Sheikha Moza Bint Nasser Al Missned, the wife of Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar, was an avid Apple fan. All personal computers at the Ruler’s Palace and her own office were Apple. She had read every single book about Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder, and was familiar with TBWA\Chiat Day’s 1984 and “Think Different” campaigns. She even learnt about Lee Clow, to the extent that she asked her assistants to call Lee in Los Angeles.
Several attempts to reach Lee that got filtered by telephone operators and secretaries and which Lee Clow think that Qatar Foundation was a foreign charity, he responded that he was heavily involved with a few American charities and was unable to travel. He apologized for not accepting an invitation from Sheikha Moza to fly to a meeting with her in Doha using her private jet. He also declined her suggestion to use video conferencing to brief him about the campaign she was eager for him to develop. Finally, Jeremy Miller, TBWA\Worldwide’s communications director, who had overheard the conversations of secretaries at Clow’s office and researched the prospect, persuaded Clow to divert this led to us at TBWA\RAAD.
I instantly rang the Doha contact forwarded by Miller and my call was taken by a Sudanese lady named Mawahib Baqer, who I found to be extremely polite and cultured. Mawahib proved to be a bright PA caught between her frustrated management, which was keen to secure a world-class professional service (irrespective of the price), and a seller that was playing hard to get. After a great deal of hesitation, with the help of Mawahib they agreed to meet the TBWA team from Dubai. From that moment on, the logistical preparation for my visit to the Qatar Foundation began, although excessive red tape meant it took a long time. I stepped in, offering to visit at TBWA\RAAD’s own expense without waiting to receive an airline ticket or a hotel confirmation, which they were keen to book.
Finally, I arrived in Doha thinking I would be meeting with Sheikha Moza, only to discover that Haya Al Nasser, the manager of Sheikha’s office, was to be our main contact at this early stage. The meeting was tough, since it immediately became apparent that a heavy dose of inherent frustration with Lebanese advertising people existed. It was clear that the Qataris were suffering at the hands of a new breed of young Lebanese admen who had recently landed in the Gulf claiming they knew it all. This became clear in the first few minutes of the meeting, when Al Nasser asked me to name the top five regional advertising agencies in the Middle East. Not even allowing me time to respond, she said: “Obviously you are going to start by naming Promoseven. But you should know that here we call this agency PromoZero.”
After an hour of unexpected confrontation, I succeeded in convincing her that TBWA would assemble an international team to help the Qatar Foundation define its communication requirements. After that, we would organize a Disruption workshop, which I took all the needed time to explain. Al Nasser seemed to like this and promised to persuade Sheikha Moza to accept this approach too.
Throughout the meeting, Al Nasser remained very critical of the GCC advertising scene. After attacking Promoseven, she moved on to TBWA\RAAD\Qatar, telling me that Qatar Foundation had used our agency for a recruitment campaign and that our team had produced a TV commercial that was a poor copy of the Apple iPod Silhouette campaign. As our meeting approached its end, she concluded our intellectual fencing match by saying that all regional agencies behaved in the same way. For the first meeting they send in their big guns, then leave the business in the hands of juniors. Her conclusion was forceful and clear: Lee Clow should be involved in all the work TBWA does for the Qatar Foundation. Sheikha Moza was convinced that Lee Clow had been a major contributor to the global exposure and popularity of the Apple brand. She wanted to have the same winning strategy applied to the Qatar Foundation.
I went back to Dubai loaded with the prospective client’s sensitivities. What I had managed to note between the showers of criticism was that our brief was to launch the Qatar Foundation, which had been established in 1995 as a non-profit, semi-government organization that would support the transformation of Qatar from an exclusive oil-producing state into a knowledge economy. This had so far taken the shape of a large campus that housed a select number of American universities, including:
- Georgetown School of Foreign Service
- Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts
- Weill Cornell Medicine
- Northwestern University for Journalism & Communication
- Carnegie Mellon University for Computer Science & Business
- Texas A&M University for Engineering
Back in Dubai, we began an urgent coordination process with TBWA\Worldwide, having established the global potential of this account and knowing fully well that Lee Clow did not travel out of Los Angeles.