The first global agency to establish a presence in our region was J. Walter Thompson, which opened its office in Alexandria, Egypt as early as 1927. JWT came to Egypt to service its newly won General Motors account, which was soon followed by Kodak, Ponds, and JB Williams.
The agency closed its office in 1932 in the wake of the Great Depression, as General Motors embarked on an abrupt withdrawal from world markets. JWT returned to the MENA region via affiliation arrangements in the early Sixties to service the Pan Am account. First, it affiliated with Publicite Universelle, then with Intermarkets. In 1982, it divorced Intermarkets when this agency tied with Saatchi & Saatchi. JWT then moved to the Saudi agency Tihama International, which rebranded as JWT when WPP acquired TMI-JWT in 2000[1].
In 1987, JWT signed a franchised agreement with the merged Tihama and Al Mona, resulting in the establishment of TMI-J, Walter Thompson.
As mentioned earlier, the first American agency to be established in Lebanon was Grant’s Advertising & Associates, which was founded by Shawki Saifeddine at Makki building in Hamra during the late Sixties. In 1968, another American agency by the name of Young & Rubicam (Y&R) came to Beirut’s Hamra Street. It was managed by a young Palestinian named Nadim Saffouri, who was assisted by another adman of the same nationality, called Johnny Youssef. Y&R hired Farid Chehab as creative director and Charles Homsi as account executive. In 1973, Saffouri asked to be transferred to BrazilI and Youssef replaced him as manager. During the Seventies, Lebanon became the leader in quality advertising in the Middle East, and from Beirut Y&R spread its operations to the Gulf and elsewhere. During Youssef’s tenure he hired and trained many people who would later become leaders in Middle East advertising, such as Raja Trad, Antonio Abou Al Hosn and others.
Y&R’s main client at the period was Winston cigarettes, which became a real threat to the market leader, Marlboro. When the battles of the Lebanese civil war made life in the country risky and dangerous, Y&R moved its Middle East operation to Athens. As this Greek asylum dragged on, and after the loss of the Winston account in 1978, rumors started to spread that Y&R’s management had suggested that the Athens team join the Y&R London office and manage the Middle East operations from there. Intermarkets felt that this could be an opportunity, so I was assigned to travel to Athens to explore business and recruitment possibilities. I met with Youssef and heard from him that, despite the intensity of the rumors, there was no certainty yet about the future of Y&R Middle East and he was not interested in joining Intermarkets because he wanted to emigrate to Los Angeles. However, he introduced two of his colleagues, Antonio Abou Al Hosn, the creative director, and Raja Trad, one of the agency’s rising stars in account management. The outcome of this visit was realized sometime later when Antonio joined Intermarkets in Dubai as executive creative director.
In time, things took a different turn for Y&R as the fighting in Lebanon calmed down, and in one of the moments of calm the agency attempted to return to Beirut. To celebrate this, it launched a campaign in the Lebanese press that featured two meat skewers side-by-side under a headline that read: “Although we loved the taste of souvlaki, nothing could make us forget the taste of laham al mishwi”. Another ad featured a bouzouki next to an oud and carried a similarly crafted headline. When the fighting flared up again, Y&R packed up and relocated its Middle East operations to London.
Youssef eventually emigrated to America, but before leaving in 1976 he offered Y&R’s[2] Middle East chief creative officer, Farid Chehab, and his account management partner, Charles Homsi, the opportunity to take over the reins of Y&R, which they declined. In October 1976, Farid Chehab and Charles Homsi announced the establishment of H&C. Saffouri maintained contact with his two old colleagues from America, where he had settled with Leo Burnett. After some time, he brought a group of Leo Burnett seniors on a visit to Lebanon, and this led to the establishment of the H&C Leo Burnett partnership in the Middle East.
Samir Fares left Intermarkets to establish his own agency in Dubai, which was named AMACOM. It was soon bought by Lintas and the name was changed to Lintas Middle East. Many of the old colonial team were transferred from London to operate the new agency, led by Tommy Atkins and supported by Brenda Allen, who flew in every time Unilever had a media challenge to be resolved. The agency was housed at the Pearl building on the Dubai Creek. Early one morning in August 1988, I received a call from Lucille Fares, Samir’s third wife, informing me that her husband had suddenly passed away. Tony Hussein and I had to sadly attend to the church service in Dubai and manage the transportation of the coffin for burial in Lebanon. As a result, Lintas Middle East broke up and split between the agency in Dubai and an affiliation in Lebanon.