Before too long, Alban Lloyd and Bill Muirhead came to visit us at Intermarkets. The meeting was quick, efficient, and productive, with Saatchi & Saatchi confirming the appointment of Intermarkets as its affiliate agency for the Middle East. BA would be the first account we were to handle on their behalf, conditional of it remaining the only airline in our portfolio. We instantly tried to resist this condition, reminding our visitors that during the FCB affiliation era, BA accepted our handling of Swissair and Singapore Airlines. Bill Muirhead was adamant, saying that our rejection of the exclusivity clause would be considered a deal breaker since the days of FCB were long gone. Now we were dealing with Saatchi & Saatchi.
Luckily, we had been working with Singapore Airlines and Batey Ads to prepare the campaign material for the launch of the Concorde supersonic flight to Bahrain. This allowed us privileged information that the Concorde flying into Bahrain from London Heathrow and continuing to Singapore Changi Airport would be a special one, as it would carry BA livery on one side and SIA livery on the other. We warned that if Singapore Airlines was forced to change agencies at this late hour, they (BA) would lose control of the ads that feature their Concorde, even if it was from one side only. This thought seemed to force the two BA executives to grant us a grace period, during which we could carry on handling SIA’s advertising. Lloyd and Muirhead gave their green light to this agreement, without even referring to the Saatchi brothers back home. In silent appreciation, we reassured them with the thought that SIA did not fly competing routes out of our region.
Before 1983, there was much criticism of the level of service at BA. So, to prepare people to live up to “The World’s Favorite Airline” standards, BA introduced four staff programs: “Putting people first”, “A Day in the Life”, “To be the Best” and “Winning for Customers”. The aim was to ensure that quality permeated the organization to ensure its long-term success[1]. After most of the UK-based frontline staff underwent this crash training program, both BA and its new advertising agency felt it crucial to introduce the revamped BA strategy and the “World’s Favorite Airline” slogan to all the people at BA who were in touch with the travelling public prior to the campaign launch. This would be done at a site close to Heathrow Airport. I was invited to this event and had first-hand experience of the audience roar, followed by the sudden silence when “Manhattan Landing” was screened. Participating in this gathering allowed me the opportunity to meet Charles and Maurice Saatchi, Martin Sorell, Tim Bell, Jeremy Sinclair, and Ed Wax, who had flown in from the US for the meeting.
In Bahrain, we launched the joint BA/SIA Concorde service and Intermarkets played a major role in maintaining synergies and dual brand integrity. What helped was the mutual respect between the two country managers, Nigel Page of BA, and Jimmie Goh of SIA.
Early in this relationship, the situation in Lebanon forced my move with the Intermarkets head office team to France, so the relationship with Saatchi & Saatchi which was totally focused on BA and got transferred to Intermarkets Bahrain. Eddie Moutran, the agency’s general manager, and Susan Turnbull, the account director, did a perfect job of keeping the assignments of both airlines at a distance, while keeping both happy. SIA cancelling the Bahrain-Istanbul route and launching the Singapore-Cairo flight sort of diverted the focus. Intermarkets Egypt then took the lead on the SIA portfolio and Sahar Nazmi, the account director at our Cairo agency – who turned into the Middle East Iron Lady for SIA and Batey Ads – helped diffuse the competitive time bomb, which had never stopped ticking at Saatchi & Saatchi.
After two years in Paris, Intermarkets’ HQ moved to London and was located at Berners Street. Our new headquarters were around the corner from the offices of Saatchi & Saatchi on Charlotte Street, and this brought me closer to our international affiliates. In fact, we needed to be close, now more than ever, since Saatchi & Saatchi had made public the news about acquiring a Middle East affiliate, which resulted in termination letters poured on Intermarkets by JWT, Lintas, O&M, FCB and Univas.
While in London, most of my time was dedicated to overseeing the P&G business, which was handled by Amr Yafi. However, the thought that Saatchi & Saatchi could be our timely opportunity to upgrade the way we operate and our robust introduction for new business, led me to spend much time at the Charlotte Street offices, where I was continuously rubbing shoulders with the upcoming champions of global advertising.
Soon I became part of the team as I was invited to their European Creative Huddle in Estoril, Portugal. Upon checking into the conference hotel, every participant found a welcome kit in their room, including a bottle of Portuguese green wine (the white wine equivalent of Beaujolais Nouveau), carrying a label that read “Saatchi & Saatchi World Wine”.
