Intermarkets Kuwait took control of the Nissan account with the leadership of Youssef Habbab, who quickly built a promising partnership with Norio Osawa and his Nissan Middle East export team, as well as with Ken Oki and Standard Advertising. This necessitated frequent trips to Japan, particularly when Osawa’s mandate widened to cover South Africa, too.
Soon we all began questioning the campaign material developed by Standard Advertising, where our role was simply to Arabize and deliver it to the media. Most of its TV commercials were similar. The camera opened on one of the Nissan models – be it Sunny, Maxima or Bluebird – driving along winding roads, finally entering a city where the car stops, and a happy family gets out of the car. The people involved on the Nissan business – within the Intermarkets network – urged Youssef to work on persuading the Japanese to consider local production. But we were soon told that the production of films to announce new model launches began when the new car was still being tested on the company’s strictly guarded test track. To ship a new model to the Middle East could mean that the competition would see it and plan a quick pre-emptive strike.
We all respected this wisdom and worked hard to help the Nissan brand grow via tactical campaigns that we launched on behalf of local dealers and then exported them from one market to the other, where we experienced good results. This was also the period when we began working for most of the GCC dealers with encouragement from Nissan.
We soon realized that the box-shaped Nissan 4×4 model – Patrol Super Safari – was the company’s anchor model, as its sale exceeded all other 4x4s and the rest of Nissan’s models. For Nissan and the dealers, the Patrol was bringing in the highest revenue. The Abu Dhabi dealer – who sold more of this model than all the GCC dealers combined – was the first to complain about the advertising. Al Masaood Automobiles were totally against classical media advertising, as they were a staunch believer that every penny spent on buying print space or TV airtime went down the drain. Instead, they only offered the new Nissan Patrol – upon arrival in the UAE – to a select number of ruling family members. They were convinced that among the Abu Dhabi elite, the Al Nahyans were the real influencers. They also offered Patrols as grand prizes at camel races. Despite this deeply entrenched corporate thinking, David Radcliff, the general manager of the company, raised a loud complaint on behalf of the Al Masaood family against the advertising commercials being aired on all the TV stations in the GCC, which showed the Patrol cruising amongst the Australian savanna, or the slope of snow-capped Mount Fuji.
Affluent GCC nationals prided themselves on the Patrols they drove. Hence, the concern over the gradual mind shift from the powerful conqueror of desert dunes to the timid image of their tough thoroughbred cruising amongst alien greenery and snow. This bold complaint was raised on the first day of the GCC dealers’ visit to Tokyo, where they were given a first look of the new Patrol. With the code name Y61, it was to go into production if all the dealers gave it their thumbs up. The Y61 would then be ready for shipment after six months. For eight years, the same-looking Patrol was shipped to the GCC. No change to the exterior look, except the side-door stickers that changed from one year to the next.
Most of the GCC dealers agreed with the sentiment forcefully communicated by the young Abdallah Al Masaood, who was dressed in a white thawb and red chequered headdress. He spoke in Gulf-dialect English, which was echoed loudly and firmly by David Radcliff. The Abu Dhabi team did not stop at pointing out the weakness in the communication. They volunteered part of the solution by addressing Nissan’s concern over the risk of unveiling the newly changed Patrol prematurely to the competition. Al Masaood suggested a TV shoot in Abu Dhabi, to where the car needed to be covered when shipped, pledging to off-load it from the cargo ship and clear it from customs at night. They further pledged to transport it (while still covered) to the Abu Dhabi desert.
At that key moment, we sensed a change in Nissan’s stubborn stance. It seemed that the joint effort of the GCC dealers and their advertising agency had finally convinced the Nissan Motor Company that there was a better way of communicating with car buyers in the GCC.