Of the many professors and instructors who taught me at AUB, I was very much influenced by two professors for whom teaching was not a full-time career. The first was Professor Ibrahim Ombargi, my industrial management teacher. Professor Ombargi was the director of procurement and sales at the Lebanese Tobacco Monopoly (La Regies Libanaise de Tabac). The second was Professor Rateb Shallah, assistant professor at the Institute of Money & Banking at AUB and owner of Shallah Research Establishment in Lebanon, as well as chairman of the British Columbia Corporation in Damascus.
From these two professors I learnt – in addition to the academic course material – many practical lessons that helped my everyday responsibilities in the advertising world. One such lesson was the need for – and the skill to put together – case histories to bring alive one’s experiences and to share those experiences with third parties. As I took over the responsibilities of the Ceylon Tea advertising account, I began taking photos of every press ad and every poster that we produced in its public setting. I used my own Asahi Pentax camera to shoot the events that we organized, from participation in exhibitions to the very innovative Hajj campaign, which was one of the most challenging promotions we planned and executed for this client. I was shooting slides – instead of the usual prints – and this allowed me to put together very elaborate presentations in which we spelt out the campaign objectives, its mechanism and results using photographed charts that were prepared by the studio. To these we added photos of the activations, making sure that the photography showed the targeted public at the peak of their interaction with the product. After some time, I had a very dynamic case history on the launch of Ceylon Tea in the Middle East, which was the only one of its kind at Intermarkets.
One day, Erwin Guerrovich received a tip from a friend in the media that Beiersdorf, the German company that manufactures Nivea the well-known skincare cream, was looking to appoint an advertising agency. Erwin instantly jumped on the opportunity and an appointment was set up with the company’s export and advertising teams in Hamburg. I accompanied Erwin on this trip and Samir Fares arranged with his brother, Felix – the Pan Am Station Manager in Hamburg – to help us and act as our guide.
On the flight, I found out that every time Erwin travels, he carries along many small crossword puzzle books, which he keeps working on solving throughout the flight. This allowed me time to put my Ceylon Tea case slides – which I had brought along – in order, and to rethink the narration that went along each slide. As we came down the airplane stairs, we saw a young man with wavy blondish hair wearing an olive-green blazer with brown leather patches on the elbows; carrying a Pan Am signboard which displayed our names: Guerrovich & Raad.
Felix was the typical happy-go-lucky Germanized Lebanese bachelor, who never stopped smiling and giggling. He drove us to the Hotel “Terminus Am Hauptbahnhof” – where he had booked us at the instructions of his brother, who asked him to book a low-budget hotel, which turned out to be a small lodge, adjacent to the main train station of Hamburg. Felix never stopped enquiring about Samir and his adventures with hostesses of the international airlines who stayed overnight in Beirut.
Since Felix was to meet a Pan Am flight that was expected after two hours, he made sure that we checked-in at our hotel and promised to pick us up for dinner later that same evening. Erwin and I agreed to unpack and go discover the city – each at his own pace – till pick-up time.
This was my first visit to Germany and Hamburg proved to be the ideal city to offer the proper induction to the country, that I had in mind for years. During my spring stroll through the streets of Hamburg, I bumped into Erwin twice who seemed to be moving similarly in a direction opposite to mine.
At 6 pm, Felix picked us up in his Mercedes coupé and we drove the Jung strass to an area called Bergdorf, where university students get together – on long communal tables – to drink beer and chat. Felix chose a table where his expert eyes spotted a small concentration of young blondes and instantly started what seemed to be his classical flirting routine. The beer that he kept carrying to the long table proved to be the catalyst for non-stop giggles and laughter.
After spending around two hours drinking beer, trying to join the singing in German, and munching on Buckhurst sausages – served with sharp piquant yellow mustard – we drove to the St. Pauli night district, and we strolled through the Reeperbahn – Hamburg’s famous streets of shame. Felix was our caring guide and Erwin acted as the guardian; while I stopped at every new attraction, from the sex workers displaying themselves behind shop windows to the promotional displays of the Erotic Art Museum and the many adult shops. Felix then invited us to one of the more famous live shows before dropping us back at our hotel to rest and get ready for the next morning’s meeting.
We arrived at the Beiersdorf headquarters on 48 Unistress and as we walked into the foyer of the old building, we saw a sign displaying the names of the visitors – that day – which showed those of Erwin and mine next to the time of our meeting and the number of the meeting room, where we were expected. The board also revealed two other Lebanese agencies who were expected later that same day.
