s office and called Dubai, to be told that a gentleman from the office of Young & Rubicam in Amsterdam was visiting Dubai for the day and was keen to meet me. After giving the surprise visitor a lecture about setting an appointment before walking in, I drove back at full speed.

The visitor, Tiemen Bosman, was Dutch and had been called back from retirement six months earlier to help identify an affiliate agency in the Middle East – one that could partner with Y&R on handling the Colgate account in the Arabian Gulf. Tiemen innocently confessed that he had been going to and from between Amsterdam and Tel Aviv for the previous six months, confident that he was making real progress with the Israeli agency that he had been in dialogue with. However, when the time came to introduce them to the client, he and his bosses were shocked to find out that an Israeli agency could not help them in any market in the Middle East, apart from Israel itself. Bosman was rushing to identify an alternative partner during his one-day visit to Dubai. Although the time was already very late, I shared Intermarkets’ full credential presentation, many samples of our work and a couple of case histories. He concluded the meeting by thanking me for making time, despite the very short notice, and repeated that he was travelling back the same evening, promising to contact me as soon as he got back to Holland and presented his report to his management and the Colgate-Palmolive client.

The next day was a Friday, so in the afternoon, I took my son to ride his bicycle in Shindagha. At a distance, and behind the crowds of pedestrians, I saw Tiemen Bosman, who was supposed to be back in Holland, walking next to Isabella Al Makdissi, the wife of Talal Al Makdissi, the founder and CEO of Team Advertising. She seemed to be acting as his guide in this tourist area of Dubai. Being Swedish, might have helped in creating a closer empathy with the visitor. That coincidental encounter made me believe that the Y&R tie up would go to Team Advertising. In fact, in the same way that Tiemen Bosman and his bosses had been convinced they could handle Colgate’s campaigns in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait via an ad agency in Israel, they all soon discovered that the network of Team agencies shown in the credential presentation Bosman had taken back from Dubai did not exist. At that stage, they all rushed to find a solution before Colgate finds out.

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^[1] La Télé Quelle Histoire – Jean-Claude Boulos – Page 235