Al-Futtaim Honda - or how to talk about mental health without preaching

Is it possible? Could someone in the Arab region have cracked the code of how to talk about mental health without being condescending, without the stigma, without the preaching? I am not inventing gunpowder when I say that mental health is not just a taboo but is also dismissed in the Arab region at large and often mixed with "se7r" (magic) and "cured" by talismans instead of being taken seriously and people visiting proper therapists for it. Yet here we are Al-Futtaim Honda comes with an elegant, purposely understated at for the World Mental Health Day, which - thankfully - does not focus on the car with a copy which - at first - refers to the machine, and which works in a bi-linguist fashion. Only for the reveal to come by - that perhaps the problem is not in the car which puts the earlier sentences back into perspective. A brilliant, minimalist ad, which - of course might not erase all the "shame" associated with mental health and therapy in the Arab region - is a wonderful baby steps. See the ad here.

Crepaway, either give wholeheartedly or don't

You know the adage "every bit counts"? Well, yes, of course it does. But honestly one gets to a point where this is just.... unacceptable. Crepaway has offered a campaign that it dubs "share a meal of hope". So far so good. The meal is priced at USD 29. Again, no comment there. Now, Beit El Baraka is getting a full blown USD 1 out of every meal. Let me repeat, ONE buck from every 29. That would be 3.4%. Remember when I wrote about shopping with a conscience lately? (here).

Take this example - a man who owns a bakery has refused to take the price of 4 manakish from a girl when he knew she was displaced from the south. In the gloriously wonderful and efficient Matbakh Mariam (here) father Hani Tawk forbids any of the people working there and donating their time and energy to even ask the name of the people being served lest they think they are not welcome to eat for free.

So yes, one Dollar is lovely, but please Crepaway, this is insulting.

al-Awneh, al-Najdeh: have the Lebanese re-learned a lesson?

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly from the series Belvento

Anyone who reads this blog knows I am not a big fan of the Lebanese. Although I am one. Our political system I find was always in tatters, our understanding what politics was has always been skewed, etc, etc.... And still today to give what it is to Caesar what it is to Caesar, I must admit I am - if not proud - at least I am very impressed about us. Forget the bloated NGOs, but the initiatives on the ground are mind-blowingly insane. People hosting, cooking, feeding, distributing anything from mattresses, to milk, to diapers, to medicines, some closing their restaurants and doing a common kitchen to cook. I know I know this is a short-term band aid on a huge hemorrhaging wound, but still - the scale and impact on the ground is.... incredible. As I said this is not some publicity-hungry NGO justifying its salaries, no, it is just people coordinating, volunteering their time, energy, and resources into making it happen.

Of course it is not perfect, neither should it be. But seriously, every time I turn to Instagram I cannot but try to stop my heart from being squeezed. A barber and his team went and cut children's hair in one story, this almost made me melt. Of course, you can argue till tomorrow about if this was a priority or not, but to me watching the video and seeing the kids go ballistically insane from happiness (and I measure my words), feeling "human", like everyone else, regaining a sense of normalcy as they were uprooted from their usual surroundings and homes which most likely no longer exist - was worth every iota of buzzers that was spent.

Sure sure, pessimistic/realistic me will give you a thousand reasons why this won't matter in the great scheme of things. Charles Hayek in his beautiful feed on Instagram spoke recently about al-Awneh or al-Najdeh (basically help and rescue) two virtues rooted in the culture of the Lebanese village (here). Perhaps the Lebanese village is morphing and changing, that is for sure, but what is happening in all these endeavors is the same: People are sticking to one another regardless of sect, religion, or geographical origin.

Maybe, just maybe, the Lebanese have learned a lesson after all.

Alternative uses of bombs #flashback

Originally published Dec. 9 2014

Ah the power of recycling!!!

Smallville Hotel - now with a condolences hall

Well, desperate times call for desperate measures I presume. Smallville Hotel is now advertising its condolences hall, no, this is neither a pun nor a joke but rather how the hotel evolved with the current times and is adapting to the dismal situation in Lebanon. I am not even sure if this is a smart move, a total folly, one born from financial desperation, or what not. But here we are - a hotel with a condolences hall. 

