Intermarkets was the pioneer of regional advertising agency thinking in the Middle East. In 1968, two years before MEMAS merged with HIMA and Pharaon Advertising to form Intermarkets, the agency launched its first branch in Kuwait. Then in 1972, Intermarkets Bahrain was established to serve the agency’s clients in Saudi Arabia and the lower Gulf markets. The Bahrain operation was meant to service the representatives of its international clients, who were stationed in Bahrain to cover the same geography.
After the oil embargo in October 1973, national wealth in the oil-producing countries of the Arabian Gulf (Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar) increased dramatically, catapulting living standards in the region from medieval to altra-modern. This sudden wealth fueled consumerism, leading to a seller’s market not only in consumer electronics, but even cars. The sudden surge in demand led to increased advertising allocations towards the region and multinational companies began exploring the media scene and how best to manage these ad budgets, independent of the tug-of-war between each of their market distributors, fueled by the nepotistic agency relationships that most of them employed.
Their exploration led them to realize that the Arabic language is the same and is used from Morocco on the Atlantic Ocean to Yemen on the Indian Ocean. The common language, religion, history, and culture made it possible to deliver the same advertising message to all of Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, Oman, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Multinational advertisers realized the need for an agency that was different to what each of their market distributors had been using, and the search for regional agencies began.
At Intermarkets, we felt that we were at an advantage, being physically present in Lebanon, Kuwait, and Bahrain. However, we and our clients were aware that if we were not in Saudi Arabia, we could not claim to be a regional advertising agency.
Raymond Hanna and I had earlier experience in the Saudi market – over all our Intermarkets colleagues – because of our Ceylon Tea involvement. We had cooperated with an agency called NADA (National Advertising Agency), which had been established and managed by a young Saudi named Abdallah Al Qunaieer, who, after completing his studies in Beirut, established this agency in Jeddah. We were also introduced to a young Lebanese named Talal Al Makdessi, who’s relative published a magazine named Al Jadeed, which was very popular in the Kingdom.
Ceylon Tea agreed to add this magazine to its media plans – on our recommendation – and Talal used to pass by the agency’s office in Beirut to collect the printing blocks of the ads (as this was the pre-offset printing days) and carry them to Jeddah, which he visited every month. This brought me close to Talal and his friend Abdallah. The three of us spent a lot of time together at the offices of NADA on Gabel Street in Jeddah. At that time, I developed close business relationships with the advertising departments of most Saudi dailies, particularly Al Bilad, Al Nadwa, Al Madina, Okaz and Al Jazeera.
At Intermarkets, we arrived at the conclusion that our business in Saudi Arabia had grown beyond our current portfolios of Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Rothmans, Beecham, Gillette, Parker, Westinghouse, and Ceylon Tea, which were the existing clients of the merged agencies. As more local Saudi business was won, new opportunities appeared on the horizon. Abdel Latif Jameel’s Toyota signaled an opportunity for further growth, which was clearly going to be difficult to develop if we relied on the average servicing of NADA or worked remotely out of Beirut.
At that time, we learnt that a giant media company – Tihama[1] – had been established in the Kingdom and was taking over the entire outdoor advertising scene. Up to that stage, outdoor advertising was chaotic since it took the form of rooftop signs and billboards of different shapes and sizes scattered on the sides of city streets and motorways and designed and owned by individuals. Tihama was rumored to have started standardizing and bringing order to these signs, while introducing new media in parallel, like lamp-post signs and giant unipoles.
Then Tihama approached the print media, offering them guaranteed punctual payments in return for taking full control of advertising sales. One newspaper after the other fell under the control of this mega-advertising-space-selling whale.
Erwin Guerrovich, Raymond Hanna, and Samir Fares met Tihama’s visiting executive, who was participating in an advertising conference at Beirut’s Long Beach Hotel, and then came back to the agency to tell us tales about the might of Saudi advertising money. This visit led to frequent meetings with Tihama representatives who called on us to promote their media.
Soon Tihama was credited with shaping and regulating the media business in Saudi Arabia, and within a very short period after its establishment it claimed approximately 70 per cent of the Saudi advertising market. Although this was – most likely – the product of a developing monopolistic approach to business, as it became the sole seller of advertising space in the Kingdom, it led the way to disciplining media buying practices and putting[2] a nail in the coffin of the kickback habit.
Tihama seemed to be unstoppable, as it expanded from outdoor to print media and soon after, it started an advertising agency practice which seemed to be inspired by the Al Ahram experience in Egypt. Many Egyptians were employed at Tihama’s media operations, and most probably had convinced group management that there was additional money to be made in advertising.
Saleh Balahwal of Al Abbar was the first to warn us that the Tihama people had approached his big boss, Sheikh Mahmoud Al Abbar, to move the Westinghouse advertising budget from the “Lebanese agency” they’d been using and give it to Tihama. Saleh Balahwal stood firm against such a move when consulted.
