The human resources function in the early days of Dubai used to be a challenge all over the Gulf states. In general, the region attracted mostly workers from the Indian subcontinent. Then in the mid-Eighties, the situation started to change with the arrival of young British job hunters, who were followed by South Africans, Australians, and finally other Europeans.
After we were appointed affiliates to Saatchi & Saatchi in 1982, we started attracting talent from this agency, which included a young Englishman by the name of Tim Mousel, who had just landed in the UAE after an account management spell at Charlotte Street. At Saatchi, Tim was one of the playboys of the agency who drove his Porsche Carrera daily to the office. But he was also known to be a whizz-kid, since the London police had once come to the agency wanting to know who was the owner of a Porsche that had the habit of feeding the parking meter with tokens made of frozen water molded into the shape of a British one-pound coin.
The British Bank of the Middle East was a major advertiser in the UAE. One day, Tim dashed into my office at Hor Al Anz carrying a telex from the bank’s advertising manager, saying they had just faced an ethical conflict with their advertising agency, which led them to instantly fire them during a major advertising launch. They were rushing to identify and appoint a replacement with the least possible delay. I immediately asked Tim to cancel all our other appointments for the day and to line up the troops to meet with the bank and present them with our credentials. I rushed my PA to Gerard Patisserie at Al Ghurair Centre, asking them to bring back the finest petit fours for our guests, hoping that all the small hospitality gestures we had put together at such a short notice would demonstrate to the visitors that we would be their ideal communication partners.
At 12pm sharp, three English gentlemen in typical banker suits walked in and were warmly welcomed by Tim Mousel, who was an old friend of one of them. We exchanged business cards and invited them to sit around our boardroom table. The cards indicated that they all belonged to the bank’s marketing department. From the Intermarkets side, there was only Tim and me in the room, as Tim had insisted on the need to be very focused, as they were seeing two other agencies before making a same-day decision. The agency’s telephone operator and all the staff were fully aware of my directive that no incoming calls should be passed to the boardroom whenever we were meeting with visitors.
After a brief explanation from the senior member of the team about the reasons behind their request for such an urgent meeting, Tim stood up, switched on the Kodak Carousel projector, and started his introduction of Intermarkets. By the time he clicked the third slide, the phone at the edge of the table began ringing. I jerked with irritation as Tim picked up the phone, listened and curtly responded, saying: “We will talk later.” Barely five minutes lapsed before the phone rang again, and Tim, this time screaming, said: “I told you we shall talk later!” And banged the phone down. I was thinking what I would do with both the phone operator and Tim after the meeting when the phone rang for a third time. Tim picked it up, listened for a second, screamed “Shit!” and rushed out of the room.
Few difficult seconds of surprise and frustration fell over the Intermarkets boardroom and its occupants. Sensing that we were about to lose a golden opportunity, I jumped from my seat and picked up the slide projector’s remote control, mumbled a brief apology and clicked the following slide. This was a map of the Middle East that showed all the cities that Intermarkets’ agencies were located in. Shockingly, the slide was placed upside-down in the carousel. Another apology followed while I re-arranged the slide and went back to the screen to present each of our regional agencies, stressing the markets where the British Bank of the Middle East was present. I clicked again and a colorful slide appeared that I immediately noticed was not part of Intermarkets’ credentials. On the slide was “Ramzi, we’ve got ya” framed with colorful balloons on top of a birthday cake. The boardroom door then burst open and in came Tim carrying a cake with candles and all the staff singing “Happy birthday to you”. The three prospective “clients” burst into laughter. In the rush to acquire the bank’s potential new business, I had forgotten that it was my birthday.
Tim Mousel’s surprise party seems to have established a tradition with the members of my future agencies, who came from Intermarkets to join TBWA\RAAD.
On 27 November 2000, I walked into the Twin Towers’ office at 9.15am to find only Stephanie Lobo, my PA, and no one else. As always, Stephanie had an instant answer to my question, blaming the absence of staff due to the difficulty of finding parking space. On my third very edgy enquiry, Stephanie flared up and asked me to step to the window and look down at the Dubai Municipality parking lot. There I saw the entire agency team holding colored balloons and gathered round a table carrying a giant birthday cake.