I was seven years of age and studying at the Ecole Du Sacré-Cœur in Aley when I tasted Coca-Cola for the first time. We were taken on a school trip to the nuns’ school in Araya, and when we finally sat on the long collective tables on the balcony that overlooked Beirut, the sweet, caring Soeur Marie Gustave, who was my class teacher, handed me the picnic basket that had been given to her by my mother that morning. Next to the two sandwiches was this funny-looking bottle and a bottle opener. When we got back home my parents explained that this was a new drink[1] and they had purchased a couple of bottles, knowing I would like it.
Two years later, and at the beginning of the summer of 1952, I was sent with my cousins, who had recently moved up from Beirut to spend their summer holiday in Aley to join a crowd of children our age chasing a decorated delivery truck, whose loudspeakers were playing music and calling on people to taste Pepsi-Cola[2], the new drink that had just been launched.
The two American soft drink brands competed fiercely in the Lebanese market until Coca-Cola was placed on the Arab League’s blacklist in 1966 and was therefore boycotted, not only in Lebanon, but in most other Arab countries. The boycott was the outcome of Coca-Cola deciding to open a bottling franchise in Israel[3].
I also remember accompanying my parents one day on a drive to Beirut, where our first stop was always Pharmacie Bechara Baroody, the pharmacy of my uncle, which was located on Emir Bashir Street, close to the Beirut-Aley taxi station. The pharmacy had an inner room that opened onto Samadi Sweets, and this was where my uncle used to receive us and demonstrate the warmth of his hospitality, bringing the knafeh straight out of Samadi’s oven. The knafeh was always followed by the traditional Lebanese soft drink Kazouz Jallol, which was brought from the bottling site next door. The Perrier-shaped bottles were capped with glass balls that the delivery boy, wearing an apron, used to pierce inside the bottle with an icepick, causing a swish sound.
All these memories came back to me when I sat with Nahi Ghorayeb and Samir Fares to define Intermarkets’ new business strategy, since the merger had begun to open doors outside the Fattal and Hanna hunting grounds. Our brainstorming concluded that, due to their heavy media investment, only the American brands were worth pursuing in this product category. However, we also arrived at the conclusion that all mainstream soft drink brands were only allowed to use their globally aligned agencies, hence we were not to waste our time chasing this category.
But we soon realized that in advertising there were no rigid rules that dictated what should or could happen. Unilever, one of the agency’s long-term clients, was becoming more and more active in Syria. As a result, Raymond Hanna was assigned to develop this neighboring market for our agency. Raymond blew a breath of fresh air into the relationship with The Syrian Advertising Agency, our associate agency in Damascus. Nader Tahhan, the owner, and manager welcomed this new spirit and jumped on all the business opportunities that came his way and worked hard to deliver. Soon, news of an agency delivering a different quality of service in Syria started to spread and Raymond received a call from a gentleman named Kamil Al Shabb who introduced himself as the person responsible for a carbonated soft drink called Canada Dry. This gentleman was keen to find out if Intermarkets could help him in Syria.
Kamil Al Shabb, a tall, baldish gentleman in his early 50s, visited Raymond Hanna the following week and introduced himself as the son of Dr. Ramzi Nabih Al Shabb, the owner of a hospital in Saida with the same name. The drink brand that he represented was known only to a few at Intermarkets. But the corporate identity guidebooks that Kamil brought along revealed that Canada Dry was not just a cola brand like Pepsi and Coca-Cola. It had a very wide range of fruit-flavored drinks, mixers and popular American sodas like Ginger Ale and Root Beer. Canada Dry had a franchisee in Syria that owned a huge bottling plant, manufacturing a wide range of flavors.
Kamil Al Shabb explained that the Syrians were great manufacturers, not only of soft drinks, but of many other products. However, they were weak at marketing and that is why he was personally trying to help his bottler. Kamil had brought along an urgent label design job, and he was keen to see if Intermarkets could help him with that.
Raymond welcomed the challenge, sensing the sweet smell of new business behind the simple design job, so he asked Kamil to join him, and they went up the spiral staircase to Gabriel Brenas’ office. The three tall men seemed to hit it off instantly in a noisy way, since their giggles and high-pitched French jokes could be heard on the ground floor of the agency. While the animated chat went on and on, Jean-Jacques Shwenzner, the agency’s chief designer, worked fast on several alternatives for the label design.
This first visit concluded with the decision that Kamil would accompany Raymond Hanna on his weekly visit to Damascus the following week, where the circle of friends quickly grew with the addition of the Syrian bottler and Nader Tahhan. While Kamil became a regular companion of Raymond on the weekly visits to Syria, there came a day when Raymond came back to the agency to announce that we had received a brief from Canada Dry for an extended launch campaign in the United Arab Emirates, and from that day on Intermarkets had its first soft drink account.
