Chapter 12\ Good to the last drop

Grant’s Advertising & Associates was the first American ad agency in Lebanon when it was established by Shawki Saifeddine, the son of a well-known feudal lord and an elected member of the Lebanese Parliament, in October 1969.

Amongst this agency’s main clients was General Foods. The brand had become one of the major companies in Baroody Brothers & Company’s portfolio, thanks to the popularity of its many products and to the aggressive sales efforts of Geadah Brothers, who had been appointed by the general agents as distributors for this brand. Geadah Brothers was a food distribution company established by Charles and Adib Geadah, two Palestinian brothers who were also the distributors of Plumrose canned meats, Uncle Ben’s and Wescobee Honey, in addition to a host of other brands.

General Foods had become well known in Lebanon due to its introduction of numerous dessert and beverage concepts into local homes. The lead brand amongst these was Tang, an instant fruit drink sold in crystal powder form, which, when cold water was added to it, instantly became an orange flavored, vitamin C enriched drink, even when oranges were out of season. Very soon after the launch of orange Tang, additional peach and mango flavors were added to the range. Tang became world famous when NASA astronaut John Glenn drank it while in orbit around the Earth.

The Lebanese, for whom the ritual preparation of coffee is a daily art, were introduced to the much easier and faster way of preparing instant coffee by General Foods. Maxwell House became famous well before Nescafé was even known, thanks to the endorsement of the popular TV personality Abou Melhem, who saturated the airwaves with his memorable selling line: “Maxwell House coffee, good to the last drop.”

Jell-O instant gelatin dessert, Dream Whip instant powdered whipping cream, and Shake-n-Bake enriched Lebanese kitchens and became the pride of Lebanese housewives.

General Foods was a great believer in the value of advertising. So, it quickly learned that its campaigns for Arab markets had to be localized. This was why it fully supported Baroody Brothers & Company in its efforts to take full control of the creative development process for the Middle East. However, General Foods insisted that this should be done through its global agency of record, Grant’s Advertising & Associates, and accordingly it repeatedly rejected Baroody’s request to use its preferred ad agency, Publicite Universelle. I soon realized that our closeness to Baroody would not be enough to get us the General Foods advertising business, and that we would have to devise an alternative approach based on demonstrating the added value to be expected from our agency. General Foods had realized the potential of the Middle East market, so it opened a regional office in Beirut to tap this potential. The manager of this office was an American who, according to Baroody, was thinly stretched as he had to familiarize himself with the many markets that he covered, along with the consumers and distributors in each of them. He had hit the ground running in Beirut and spent most of his time travelling around the region.

The treasure trove of market information that I had witnessed when I was carrying out press monitoring during my early days at Publicite Universelle came to mind. It dawned on me that a lot of this information could prove useful for this travel weary American. We got his contact details from Baroody and started mailing him press clippings carrying news of interest. Then we improved our initiative by sending him alerts on promotions and similar activities launched by the competition around the region. After some time, we concluded that this approach was not helping, since we never received a word of thanks or even acknowledgement.

Then, at one of our Monday meetings at Baroody’s, we were told that General Foods had replaced their man in Beirut with one of their old-timers, named Pierre Beurskens. It took the newcomer a couple of months to settle in. Then, one day, he asked his PA to get him the advertising agency’s file, and she responded by asking him which of the two agencies he wished to review. At his request, she got the file of Grant’s Advertising & Associates.

A couple of days later, when he had free time on his hands, he called his PA and asked about the other ad agency file she had referred to, and the story behind this second agency. She got him the file labelled “Publicite Universelle”, which he thoroughly inspected. Then he called for the Grant’s Advertising & Associates file and compared. One was full of media schedules and invoices – nothing more and nothing less. The second was packed with valuable market information. He instantly called Emile Baroody and asked him to arrange a meeting with us.

Pierre Beurskens had his contacts at the highest level at General Foods’ global head office. He managed to convince his bosses to allow him to move away from the global agency and appoint a local agency, which he was adamant would better help the business. When we went to our first business meeting with Beurskens, he had a warm welcoming smile, since he remembered that I and Georges Feghali were Raja Baroody’s companions at Beirut Airport and had helped welcome him, his wife, his three daughters and their giant wolf terrier on their first day in Lebanon.