Then one day, as Shaker Naboulsi was visiting Intermarkets in Beirut to review a Toyota campaign we were preparing, I received a message from the receptionist that a visitor – from Saudi Arabia – was aggressively insisting on meeting me, although he admitted not having a confirmed appointment. As I was taking Shaker on a tour of Intermarkets, I kept him chatting with Samir Fares and quickly stepped out to meet the visitor in the waiting room between the offices of Samir Fares and Nahi Ghorayeb. There I saw a short, bald man who jumped to meet me carrying the expression of an invader on his face. He introduced himself in a less-than-polite tone as Gebran Eid. I instantly recognized his mountainous Lebanese dialect. In the same loud voice, he announced that he was in our office – on behalf of Tihama – to warn us to immediately resign the Toyota account, as there was a national Saudi ad agency now that was more capable of handling the business of Saudi companies. I had left the door ajar when I stepped out to meet the unannounced guest. Shaker Naboulsi and Samir Fares overheard Gebran Eid’s loud threats and his aggressive tone. Suddenly, Shaker stormed out of Samir’s room and walked towards Gebran, who backed up on seeing this tall man – in the Saudi national dress – approaching him in a voice louder than his. Shaker introduced himself, adding that his company – Abdel Latif Jameel – was a shareholder in Tihama and it had encouraged its founders to bring professionalism and order to the Saudi advertising scene.
Shaker raised a warning finger to the face of Gebran as he told him that his threatening statement to Intermarkets should not be Tihama’s line of operation, and he (Gebran) was an embarrassing mercenary. Gebran Eid walked out in shame and we soon all sat with Shaker, who encouraged us to move quickly and to establish an Intermarkets office in the Kingdom, recommending that we look at Tihama as our first choice for a national partner. If it did not work, we should come to them.
Upon Shaker’s return to Jeddah, a meeting was confirmed with the management of Tihama, during which I was to explore their interest in a possible tie-up. It was understood that if I saw interest, then the Intermarkets board would come to negotiate, accompanied by our lawyers.
Upon arrival in Jeddah, my first port of call was the office of my ex-AUB colleague and close friend, Talal Dhulaymi, Tihama’s outdoor general manager, whose office was in Al Baghdadiyah in the north of the city. There I received a warm welcome, as Talal and I had not met for a few years and he had been alerted of my visit, so he volunteered to be my guide. I drove with Talal to Tihama’s head office – a six-storey building with a large sign on its roof – on Jeddah Corniche. We passed by a row of male receptionists in Saudi national dress, who all rose to salute Talal and his guest. We took the lift to the top floor and as we stepped out to the spacious reception and waiting area, we were greeted by a personal assistant in European dress. From his welcome statements, I realized that he was Egyptian. Talal explained that the entire top floor was the territory of Tihama’s founder, partner, and CEO, Sheikh Mohammad Saeed Tayeb.
As we walked into the CEO’s office, I was greeted by a hawk-eyed Saudi with a black moustache and thick, black-rimmed glasses, who instantly projected the image of a very witty and well cultured person. In fact, en route, Talal had introduced his boss as a university educated Saudi holding a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science. Talal also mentioned that Sheikh Saeed had been an attorney and counselor-at-law, as well as a senior executive at the Passports and Immigration Directorate, the Ministry of Hajj, and Endowments. This was in addition to a very long list of memberships to different private sector boards, charities, and educational institutions. Moreover, the man never stopped writing for various Saudi publications.
After the first round of Arabic coffee to welcome his Lebanese guest, Sheikh Saeed explained that Tihama was established in 1974 as a limited liability company and was upgraded to a joint stock company in 1983, specializing not only in advertising, but also in public relations, marketing, publishing, and distribution, with a capital of 75 million Saudi Riyals.
From my side, I was about to start introducing Intermarkets, but Sheikh Saeed stopped me to allow his assistants, Issam Basrawi and Bahaa Abou Ghazaleh, to join the meeting. I concluded the introduction by explaining that my visit was to find the best way of servicing Intermarkets’ clients in the Kingdom. Sheikh Saeed suggested that I allow him and his generals time to think about my suggestion, and to confirm whether they were interested in helping. Our meeting was concluded when they asked me to return to Tihama in two days, when I would hear the outcome of their discussions.
I spent the following two days finalizing projects with my clients and sounding them out about how they felt about Tihama and the thought of a possible cooperation. The consensus was very similar to what we had heard from Shaker Naboulsi in Beirut. It would be good to cooperate with a large and well-connected Saudi partner, provided the spirit of Intermarkets prevailed in every aspect of our responsibility towards our clients. I went back to Tihama on the third day to receive the positive news of their readiness to act as national partners for Intermarkets Saudi Arabia.
When I flew back to Jeddah in the company of Erwin Guerrovich a month later, the renovation of the airport had just been completed. The jumbo passenger coaches smelt new, and the terminal building was sparkling with new furniture and bright-colored paint. There were no pilgrims sleeping on the floor and the immigration officers were trained to greet arriving passengers with a smile. During the drive to the hotel, Erwin turned to me and said: “This airport is really great, I fail to understand why you always returned from your visits to the Kingdom, grumbling and complaining about Jeddah’s airport.”
[1] Tihama website – http://tihama.com/
[2] Advertising and the Media in the Gulf – Robin Arthur – 1993 – Page 49 & 50