In the late Sixties, Cutty Sark, the light-colored whisky, became the bestselling whisky in the US. This brand was distributed by Baroody Brothers & Company in Lebanon and the trendy Lebanese began ordering it on the merits of its popularity in the States. Berry Bros & Rudd, the distillers of Cutty Sark, did not allocate any money for marketing support in Lebanon and Baroody did not want to invest its own money because sales were still relatively low.
Les Éditions Oriental, the publishing arm of the Georges Abou Adal Group, which was the owner of Al Ousbou Al Arabi and Magazine, launched a competition for “The Best Advertising Photograp” in its French language weekly, which was fighting to establish a reader base for itself against the long-established La Revue Du Liban.
In the aftermath of the hype that my Personna ads had generated, I couldn’t stop dreaming of other campaign opportunities to repeat my first successful attempt at creating a different type of ad. Magazine’s competition came as the answer, and the thought of convincing our enlightened client to approve Cutty Sark’s first ever ad in Lebanon was like the impossible challenge of hunting two birds with one stone.
In July 1969, the whole world was looking towards the sky as the Americans were getting ready to land their Apollo 11 spacecraft on the Moon. The historic night of 20 July turned into a big event at our home in Aley. My uncles and their families, my aunt, and the neighbors, all got together around the television set – which my father had moved to the garden – and we all watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin step out of the lunar landing module Eagle to the amazement of millions of viewers all around the world. Armstrong’s iconic statement – “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” – echoed throughout that long night in the Raads’ garden as well.
As the entire family entered a long night of discussing this historical feat, how it happened, what would come next, and exchanging their many impressions and ideas, I retired to the balcony on the other side of the house. There, I had been preparing for a week in anticipation of the Moon landing’s success. I had bought a bag full of plaster of Paris powder, paints of different Moon shades, a G.I. Joe toy in a spaceman’s outfit, and a small one-bottle serving of Cutty Sark. I mixed the plaster of Paris with water and used the paste to create a lunar landscape with craters and hilly surfaces on a large sheet of plywood, so it looked just like the scene we had witnessed during the live transmission. Then I used my mother’s hair dryer to speed up the drying of the plaster of Paris on the plywood. In other words, to quickly complete the reproduction of my backdrop, which I then put aside and allowed to dry completely overnight.
I then went back to the family gathering to get an affirmation from my uncle/client on the big campaign idea that was brewing in my mind, because I knew it was going to be a bigger deal than any ad I had conceived before.
Early in the morning, I crept out to the balcony while the entire building was still asleep. The lunar surface had dried so I applied different shades of paint. Then I brought the G.I. Joe doll and made him step on the Moon in a miniature reproduction of Armstrong’s historic first step. I made sure to place the mini bottle of Cutty Sark at the end of his shadow and started clicking my Asahi Pentax from different angles. Since I was not using any artificial light, the sun was my source of light and helped me to create that shade.
Before heading to the office, I dropped by Studio Telayan at Graham Station facing the Swiss embassy. The owner and his lab technicians had become my friends, as I always came to them with creative challenges that they were happy to help me overcome. I left my rolls of film with them, and they promised to process them by the time my last class at AUB was over at 2pm.
I stopped at the Bikhazi sandwich parlor to call Publicite Universelle and excitedly briefed Vahe, asking him to be on standby for my arrival at three. The photographs came out exactly as I had wanted, and Vahe quickly agreed to give it a shot. Soon, the two of us walked into Philippe Hitti’s office with Publicite Universelle’s first and only entry to Magazine’s “Best Advertising Photograph” competition carrying the headline: EVEN ON THE MOON YOU’LL FIND SOON… CUTTY SARK.
The next day we secured Baroody’s approval to run a Cutty Sark full-page colored ad in Magazine, which instantly became the talk of Beirut’s advertising circles. Creative competitions were rare in those days.
Unfortunately for me, the winner was a professional photographer named Alain Brenas, who, I was told, was a full-timer at an agency called Middle East Marketing and Advertising Services (MEMAS). However, earlier that year, and at my request, a friend had brought me several advertising and marketing magazines from London. I very much liked Campaign and ordered a subscription to it. Campaign had a page for international news, and I began sending contributions from Lebanon to its editor.
To my delight, my Cutty Sark ad was immediately reproduced there, since news of the Moon landing was still rippling in a very big way.
In mid-August, I received a call from Baroody’s to announce Cutty Sark’s sales were witnessing tangible progress, although the first ad ran only in the competition issue of Magazine. They wanted to meet and brief us on a campaign for Cutty Sark.