The lift to the third floor – like all other lifts in the building – had no door. The lift cabin kept going up and returning to the ground floor; after going all the way to the top floor. It moved slowly to allow people to jump inside and quickly make place for others to join. We hesitated for a moment while we observed the way it worked, before jumping in and when we reached the 3rd floor, we jumped out. As we landed, we were met by a chubby German lady that looked like a permanent fixture of this post WW2 building, who escorted us to a spacious boardroom with burgundy-colored carpet, curtains, and leather-padded armchairs. To my relief I saw a Braun 35mm slide projector perched on the edge of the long table and pointed towards a pull-up screen. My old friend Rafic Najjar had advised me to remove the Ceylon Tea case slides, from my own Kodak Carousel magazine and place them in a Braun projector tray that he gave me, while saying “In Germany, you will not find a Kodak Carousel projector”. After few minutes, five middle-aged Germans walked into the room and introduced themselves. Three were from the Export Department and the other two were the Advertising Department Seniors.
Erwin Guerrovich introduced Intermarkets verbally and then asked the Germans if they had any questions. The International Export Director was the first to speak and started by explaining that Beiersdorf were conducting this agency review because their business in the Middle East had been growing at an impressive pace which led them to conclude that it was not wise to keep the advertising responsibility in the hands of their different distributors. He continued to explain that they were meeting 6 agencies, and they would be selecting based on how these agencies presented themselves. Then he turned to Erwin and asked him if he had any additional information about Intermarkets. Before Erwin spoke, the Advertising Manager stood up and threw a barrage of questions at us, speaking with what sounded like the speed of a machine gun. He wanted to know if any of Intermarkets’ partners had his own private business, and if this posed a competitive threat to Beiersdorf. He also asked if Khalil Fattal & Partners still retain any equity at Intermarkets and if they have access to the agency’s client information. Then the second in command at Beiersdorf’s Advertising Department said: “Now that you have come all the way to Hamburg, how can you assure me and my colleagues that all that you’ve been saying about Intermarkets is true and you are not boasting like all Lebanese advertising people do; Is it true that you have your own agencies in Beirut, Kuwait, and Bahrain? Is it true that the Fattal people have no access to your client’s files despite the rumors that many of Intermarkets’ old timers were originally recruited by Fattal?”.
At that instance it dawned on me – and on Erwin as well – that Beiersdorf’s advertising department people have certainly been talking to one of the other agencies with whom they had met the previous day and seem to have been fed with false information to blow our chance of winning this review. I also felt that we were at risk of losing this opportunity if we did not only respond factually, but loudly and boldly as these two Germans had done. I picked up my slides and moved towards the projector saying that we have a real case that brings alive what Intermarkets can do, stressing that what I was about to share with them had been cleared by the client involved, who was ready to answer any of their questions, if they felt like contacting him.
With the help of my slides, I showed them the charts summarizing the results of the survey on the hot drinks consumption habits that prevailed in our markets before the campaign that we launched on behalf of Ceylon Tea Board. Then I showed the campaign that we launched in Lebanon to convince the population that Ceylon Tea is not only a medicinal beverage but also could be a glamorous drink served in its iced form on beaches in summer and to the young people, showing Ceylon Tea as Superman’s, Batman’s, and Little Lulu’s preferred beverage. I showed them the nicely designed packs that we had produced for tea importers in Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, and Bahrain. Then after explaining the business opportunity that exists in the Haj (the pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia), I shared with them – what seemed to be – fascinating photographs of the distributions of the prayer books and the sample Ceylon Tea packs to the thousands of pilgrims that visited Mecca the previous year, and the police force that was deployed to protect our sampling guys from the stampede of pilgrims that crowded around them. I showed them our participation on behalf of Ceylon Tea at the Ideal Home Shows in Kuwait and Cyprus, focusing on the slide that featured President and Archbishop Makarios sipping Ceylon Tea at our stall. The sponsorship of the Arabian Gulf Football Championship in Baghdad. To conclude, I showed the graphs of Ceylon Tea sales increases across the entire region.
A week after our return to Lebanon, we received – at Intermarkets – a telex from Beiersdorf stating that we had been appointed as their advertising agency for the Middle East, explaining that their unanimous decision was influenced by the work that we had been doing for our other clients and for the truth that we had demonstrated, which seemed to be the only language spoken at Intermarkets.
That Sunday when I went to church, the sermon was based on Apostle John’s message to the Corinthians (8:32) in which he wrote:
“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
I went back home, with a big smile on my face.