Chapter 19\ The Lebanese Ad Agency Scene of the sixties

My advertising world had expanded beyond Publicite Universelle, the offices of the clients I had been working for, and the Jafet Library at AUB. Our gatherings with colleagues from other agencies made me realize that there were many other ad agencies in Lebanon besides Publicite Universelle, SNIP and Publico. I became familiar with the old timers, the larger agencies, and the more established ones.

Pharaon Advertising was the agency founded by Fouad Pharaon in 1932^[1] and, over the years, it had developed to become the launch pad for the advertising careers of many communication pioneers, including Jean Rizk, Samir Fares, Jean Pierre Regnier, Nabil Kazan, and Mustapha Assad, among others. Pharaon had introduced practices and regulations that had helped him become one of the founders of the Advertising Agencies Association (AAA) on 12 October 1959. Employed at his first agency was Jean Rizk, the nephew of Fouad Boutros, Lebanon’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, and an active member of the Achrafieh Greek Orthodox elites. A graduate of law, he started his professional career as inspector of the courts of law for the French Governor of Lebanon, then switched to banking in 1936, before joining Pharaon Advertising. In 1959, he moved out to establish his own agency, PIMO (Publicite Information Moyen Orient), which soon developed to become another leading agency in the country.

MEMAS^[2] was a main player and was well established as the house agency of Khalil Fattal & Freres (KFF), the distributors of Gillette, Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, Dewar’s, Cadbury, and Reckitt & Colman, in addition to many other global FMCG brands. Erwin Guerrovich^[3], the manager of KFF’s advertising department, succeeded in upgrading his in-house department to a fully-fledged advertising agency in 1961, after the AAA was established with the objective of stopping large advertisers from booking directly with the media. MEMAS had clients who put it in contact with their aligned global agencies, such as Ogilvy & Mather, SC Lintas, and J Walther Thompson, so professional learning was passed on and this was how MEMAS progressed ahead of the rest.

SYCO was founded in 1949 by Emile Sioufi and Henri Yonan. The initials of the two surnames are at the heart of the SYCO brand. In late 1959, Toufic Bared and Robert Arab came onboard as new partners, which saw the agency’s name change to SYCO Promotec. Henri Yonan had gotten together with several his colleagues and drafted a petition to form a chapter of the New York-based International Advertising Association (IAA) in Lebanon. Yonan served on the first board in 1961 and was voted chapter president in 1971.

Publicite Orientale, an agency owned and managed by a politically high profile Beiruti named Mohammad Choucair, was known to be the Philip Morris agency for a very long time. While the whole world was running the “Come to Marlboro Country” campaign^[4], which featured the famous Marlboro Man, a rugged cowboy riding in the vast American wild west, Publicite Orientale ran a Lebanese-created print campaign that featured the columns of the Temple of Jupiter in Baalbek or a basket of fresh Lebanese fruits, as if to say, “Come to Lebanon”, the land of Marlboro in the Middle East.

Choucair’s political personality was hidden behind an ad man façade. He acted as a private advisor for Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Riad Al Solh, who fell on the shoulder of Mohammad Choucair when he was assassinated in Amman in 1951. The same way Publicite Orientale was personally associated with Philip Morris, an agency by the name of Al Mokhtar was associated with Procter & Gamble (P&G). Established by Mokhtar Shamli, who came from a printing press background and was also an artist, the agency later became Shamli & Partners and was very close to Transmed, the agents of P&G, Mars, Rayovac batteries and many other FMCG brands. Transmed itself was established by Camille Khattar, a businessman from the village of Abey, which overlooks Beirut in the Gharb region.

When Khattar became sick, he sold Transmed to Fouad and Nouhad Al Saeed. The two brothers had worked with Shamli at the printing press, so they persuaded him to leave and establish his own agency. The trio were very close to Samih Al Sharif, the first Arab CEO at the helm of P&G. Sadly, after the death of Fouad, Nouhad took over the management of Transmed but was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and gradually and agonizingly lost control of his limbs.

There was also SOLIP, a small agency owned by René Trad, which was the select agency of the Fiat and Jaguar car dealers in Lebanon, namely Saad & Trad. SOLIP was later integrated within MEMAS. I also learned that a new breed of agencies had begun to appear on the advertising scene in Beirut – ones started by younger people who were graduates of art or advertising colleges abroad. Some were also the sons of trading families who saw the opportunity to control the advertising budgets allocated by the principals of their fathers to improve their own profit margins.

Hanna International Advertising & Marketing (HIMA) had been founded by Raymond Halim Hanna, whose family was the agent for Parker Pens, Faberge fragrances and toiletries, Fred Perry shirts and others. Raymond Hanna was later joined at the helm of HIMA by Nahi Ghorayeb, the commercial director at Télé-Orient.

Nabil Kazan^[5] founded Publicite Kazan in 1961 and merged it with Jean-Pierre Regnier’s Éclair Publicite in 1969, which resulted in the formation of Éclair Kazan, which signaled the first advertising merger in the Middle East. This agency was amongst the first Lebanese agencies to expand to Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE, Egypt, London, and Paris. Furthermore, it developed the reputation of becoming the agency of choice for Japanese clients.

Razek Maamarbachi founded Graphics, which was acquired in 1973 by the son of a Lebanese immigrant to Senegal named Mustapha Assad. After graduating from the Sorbonne in Paris, Asaad had worked at Arab Week magazine, Pharaon Advertising and lastly at Promotec. The acquisition resulted in the agency’s name changing to Publi Graphics.

Andre Rizk, who graduated from the Ecole Supérieure de Publicite in Paris, returned to assist his father at their furniture manufacturing and sales business. However, in 1965, Andre opened an advertising agency behind his father’s back^[6], which he called Publirizk. Later, Rizk was joined by another TV air-time sale executive named Wajih Nakhle.

Amin Kassouf established Progress and was later joined by Samir Naim, Jack Choukrallah and Saba Nader, who stayed as a silent partner. Sadly, the founder fell to his death from the roof of his house while installing a new powerful TV antenna. Shortly afterwards, his agency followed him to the grave^[7].

Fortune Promoseven (FP7) was established by Akram Miknass and six shareholders in 1968. His campaign for Lipoul Chicken made the agency famous, but the client faced financial problems and the six shareholders collectively decided to cash back their investment and quit, which gave Miknass a free hand to develop the agency and expand.

By the end of the decade, Beirut had developed into a very active advertising market and creativity became the spearhead of this development.

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