Chapter 123\ Who is sleeping in my bed?!!

In July 1995, Intermarkets won the Rothmans account, having pitched against Publi Graphics, Oster-ads, and Team Advertising. Rothmans had been with Publi Graphics since 1980. The brands we were assigned included Rothmans King Size and Dunhill Light, which were both Virginia tobacco blends and were very popular across the entire GCC and beyond. Our main contacts on the client side were Martin Southgate on the senior management front; Stephen Atkins on the marketing side; and Suzan Turnbull for advertising. Turnbull was an ex-Intermarkets employee, having been the personal assistant to Eddie Moutran in Bahrain when the Beirut agency staff were transferred there due to the civil war in Lebanon.

I was assigned to visit all of Rothmans’ distributors in the various markets, including Yemen, which was a very important market for the brand. As I had not been to that market since the Moulinex days, I was concerned about where to stay and other travel logistics. The client assured me that they had requested their distributor to book me a room at the same hotel where Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, President of the UAE, had stayed during his last state visit.

There was a company car awaiting my arrival at Sanaa International Airport and I was driven to Al Ikhwa Hotel, a two-storey building on a hilltop in the middle of the city. I registered at the reception and collected my room key, which was tied to a very heavy bell-shaped brass keyring that had the room number engraved on it. My room was located on the second floor, which was accessible via a spiral staircase next to the reception.

The next morning, a smart Rothmans-marked delivery van was waiting to drive me to the offices of Hayel Saeed Al Anam, the Rothmans distributor in Yemen. Abdel Jabbar Hayel Saeed awaited my arrival with a welcoming smile, surrounded by a group of male assistants, all in European jackets and Yemeni skirts. After the coffee was served, Abdel Jabbar announced that he had earlier committed to drive to Taiz after lunch and requested that we cover the topics he needed to approve before his departure. On my schedule, these topics were allocated for the next day, and I had left the related files in my hotel room. We instantly agreed that I return to the hotel to retrieve the needed documents. The same delivery van drove me back at top speed.

At the reception I asked for my room key, which was not to be found in the pigeonhole. The reception said that the key should be with the housekeeping staff. I rushed up the stairs to find my room door closed. I turned the knob and walked in to find a young Yemeni asleep in my bed. So, I rushed down to the reception, complaining furiously in a loud voice: “Who is sleeping in my bed?!” The front desk manager stormed out of the back room to pacify me. He answered my complaint with a sheepish smile, explaining that hotel workers needed to rest and that guests were usually out all day, so the staff used their rooms.

Following this surprise-packed first Rothmans visit, we realized that Hayel Saeed operated the largest cigarette factory for Rothmans outside the UK, and that it ran all advertising campaigns via its own ad agency called MAS. Rothmans wanted more control over the messaging since the company was very particular about global health warnings, which the Yemenis didn’t feel applied to them. Obviously, this was not the only reason, as all our contacts at Rothmans never stopped encouraging us to step in and take full control of their campaigns.

Finally, Erwin Guerrovich and I travelled to Sanaa where we signed a partnership agreement with MAS to form Intermarkets Yemen – an entity that we managed as part of the regional network until the day Rothmans decided to change agencies. During the partnership period we became very close to the Hayel Saeed family. We participated in qat chewing sessions at their majlis. We also witnessed the brothers shedding their European outfits on the first day of Ramadan, putting on their national dress, and each leading a convoy of delivery vans loaded with provisions. They personally oversaw the distribution of these provisions to poor families in the remote provinces of the country.

To our surprise, we also found out that Hayel Saeed operated a large biscuit manufacturing operation. Its main export market was the UK, where they were competing with brands such as McVitie’s and Rowntree’s. The company’s packaging carried the words “Made in ROY”, which sounded intriguing and camouflaged the Yemeni origin of the brand.  

In 2013, we returned to Yemen after TBWA\RAAD won the MTN account. We placed a young Lebanese by the name of Walid Haidar in the offices of this telecommunications company in Sanaa and Walid quickly blended into the Yemeni environment. In October 2014, the political situation started deteriorating and Walid had to spend many nights at the Lebanese Embassy with a few of his countrymen who were also living in Sanaa. Finally, he was evacuated along with all the other Lebanese when the security situation reached a dangerous threshold.