Chapter 86\ The return to Beirut

I handed over my Dubai agency management responsibilities to Samir Fares, who volunteered to hold the fort until Albert Nofal came on board as general manager of Intermarkets UAE. Albert had no advertising experience, but he was hired by Erwin Guerrovich and all we knew was that Albert^[1] was the brother of General Suleiman Nofal, the retired head of the Lebanese Police Force (gendarmerie) and the current director general of Compagnie Libanaise de Télévision (CLT). Albert arrived in Dubai accompanied by his wife Leny^[2], the well-known face of Canal 9, the French TV station on CLT.

By the time we packed our personal gear, which had piled up during the previous two years in Dubai, Intermarkets Lebanon had already changed offices twice. The original Homsi building based on Rue de Damas had become inaccessible, so it was replaced by a two-office temporary arrangement: the first on Sami Al Solh Avenue in the Badaro district; the second, a small base on the top floor of the Sabbagh building, which was at the entrance to Hamra Street.

By the time the new senior management team returned to Lebanon the Beirut agency staff had joined the regional head office group at the Mirna Al Chalouhi building. The Group General Management – as we decided to name it – had an office on the 10th floor, while the Lebanon agency team had one on the 9th floor. The civil war continued to haunt the country and at Intermarkets we had our share of scary surprises. One day an ammunition depot belonging to one of the militia groups received a direct hit on the horizon. The Mirna Al Chalouhi building trembled with the first loud explosion, and we all went to the windows to see what was happening. We stood watching the black smoke reaching up to the clouds. Then we saw that the fire had begun eating the building in whose basement the ammunition depot was located. Then suddenly we saw balls of fire flying in all directions, including the direction of our building. At that moment, we all ran down the stairs to the basement, expecting one of the flying rockets to hit at any moment. After a few minutes of silence, we and other tenants of the Mirna Al Chalouhi building went back up to our desks. However, the flare-ups kept happening for the rest of the day and we had to go down to the shelter again and again.

On another occasion we jumped from our seats and ran to the windows as we heard repetitive bursts of machine gun fire. To our astonishment, we saw a group of young militia fighters firing in the air to scare the Bangladeshi garbage collectors of Beirut Municipality, who they seemed to have forced to fill sandbags, which they were using to build barriers in the area. 

My first opportunity to exercise the regional network role I had been assigned came from Dubai. Albert Nofal called me to help the Dubai agency put together a presentation for a Swiss cheese export promotion body that was planning to launch a generic campaign targeting the rich oil markets of the Arabian Gulf. I had vast experience of promoting Ceylon Tea, which had changed the hot beverage drinking habits of both the Saudis and the Lebanese also with my Sopexa French Food Council experience the Swiss cheese challenge was to be a simple one. At the same time, I was under the impression that this would never develop into a major client, and it would be normal to mail the presentation docket to the client. Surprisingly, Albert Nofal jumped the gun by setting up an appointment for the two of us with this prospective client, and we were to visit Gruyères in the Swiss Alps and present face-to-face.

We flew to Geneva and took the train to Gruyères where we were met at the station and driven to the meeting place. The Swiss executive who received us was very warm towards Albert, whom he had met a few years back at a Swiss embassy reception in Beirut. The entire building smelled of cheese and the conference room, which seemed to have been set for our meeting, had the most impressive display of cheeses laid out on tables. A group of executives in white gowns walked in and, after an exchange of business cards, Albert’s old friend, who was acting as the master of ceremonies, introduced one of his colleagues, who stood next to one of the tables and began a detailed presentation of the cheese on display. He covered the history of the brand, how it was made, the forms in which it was exported, and the time of delivery. He then picked up two presentation folders and handed them to the two of us, stressing that all export prices were to be found in the folders. This statement came as an anticlimax to weeks of preparation and a whole day spent travelling by plane, train, and car, hoping to convince the Swiss Cheese Board to buy into our services, not the other way around.

While this gentleman had been delivering his presentation in Swiss-accented English, I kept looking around the room to see if they had arranged a slide projector and a screen for our presentation. It was only when the second presentation began that it dawned on me that a major misunderstanding was unfolding. I whispered my concern to Albert, who instantly shook his head as a sign of disagreement. Then, when I poked him again halfway through the second cheese presentation, he whispered a long sentence into the ear of our chief host, who burst into a low-voiced but animated debate with Albert. When the second presentation ended, our host stood up and made what sounded like an apologetic remark in Swiss, which led all the cheese manufacturers to stand up, pack up their presentation gear and leave without even shaking our hands or talking to us.

This was the most shocking misunderstanding I had witnessed in my fairly short advertising career. The Swiss host had wrongly reacted to Albert’s letter announcing that he had joined Intermarkets and moved to Dubai, thinking the name of Albert’s new employer had to do with marketing and that the new base in Dubai was a gateway to the rich oil-producing countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). His invitation to Albert and his business colleagues had been intended as an invitation to a buyers’ delegation, and therefore all the seasoned cheese producers were present in the room that morning, expecting large orders.

Eager to make up for his lack of advertising experience, Albert wanted to show us that he was a man of contracts and a business getter, but he had failed to understand what the correspondence with the Swiss cheese man really meant. From that day on, I decided to look at all background material thoroughly before jumping into any promising opportunities that were thrown me or my agency’s way.

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^[1] La Télé Quelle Histoire – Jean-Claude Boulos – Page 58

^[2] La Télé Quelle Histoire – Jean-Claude Boulos – Page 284