Honest Petroleum - with a hint of basic instinct

Let's face it, Honest Petroleum just did what no ad should do - rely on sex appeal, shoot with whatever means, play on cheopo visuals (see the ad here). Say whatever you want about exploiting women, and give as much as you want about gender abuse. I myself saw the ad about 6 times, and now can lecture you, less effectively to be honest, about the merits of green diesel being sold at the best prices. Of course, in 2024, as I said - you can go ethics for days, or just simply capitulate and say the ad works. Very well actually. And yes, I still saw hints of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct with that white dress.

Advertising awards should be a byproduct not the aim.

Recently for Saudi Day (September 19) Heinz went brandless and colored itself with the colors of the Saudi flag. The aim was to express "our irrational act of love to join our Saudi consumers in celebrating the Kingdom with its rich culture, heritage, and unity,” according to Passant El Ghannam, Head of Marketing at Kraft Heinz MEA. I can already see the case presented to advertising awards - "we allowed consumers to scan QR codes to share their own messages of pride, we hired in situ calligraphers to personalize the bottles so as for consumers to keep one-of-a-kind mementos, and sales grew by (insert impressive number here)". The whole thing reeks of advertising awards rather than a normal campaign targeted towards consumers.
A long long time ago (2003 to be specific), an agency in KSA I was working in was contacted by newspapers telling them that GMC was launching a massive campaign the next day. Since we represented Toyota they wanted to know if we were going to launch anything ourselves. That same day - a statistic fell into our lap: KSA was the second worldwide owner of Toyota Landcruiser per capita in the world after Japan. The client servicing threw it at us and literally gave us about ten minutes to get an ad done as he was off to visit the client. I raked my brains and came up with the Al Mutanabi verse:
وتصغر في عين العظيم العظائم
And the greater things seem insignificant in the eye of the mighty.
I asked if there was a photo of a Landcruiser in the Saudi desert at night and slapped a text that went - we had nothing to do with it, it was all because of you (the consumer) and went on profusely thanking Toyota Landcruiser owners for their loyalty, good taste, faith etc, etc.
To say that the ad took the kingdom by storm the next day was selling it short. The GMC campaign was simply not talked about while every Saudi was congratulating themselves for picking a Landcruiser. Maybe, in today's world this might be an "award-winning" ad. But who cares? The end clients loved it, felt pride in it, of course it does not hurt that the agency client (Toyota) approved it swiftly and was also incredibly pleased with it.
But this is what is happening these days - every other ad is thought of as an award-winning contestant rather than one aimed at the end client, who will buy, take pride, be faithful to the brand, and hopefully will propagate by word of mouth to people he/she knows or cares about. Because awards should not be the aim of an ad, or any ad campaign. Sure, if it does produce awards so much the better, but focusing solely on ads above the precedence of targeting the consumer is truly like putting the cart before the horse.
I said it again and will say it once more, every ad has three purposes no matter what brand it represents: to introduce a product, to entice the consumer to want it, and to tell the consumer that the product is available in the market.
Winning awards is not part of the initial plan.

It's raining again... Sadly

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly

So it's raining again. No, this was not the first all-cleansing autumn rain. But it is raining at the most inopportune moment. People are literally living on the streets. Sure - easy for me to say. I have a roof above my head and food on my table. I just gave some mattresses and wraps to a family that has been displaced twice - I said it before, even in the most generous act there is an element of selfishness (will I be rewarded by life, God, the afterlife, etc....). But honestly, at this point I am not even thinking that. I am truly thinking - I have a bed. I do. They don't.

A while back I saw by accident a friend from school. He wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer and everyone used to mock him, except me to be honest. It was him who remembered me and engaged in a conversation. In the previous month to our conversation, he had lost his sister, and his father. Comparatively, all I lost was all my money. It seemed ridiculous to tell him so. He obviously needed to tell someone about his losses. I felt sheepish talking to him, mostly because he actually remembered me, and wanted to talk to me after all these years (of course, maybe he also wanted to speak to those who bullied him as well, kind and primitive as he was, so I am not really bragging).

