Chapter 42\ The challenges of doing business in Saudi Arabia

During the time when we were representing Lintas in the Middle East, we received a request to extend a helping hand to two senior executives from More O’Ferrall, who were visiting Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia with a plan to establish a network of large advertising billboards (unipoles) across the oil-rich Gulf States. More O’Ferrall being one of the leading outdoor advertising media companies in Europe, was encouraged by Unilever, one of its regular advertisers, to explore the possibility of expanding its services to where it was badly needed.

That day I had an important new business meeting planned in Jordan, so I flew very early in the morning to Kuwait, where I met the two gentlemen and took them on a city tour that included a visit to the Kuwait City Municipality. At lunchtime, we all rushed to the airport, and they flew to Bahrain while I left for Amman. I had arranged for the visitors to be met by Ahmad Al Yatim, a young account manager from the Bahrain agency, who would take them around the island and then fly with them to the Eastern Province in Saudi Arabia to tour Dammam, Al Khobar and Dhahran. After completing the Bahrain tour, the two visitors flew out to Dammam the same evening, as Saudi Arabia was the most important market for their project. Ahmad was supposed to join them the following morning.

Early the next day, the two Englishmen went for a walk while waiting for their guide to arrive from Bahrain. Not far from the hotel, they saw a carriage driven by an ageing Saudi being pulled by a mule. The carriage was loaded with piles of boxes carrying the brand name Tide and the half-moon logo of P&G. They were thrilled by the site, so they took many photos to share with their colleagues back home. As they were about to take the final turn that leads them to the Carlton Al Moaibed Hotel, they were intercepted by a police car with flashing lights and its siren blaring. The policemen harshly addressed them in Arabic, and when they realized they didn’t understand the language, they forced them into the squad car and drove them to the police station. The bell captain at the hotel was attracted by the commotion that accompanied the arrest. So, when Ahmad arrived and enquired after the two Englishmen, he was told about their possible whereabouts.

Ahmad called me in Jordan to report that our visitors had been arrested for taking photographs in a Saudi street, as photography was not permitted in public. His attempts to get them released on the pretext that they were important British businessmen had failed because they were caught photographing a cart pulled by a mule, whose owner was annoyed by their behavior. Ahmad assured me he had tried his best, but the Saudi officer was adamant they would not be released until the confiscated film had been processed and the photos inspected and destroyed. I asked Ahmad if he had spoken to the visitors about the kind of film they had been using, so he went back to the police station and called me to say that it was a Kodak Chrome film that local studios usually sent to Europe for processing, as there were no laboratories to process this type of films in the Middle East. I panicked when I thought these poor gentlemen would have to spend weeks in a Saudi prison cell before their processed film was returned. Ahmad tried to calm me by mentioning that one of the policemen, who was of Bahraini origin, had tipped him to return to the police station at night when the team would have changed, as the replacement officer was much more flexible.

This Ahmad did and the night shift officer summoned the two Englishmen from their cell and interrogated them, as he could speak better English than his predecessor. When he realized who they were, why they were visiting, and why they had photographed the Tide cart, he pulled out two sheets of paper from his desk. He handed one to each, together with a pen, and asked them to write the statement “I promise not to photograph any more mules in Saudi Arabia” a hundred times. The two Englishmen looked at each other in shock, but Ahmad, who was next to the officer, begged them to go ahead and write, rather than wasting more time. By the time they finished writing and handed back their sheets, they were given back all their belongings and it was left to Ahmad to whisk them out of the police station and out of Dammam to Bahrain. The More O’Ferrall Arabian Gulf project died there and then.

In the meantime, the volume of work we had been developing for the Saudi Arabian market had increased dramatically. On top of the old international clients like Unilever, Rothmans and Beecham, the addition of Westinghouse, Toyota and Ceylon Tea meant the handling of this huge load – with regular visits from Lebanon and Bahrain – had started to take away from the agency’s professional reputation. The solution was obvious. To establish our own agency in Jeddah, like what Intermarkets had done in Kuwait and Bahrain. Exploring how to do this as per Saudi commercial law led us to explore a major development that was taking place in the Kingdom. A mega communications group – to be called Tihama – was being established by a seasoned and rich journalist, who was rapidly recruiting recently graduated Saudis from overseas universities.

Following the More O’Ferrall incident, I became a regular traveler to Saudi Arabia. On one of my visits in 1978, I called on Tony Tadros, an old Lebanese friend, who was the editor-in-chief of Arab News and Saudi Business. Tony was based in Jeddah, and I was fascinated by his stories of being involved in the Saudi media business at the time. Our chat led to me getting carried away and releasing my frustration about the state of the media in the Arab world. I cited the frustrating example of female reading habits, where the circulation of the gossip magazine Al Chabaka exceeded that of Al Hasnaa by more than 10 times. Later, Tony told me that my loud and nervous comment had led him to research the topics of female magazines for Saudi women, and this ultimately led to the launch of Sayidati, which was a first step in all the changes we were about to bring or cause.