Chapter 70\ Give it and it will be given to YOU[1]

In 1976, I had a meeting with Abdel Hakim Totah at his office at Kuwait TV from Dubai complex, which was located next to the roundabout of Al Maktoum Bridge and Zabeel. Totah had become a difficult person to meet, so my appointment had been under negotiation for quite some time. Suddenly, Totah’s male assistant interrupted the meeting by announcing in a very annoyed tone that a gentleman by the name of Mokhtar Shamli was in the reception and was insisting on meeting Totah. Totah instantly flared up, saying that he had no further appointments that morning, stressing that he does not know anyone by that name and, accordingly, the visitor should be shown out. I interjected by telling Totah that Mokhtar Shamli was a senior advertising man from Lebanon, whose agency handles P&G. I explained that the guest may have just arrived from war-torn Beirut and might not be familiar with Dubai’s business protocol; concluding that I would allow the guest to take over my own planned appointment. I did not allow Totah the time to reject my suggestion or even to comment, as I quickly followed the assistant to the reception. Mokhtar Shamli was relieved to see me and to hear my explanation of what was happening. He accompanied me to Abdel Hakim Totah’s room, where I completed a flattering introduction of the two gentlemen, and then walked out.

Three years after this incident, I received a call at the Intermarkets office in the Mirna Chalouhi building in Beirut, where both the agency’s head office and I had moved after my two-year stay in Dubai. On the other end of the line was an old man’s voice that I did not immediately recognize. The caller introduced himself as Mokhtar Shamli and he wanted to know when I could visit his office on the other side of Beirut. I crossed the partition line and went to Shamli’s office where, years earlier, he had said he would be going against P&G’s request to hire me. Mokhtar welcomed me warmly, saying he would never forget the humiliation he had received at Kuwait TV’s reception in Dubai. It was at a crucial time when he’d left Beirut under a crazy exchange of rockets and mortar, desperately wanting to explore avenues for the survival of his agency. Mokhtar, with what looked like tears in his eyes, continued to say that when I had appeared in place of Abdel Hakim Totah’s assistant, who Mokhtar was expecting to return and add further insult to injury, he perceived me as a saving angel; a feeling that he had fondly cherished all these years. He took my hand in between his two wrinkled hands and shook it, saying that all these years he had kept thinking about how to thank me. The greatest surprise came when Mokhtar concluded by saying that he and his very close friend, Samih Sherif, P&G’s group vice president for the Middle East and Africa, had come to the agreement that Mokhtar needed to retire, but before doing so he committed to help P&G identify and appoint an alternative agency, whom he would coach and guide until they felt confident enough to do it on their own. Mokhtar said that he felt so relieved that the time had finally come for him to repay me for my noble behavior on that fateful day in Dubai. The climax of his highly emotional speech was his question of whether Intermarkets would be willing to handle the P&G account, and if I could commit to be part of the account team.

I consulted with Intermarkets’ management and went back to Mokhtar, accompanied by Erwin Guerrovich, to personally thank him and confirm our interest in handling the P&G business, while Erwin assured him of our pleasure in retaining him as our consultant. From there on things started moving very quickly. A senior team and I from Intermarkets rushed to Cairo to meet Ron Pearce, one of P&G’s general managers, as his company had an embargo on travel to Lebanon. Pearce was a shrewd South African with a pleasant character. The three hours we spent together that early afternoon at the bar of the Nile Hilton allowed him to cut through the entire fluff that usually coats agencies’ credential presentations and get to the heart of our agency. He was keen to know why each of the merged agencies that made up Intermarkets had joined together. He also investigated, in an extremely skillful manner, how the cultures of MEMAS, HIMA and Pharaon Advertising were blending. The moment we thought that this philosophical interview was coming to an end, Ron Pearce switched to a more investigative mode, where he probed the very practical details of the Intermarkets network. He grilled us on the physical details of location, legal status, ownership, partner/sponsor, the management, their background, headcount, breakdown by communication discipline, education, nationality, and gender split. Pearce then went back to P&G’s philosophical tone of questioning, asking why we had established a presence in each market and whether it was a specific client-led decision. After about four hours, our interrogator invited us to lunch, where he turned into the most hospitable and pleasant host, taking personal joy in sharing the human profile of P&G and its great respect for their Arab boss, Samih Sherif, the man they called “God”, due to his omnipresence in every aspect of company life. This included everything from research and development to the distributors’ network, concluding his working day usually by correcting Arabic advertising copy. Pearce fondly told us about Mokhtar Shamli and the close relationship they had had with his agency for many years. Our first meeting with P&G concluded with an encouraging smile, a warm handshake, and an announcement that a team of P&G marketing and advertising executives would be visiting all of Intermarkets’ network agencies the following week.

^[1] Bible – Luke 6:38