Did I make a big deal about losing all my money on this blog? I did. But now I look around me and see all these flattened houses and villages and images of people living on the streets. Literally. Of people sending messages for infant formulas. Diapers. Hygiene products. One is rendered speechless. And rain comes at the most inhospitable of times. To quote the Supertramp song on which the title of this post is based: "It's only time that heals the pain/And makes the sun come out again" but time is a luxury some people do not have as they sleep under the rain - I think of the photo of the little girl sleeping on cement in front of a mosque due to lack of a mattress. I also quote from a different song, this time by Roger Hodgson (the voice of Supertramp, ironically! when he branched out on his own): "Time is always on the run/we've only just begun"... And all seems fleeting.

But as I said, I have the luxury of a roof above my head and a bed to sleep on.

UNDP goes for anti-fake news

UNDP is trying to combat fake (or unauthenticated) news. In a ad on double screens on Instagram UNDP went "count to ten before sharing an unauthenticated news" and "count to ten before believing au unauthenticated news". Obviously, with Lebanon having so many channels, radios, media each trying to propagate its own version of events, some of them happened, some of them not, it is only fair for the UNDP to go with this ad especially that many people now get their news from social media, where clicks and likes and eyeballs reign much higher than confirmed news - so speed goes above all, and damn fact checking. For a small anecdote as to how different channels tell the same story here's one from the archives (here).

And so Hizbollah is alive (according to Iran that is)

Please note, I am not here to promote ideas, conspiracies, geopolitical theories or what not (by this I mean the one that is being paddled whereby Hassan Nasrallah and the Hizbollah leaders were sacrificial lambs in a major deal between US and Iran). All I am saying is, there is an ad that is doing the rounds straight from Iran that goes "Hizbollah is alive" with some beautiful Persian calligraphy and the photo of none other than (non-alive) former head of the Hizbollah. Interestingly, these were done, approved, hanged even before there was any confirmation about the fate of Nasrallah from a formal communique (which well, makes you wonder, when they knew what they knew). Whereas it does not show in the photo, they did use the Hizb yellow background (but the original image is a bit skewed). So here we are, the tale - apparently - goes on, with an understudy of the main actor.

Anyone who says they know what is going to happen is lying

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly (2018)

Another post with a long title. But again, I could not avoid it. I was talking offline to political scientist, a real one not one of those silly talking heads that pop up on TV and start guessing, and he said "no one knows what is happening, this will change from hour to hour" - already the seismic shock of the admission of the death of Hassan Nasrallah by Hizbollah has sent shockwaves on all fronts, not least of all internal. The repercussions of losing such a seasoned player is akin to when Rafic Hariri was assassinated in 2005, It was a puzzle whose parts were thrown in the air and now being recofigured, in a different shape, with a different picture, and same players minus one. But again, just like Hariri had a firm grip on the constituents of the state, same goes for Nasrallah.

And obviously, this begs the question - now what? Late writer John Le Carre once said "society is unconcerned with the aftermath of sensation." We are now on the front pages of newspapers, worldwide, but soon a different crisis will emerge and dethrone us. And if we are going to count on the Lebanese politicians, who have proven to care for no one but their own interests (though, truth be told, their longevity in the business might prove they are doing a good work taking care of themselves - except well, those who were assassinated) then we might be stuck in the same loop.

Because as it is half a million people have fled the south of the Lebanon occupying as many governmental schools as possible (schools which are not equipped to handle them), and - whereas a lot of people are doing splendid work on the ground distributing mattresses and food for them, already the Lebanese society is stretched to the extreme between the financial, political, and economic crash it has been facing since 2019 - not to mention the influx of Syrians who fled their own country for obvious reasons. And now we are at the gates of winter, and people's goodwill shall soon dry up.

