Chapter 21\ Graduating from elementary to secondary school in advertising

Assaad Al Najjar was a Lebanese business innovator. He opened a shop selling typewriters at the Omari Mosque building in Weygand Street and quickly realized the need to automate Arabic writing. He had been appointed as the sole distributor of Continental typewriters in Lebanon and few other Arab countries and worked with the manufacturer to develop an Arabic language typewriter, which was a considerable feat at the time.

Arabic is written from right to left, contrary to the mechanism of Latin alphabet typewriters, and Arabic letters and the way they are linked involved a tough learning process for the German engineers. Eventually, Assaad Al Najjar proudly introduced the Continental Arabic language typewriter to the Arab world. His shops in Beirut, Cairo, and Baghdad each had a sign out front which read “Najjar Continental”. Shortly thereafter, the company started offering an expanded product range, which included photocopiers, office safes and shredding machines, all of which introduced further office automation to the region.

Assaad Al Najjar was a marketing innovator as well and a pioneer of his time. He knew that new office concepts needed education, so he introduced his own storytelling approach, using the morning political newspapers to warn about potential daily problems that Lebanese businessmen often faced to pave the way for his new machines to save the day. For instance, he once concocted a story pertaining to the sudden and heavy rainfall in Beirut one-weekend, which led to Samir Haddad’s warehouses being flooded. However, thanks to the safe that Samir had recently bought from Najjar Continental, all the company’s financial records remained intact inside the safe.

He ran stories about businessmen winning court cases due to the duplicate documents they had photocopied at Najjar Continental in Weygand Street; to the extent that newspaper readers used to await the new Najjar Continental heroic feat every week.

After the death of Assaad, Raja, his only son, took over his father’s empire and one day in March 1969 he asked the marketing manager of the company, Rafic Najjar (my lifelong friend), to invite me to their new Sanayeh head office. I had known Raja indirectly as he was the chief commissioner of the Wolf Cubs branch of the Lebanese Boy Scouts Association, where I was an active member. Raja explained, with an ever-present smile on his face, that the company’s advertising agency, HIMA, was owned and co-managed by a close friend of his named Raymond Hanna. They were interested in meeting me at Rafic and Raja’s introduction, since HIMA was looking for an experienced advertising person to handle its regional Shell account, which was one of the most demanding accounts of the period. Raja made a very convincing introduction of the assignment, the agency, its people, and the career prospects it would represent for me. The following week, I went to meet Raymond Hanna and his partner Nahi Ghorayeb at their office in the Alameddine building, which faced the British Bank of the Middle East on Abdel Aziz Street. I had met Nahi before when I accompanied Philippe Hitti to the Kangaroo Conference organized by Al Usbu Al Arabi magazine at the Phoenicia Hotel. Nahi’s presentation of the developments they were introducing to this magazine was impressive and convincing. However, as I remembered, I was fascinated by his charismatic approach and systematic thinking. Both Nahi and Raymond spent time painting a very challenging picture on the prospects of leading the multi-market and multi-product Shell account.

After a week, Philippe Hitti came dashing into my office to announce that we needed to get ready for a visit from Shell. On the set date, Ferdinand Farwaji, the regional advertising coordinator for Shell in the Middle East, walked into the agency, saluting in English with an Egyptian accent. He introduced himself as an old timer with Shell who was stationed at Shell Lebanon and was in control of all the advertising activities for his company in Lebanon, the UAE, Qatar, Oman, and Sudan. The purpose of his visit was to learn what advertising agencies other than the one Shell worked with offered. We presented the credentials that I had prepared earlier. Philippe Hitti generously made me the agency’s hero every time one of our case histories was presented. As we were bidding Farwaji farewell at the lift, he pressed my hand and whispered, “see you soon”.

As the lift descended, I remembered how Raja Najjar had overseen my “bridging ceremony” from a Wolf Cub to a Boy Scout 15 years before.