Kamil Al Shabb called us at Intermarkets to say that – our new client – the Canada Dry bottler in Dubai wanted to visit Lebanon to identify a publishing firm that could help him launch an independent Arabic language daily in the UAE. Kamil wanted to check if we were able to help the visitor. At the time, Dar An-Nahar, the leading news publisher in Lebanon, was moving from its old Souk Al Tawile premises to Central Bank Street in Hamra having finished its new head office building, inaugurating it under the name Al Taawania Al Sahafia (Cooperatives de Press Building).
Their new offset printing press, which had replaced the 1933 letterpress printer brought in from Germany when Gebran Tueni published the first issue of An-Nahar, was a game-changer for the Tueni family and the newspaper publishing industry in Lebanon. The Tuenis were very excited about the prospect of cooperation with such a prominent Emirati, so a meeting was immediately organized with Fouad Tueni, the brother of Ghassan and the finance and organizational brain at Dar An-Nahar. I was delegated to accompany Jooma Al Majid (Abou Khaled) on this meeting. This was the first time I had met a businessman from Dubai, and Abou Khaled turned out to be very impressive.
Abou Khaled – the agent for General Electric, Maytag, Citizen watches and Hyundai; vice president of the UAE Central Bank; and one of the closest among the wise men that formed the inner circle of Sheikh Rashid Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai – was very humble, soft-spoken, and approachable. He explained that the UAE had two government-owned Arabic dailies – Al Etihad in Abu Dhabi and Al Bayan in Dubai. Al Etihad had a sister English language daily, Emirates News. The Emirate of Sharjah had a privately-owned Arabic daily, Al Khaleej, and a mimeographed English language sheet called The Recorder. He wanted to publish his own independent Arabic language daily to report everything, not only government news.
The meeting with Fouad Tueni was perfect in the sense that the two gentlemen seemed to click together in harmony immediately following the introduction. Abou Khaled was familiar with and a big fan of An-Nahar, while the Tuenis were keen to complete the move to their new building fast without having to worry about old baggage. They seem to have already put a price tag on their old Heidelberg printer, which Fouad Tueni mentioned to his visitor. Abou Khaled accepted after Fouad instantly agreed to his request to have An-Nahar delegate its experienced staff to train – not only how to operate the printer, but also to help hire editorial staff, reporters, and journalists. At that stage, Abou Khaled stood up and extended his hand to Fouad Tueni, who pushed back, saying it was too early to leave as they still had a lot of details to discuss before they could draft an agreement and sign. Abou Khaled responded by saying that his own role ended after shaking hands. From there on, his lawyer, Abdallah Humaid (who accompanied Abou Khaled and participated in the entire meeting), would stay behind until all the details had been agreed and an agreement was drafted.
Sadly, this fascinating experience fell apart after Abou Khaled’s returned to Dubai and failed to secure the green light from Sheikh Rashid, who insisted on Juma Al Majid to continue focusing on his business, leaving journalism and politics to their experts. Juma Al Majid’s dream of publishing a newspaper was realized many years later when he partnered with Obaid Al Tayer and Abdallah Al Rostamani to launch the English language daily, Gulf News. Abou Khaled would surface again when Intermarkets decided to open an agency in Dubai.
In the meantime, Canada Dry decided to launch its Sport Cola in the UAE and Abou Khaled and Kamil Al Shabb called on Intermarkets to handle the launch. After the initial media burst, I had a team of Intermarkets’ executives accompany me by riding next to the delivery truck drivers, talking to shop owners about the reaction of people to the new cola flavor. This initiative had a strange effect on the Canada Dry people. Many years after the Dubai launch, the Egyptian general manager of the Canada Dry bottling plant moved to Oman when he was employed by the bottler in the Sultanate. He called me to Dubai and insisted that Intermarkets handle his advertising account, though we did not have a physical presence in the Sultanate. One day, I met the Omani owner Ali Daoud, who was keen to learn about the Sport Cola launch that had stuck for so long in the mind of his new general manager.
Our work for Canada Dry opened our eyes to a lot of facts related to the soft drinks market in the Middle East. One of these observations was that the crème soda flavor was the most favored in Yemen, because most of the adult population drank it when they were chewing qat.
The resident manager of Canada Dry in Kuwait was a young Palestinian named Nicolas Hakim. Nicolas loved coming to Dubai every time Kamil Al Shabb was visiting, or just to meet with the agency. Even when he was visiting for one day, Nicolas used to bring along a large Samsonite suitcase. Every time I asked him about the reason behind this big suitcase, he smiled and said: “Wait until we travel together – to Kuwait – one day.” When it finally happened, I noted that the light empty suitcase Nicolas had brought with him suddenly required a strong porter to transport it from the trunk of the taxi to the Kuwait Airways check-in counter. Another porter with a trolley was used at the Kuwait end, and when the customs inspector asked about the suitcase contents, Nicolas answered him saying: “It is full of beer.” The customs inspector laughed and waved him in with simple disbelief. At that moment, I discovered the secret of Nicolas Hakim’s suitcase.