Which brings us back to: Anyone who says they know what is going to happen is lying.

Shopping (but make it with a conscience)

In her brilliant book "Beirut fragments" author Jean Said Makdisi wrote about an anecdote whereby she saw her friend, in Hamra, all coiffed. The friend told her about her hairdresser who bought a generator and provided electricity to his shop and women were all getting their hair done. All bang in the middle of war-torn Beirut during the 1982 invasion (where no shred of electricity was present). But Beirut has always been the epitome of contradictions. Airstrikes you say? Yes, waiter please bring me some... And here we are, both PopUp Concepts and Pearl Brands (which among others sell Ralph Lauren) are donating 10% of their sales to displaced people. I mean, a Vetements uber expensive t-shirt at 70% off (only size XS and M available mind you) would be a wonderful addition to your wardrobe, and, it would provide blankets, mattresses, or whatever displaced people need. Let's call it shopping with a conscience. Or retail therapy, because if anything the Lebanese need, it would be therapy indeed.

Happy should learn how to read the room

So people are not happy and for a reason. Happy, the discount supermarket, with a logo that has a smile built-in decided to invert the smile on an ad hooked onto one of its branches with the following line being inserted into a reel "hard days will be over, and the smile will come back". Remember that famous ad by Johnnie Walker? The one that was done in 2006 with the motto "keep walking" but the emblem walking following a broken bridge? (here) One was a masterpiece, the other a flop. The difference is timing. Johnnie Walker did their after the fait accompli, while Happy seem to be gaining from the tragedy as it happens live in an opportunistic way. Happy should really, really learn how to read the room... As people were having none of it.

Pain d'Or goes back to school (sort of)

Well, back to school is no longer back to school. Considering the gravity of the current situation schools - those that opened anyhow - have switched to online learning so did universities. But hey, we are at a stage where any ad is worth talking about considering how far and few in between they are. Is the ad above earth-shattering? No not really. Believable? With a school bag labelled "pain au zaatar" (thyme bread), also not really. Is the gimmick in the copy interesting? Pack to school might as well pack it. And yet, when there are barely any ads this one sticks like a sore thumb. But suddenly all sore thumbs seem welcome.

Dear ad agency, now that you saved democracy, can you bring peace to Lebanon?

La colombe de la paix - Pablo Picasso

I know this is a long post name but could not stop myself.

A certain local ad agency, no names but anyone versed in the advertising scene knows who it is, has - in a case sent to ad festivals on behalf of its client (a prominent local newspaper, again, no names, but come on the hints are too heavy!) - that, by doing a certain activation (which was also very questionable, as it was done prior by other newspapers including one in Turkey), they "saved democracy in Lebanon".

Sure, ads presented to festivals and awards can include boastful claims, like that agency that claimed that its activation for the client (different activation than the one cited above, same client, same agency though) increased female participation as candidates by 600% in Lebanese elections, etc, etc... I sometimes read the cases on Epica Awards where I am a juror since 2016 and have a laugh about the bragging.

But of course, claiming to save democracy goes on a higher level. Who came up with it remains a mystery but this became a benchmark in what not to do in terms of strutting your stuff. Interestingly, every once in a while this comes up on sites like Linkedin - and we all have a hoot about it - so much it sets precedent to how far you can go believing what you have done and communicating it to the world thinking they are gullible to your words.

Which of course brings me to today. Dear ad agency, now that you saved democracy, can you bring peace to Lebanon? I mean all you have to do is just an activation to your client, that's not too much to ask, is it?

Cross-eyed god (praying to the)

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly

(Originally written in 2010)

Sometimes I feel like a childless mother, a long way from home, hiding into the church of the saint that does no miracles, praying for the cross-eyed god who’s not even worthy of a capital g,

The all seeing, see no evil, the omnipresent, hear no evil, the omnipotent, do no evil: Not doing is an act in itself. Laissez-faire in the name of the cowardice – look at me when I speak to you.

