On my return, Erwin Guerrovich, Nahi Ghorayeb, Raymond Hanna, and Gabriel Brenas were waiting to hear if we had lost the PACC account. So, they were surprised to hear that the Abdel Latif Jameel Toyota account was the first topic I wanted to discuss. Since I wanted their full attention to the pressing Nissan opportunity, I assured them that we had turned PACC’s frustration into renewed trust and respect. After putting their minds at rest, I shared the story of the accidental meeting with Nissan in Kuwait, focusing on the bold offer of Norio Osawa to hand us Nissan’s regional advertising account on a silver platter, provided we resign the Abdel Latif Jameel Toyota account.
Guerrovich, as usual, was the first to comment, reminding me that I had brought in the Abdel Latif Jameel business and had been managing it since day one. The decision to keep it, or resign it, must be my decision before we got into any revenue generation or any other comparisons. Erwin concluded by reminding us that the advertising business in our part of the world thrives on relationships before all other considerations. Accordingly, and since I was the owner of the Toyota relationship in Saudi, I had to tell Intermarkets’ group general management what my recommendation was. On the flight back from Kuwait the previous evening I had thought deeply about what needed to be done, so I recited what I defined to be the wisest course of action to my colleagues.
I reminded them that previously I had asked Youssef Abdel Latif Jameel and Shaker Naboulsi to lobby with Toyota to help us widen Intermarkets’ mandate from the current Saudi role to a formal regional role, stressing the fact that we had been doing a pretty good job in Saudi Arabia and had agency branches in all of Toyota’s GCC markets. The two gentlemen had promised to talk to Japan about this, but never got back. Accordingly, our first step should be to chase them for a response. In parallel, I wanted to do a quick comparison with the help of PARC’s monitoring services to evaluate the gap between Nissan’s advertising expenditure around the region and Toyota’s ad spend in Saudi Arabia. We all agreed on this course of action, and I called Shaker Naboulsi in Jeddah the next morning to find out if he or Youssef had been in contact with Toyota since I last called, seeking their support. Shaker confirmed that they had promptly done so. However, they had kept the answer from me, knowing it would frustrate me.
Toyota had responded saying that its contractual agreements with all its national sales companies in the Middle East stipulated that a certain percentage of the price of vehicles exported to each of these markets was discounted, allowing each dealer to spend on advertising, and that only the dealer could decide how and with whom to spend. Changing this required a contract re-negotiation that the company didn’t deem necessary. A short while later, PARC’s comparative study came in and revealed that Nissan outspent Abdel Latif Jameel by far. It also alerted us to the fact that Toyota was only actively advertising in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE.
I flew to Saudi Arabia, since we felt that resigning the account should only be done face-to-face with my very close friends in Jeddah. Youssef Jameel did not take the news lightly and the usually timid and extremely polite Saudi was furious. I attempted to pacify him by reminding him of my statement – made during the early days of our partnership – that Intermarkets was a very large company, and no single office was allowed to block the network from winning global or regional business by committing to exclusivity in their own market. Abdel Latif Jameel, despite its understandable anger, remained fair and honest by settling all our outstanding dues. It then went into a joint venture with Dancer Fitzgerald Sample (DSF), the US agency handling Toyota’s advertising in America at the time. This agency’s first assignment was the launch of Toyota’s luxury brand Lexus in the kingdom. Norio Osawa stayed in regular contact with us after the Jeddah meeting and when I reverted – with the news that he was eagerly awaiting – he instantly sent a formal letter appointing Intermarkets as Nissan’s advertising agency in the Middle East.