At one of our group lunches at the top of the hotel, Jeremy Sinclair sat at the piano, which was part of the restaurant décor, and started singing a spontaneous ballad, which made fun of himself, Maurice and Charles, Tim Bell, Martin Sorrell and practically everyone else within the worldwide group.
Towards the end of 1986, Saatchi & Saatchi’s global empire was employing 18,000 people in 500 agencies of its own, across 65 countries[2]. By that time, they seem to have noticed that Intermarkets was running the BA account efficiently and handling – on its own – Braun, Toyota, and P&G; these three being Saatchi’s clients in other markets.
Two of the P&G brands we were handling, namely Pampers and Ariel, seemed to be of particular interest to our international affiliates, as they handled these same two brands across Europe. Their dialogue with the global clients in Geneva revealed that Intermarkets was one of two non-globally aligned agencies (not owned by Benton & Bowles, Leo Burnett nor Saatchi & Saatchi) that P&G retained.
This revelation seems to have encouraged them to short-circuit affiliation etiquette and start lobbying Geneva in relation to the Pampers and Ariel accounts in the Middle East. Soon after, we received an official invitation from Saatchi & Saatchi for staff interchange within the account management territory. Since we had been very appreciative of the professional learning that the affiliation had generously brought our way, we excitedly welcomed the opportunity and before too long our Nadim Sfeir, one of Intermarkets’ young and very bright executives, left for the US to join the Saatchi account team working on P&G. Nadim then moved to London after completing the first leg of his internship in New York and Cincinnati. In London, he worked at the Charlotte Street office with the P&G team. After office hours he accompanied me home to Kinnerton Street, Belgravia, where we had dinner with my family and spent the rest of our evenings watching TV until a very late hour. Nadim then walked to his flat and came back early the next morning to accompany me to work.
In December of that year, Nadim and I were invited to the Saatchi & Saatchi Christmas party at the London Hippodrome, which was called “Talk of the Town”. Every member of the London agency’s staff was invited to come alone without their partners (wife, husband, girlfriend, or boyfriend). Nadim and I went to the party that night and, on leaving in the early hours of Sunday morning, I realized that I had forgotten to bring along my house keys. Nadim insisted on accompanying me to ensure that I manage, as we both had had a drink too many. I rang the doorbell many times, but the entire family seemed to have been sound asleep. So, we walked around the garden fence and entered through the back door delivery gate. Our bedroom was on the third floor and in front of the kitchen door, my wife had a basket in which she kept onions and potatoes. Nadim and I started throwing potatoes at the bedroom window, which generated a thumping sound in the silence of the night. Neighbors woke up and one of them called the police, but by that time my wife had finally woken up and allowed us in.
At Intermarkets, we welcomed Marc Cunningham, a group account director with vast P&G experience, in place of Nadim. Marc’s assignment from his own people was to help us on Pampers and Ariel, and this was encouraged and endorsed by P&G. From that moment, Cunningham made sure he was present – next to Amr Yafi – at every Ariel and Pampers meeting, both when briefing or brainstorming at the Berners Street office, as well as the P&G meeting rooms in Geneva. Cunningham gradually became our main contact with Saatchi & Saatchi. Then one day, he came to me (as the most senior Intermarkets officer in London) with a message that his superiors wanted to meet with the shareholders of Intermarkets to discuss the equity option which, as he said, was an integral part of the affiliation agreement. I relayed the message to Erwin Guerrovich, who had just travelled back to Lebanon.
A meeting at Charlotte Street was arranged during which Saatchi expressed a keen wish to acquire 40 per cent of Intermarkets as a first step. Then, increase its equity to 60 per cent after the honeymoon period, during which they would have made sure of Intermarkets’ sustained profitability. Erwin returned to Beirut with a promise to consult with his partners – Raymond Hanna, Nahi Ghorayeb, Samir Fares and KFF. The consultation took time and was followed by negotiations that dragged on and on. By September 1987, the stock market crashed and soon the advertising business experienced its worst slump since World War II. Saatchi was sucked down with it, to the extent that the two brothers rushed to hire Robert-Louis Dreyfus as finance director to bring the group back from the brink[3].
By that time, the negotiation between Intermarkets and Saatchi had settled on a price. Erwin Guerrovich and his partners received the shock of their lives, when they were told that instead of pounds sterling or US dollars, they were being offered Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide stock for the 40 per cent they had accepted to sell. Their response was an echoing “NO”.
[1] Training people to deliver service excellence in British Airways; Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, Vol.4, from page 13 till 16