Avoidant personality and no decision is a decision in itself, just file everything under “natural disaster” or “le mal terrestre” – something that never contradicts your kindness, your infinite kindness – damn it, I said look at me when I speak to you.

No words could do you justice, just like the justice you have never done yourself. But who cares? A big PR firm to make your image glossy – repeated message, repeated dogma, repent all you sinners. Now repeat after me the story so far.

The HORRORscopes of being in Lebanon

And so here we are.

Here we are. My friend said yesterday "chidd 7alak" (get a grip). The problem is that the war trauma went back to the surface with a vengeance. You can run from the war, but war catches you back. You can pretend normalcy as most of us do but the wound is still there. Some of us, nay, most of us, have no luxury to break down - we have responsibilities and lives to live and moral acts vis a vis people dependent on us. Of course, all this comes on the heels of the financial, political and economic breakdown since 2019, with covid on top, and all other factors compounding what is going on.

And still, we protect ourselves in the mundane, in the day to day, in the morning coffee, and in the cooking, and in the back-to-school related activities, and in the browsing, heck, in the shopping even (second hand, over the net, thrifting, no matter retail therapy can be a band-aid), in checking our daily horoscope, or whatever we do to pretend that our day is going to be cheerful - when obviously, already it is not.

A friend in Germany is displeased and having "mental issues" - I told him it was a good thing there was geographical distance between us, because honestly I was this close to hitting him. The Bavarian government provides him with anything he needs, including a house, a once-a-week maid, stipend, counsellors to help him and what not. Seriously, the luxury some people have is truly unbeknown to them.

Sure, I am neither in the southern suburb of Beirut, or the south or any "hot points", but simply living in Lebanon at this point drives you to the abyss of exhaustion. If you have an ounce of conscience or empathy that is. Which, believe it or not, many people do not have - case in point a lot of people are rooting for Israel among the Lebanese.

I remember so long ago Sawt Loubnan would blast Maguy Farah's daily "hazzak el yawm" (your luck today) and its catchy jingle. So, where is astrologer Maguy Farah when you need her?

The Private revolution by Sanita

Well, considering I am not the target audience of these ads I am not sure my words count (in the words of Rachel Green in the sitcom Friends "no uterus, no opinion"). Still, apparently these two films did make a splash online (you can watch them here and here). Obviously Sanita (the maker of Private) goes directly to the main idea - how soft, flexible, innovative, comfortable, and protective Private (or rather the new Private) is). It shows it by using cotton, feathers, tulle fabric and ballerinas. In the second film it shows a cocoon that becomes a butterfly and then cut to the ballerina doing a pointe. All colors are pseudo-blurry very feminine (duh!) quite cosy and dreamy (do note, Private is a brand of sanitary pads so periods for women can be difficult, tiring, hard, and very painful so the suggestiveness of Private is done on purpose).

As I said, I am not targeted by the ads but from what I understood it's that women online and social apps were actually chatting about them. Also there is a hashtage #the_private_revolution to go with the new iteration of the product. 

Joe Lux vs Johnnie Walker: Compare and contrast

I am not saying they did, I am not saying they didn't but I had to do a full second look to believe my eyes. Well, ironically, Joe Lux is a hand-made shoe manufacturer who makes you a... walker?

Lay's - the ad that backfires

Strange, I had to see the ad too many times to make sure of my reaction and the more I saw it the more I thought the same: I am repulsed and not having a Lay's potato chips any time soon. I mean it is not the fault of the director but somehow something literally got lost in translation. I think on paper this made sense: a small packet of Lay's is replaced by a bigger one. But everything from the casting, to - why use the English in a GCC ad? - to the whole episodes (which are not real slices of life), to the whole "gimmicky" effect, to that 80s slapstick effect (without the 80s nostalgia to go along) just is... annoying beyond measure. Sorry am being too harsh but as I said, this ad backfires: I just don't feel like having a Lay's right now. Which sadly, is the reverse of everything advertising related I presume. And please don't let me start on that corny copy at the end (I thought these were done with in the early aughts!). See the film here.