Monday, August 11, 2025

Lux, or rather LuxLux - twice the woman

When the moisturization is twice, what do you do? Your confidence, strength, and wisdom doubles, the two sides of you collide and amplify. People, this is very good, exceptionally good. Why? Because Lana Medawar, Cynthia Karam, and Mira Hasbini ended up, not interviewing each other, but... Themselves! Because - tadam - they are twice the woman they are with Lux. Pimo does it again, well, am I biased? Like hell I am, when they keep churning hit after hit. Again, some of you might be upset, go solve your problems elsewhere, for Lux, Pimo has been doing a great job. For Omo too by the way. For this time, schizophrenia has never looked so lovely.

Sunday, August 10, 2025

Yes, the Spinneys "Missing" campaign was an unforced error.

I know I am late on this one relatively, as it was done before the opening of the new Spinneys in Ajaltoun. But here's the issue, all this "missing" campaign by Spinneys was actually done very close to the 5th anniversary of the August 4th explosion where more than 218 people lost their lives and which engendered a large destruction on 2/3 of Beirut. Worse, one of the people portrayed in the campaign lost a close relative in that explosion. Of course, all this is "circumstantial evidence" but between this and that fishy ad before (here) that makes it too many unforced errors.

However, if advertising taught us anything is that, for those who shop at Spinneys, this does not move the needle either way. Also note, the figure of 17,000 missing people during the 1975-1990 war is also incorrect, the figure was literally "invented" in a report to force politicians to take the issue seriously. This does not negate that there are thousands of people whose whereabouts are unknown, but the above figure, I maintain, is incorrect.

Friday, August 8, 2025

Almaza - a good ad that fits no strategy

Photo credit - Mohamad Haidar

After the atrocity that their summer campaign was (here) almaza had a very decent follow up for their light version which is an excellent copy that is the equivalent of "I don't want to impose" except in Arabic it goes "don't want to spread my weight" which obviously a nice gimmick on their lack of calories and all. Is the ad good? Yes. Does it announce a turn for newer and better ads? No. Why is that so? Because every is done without a backbone of a strategy. It is just a mix and match or rather mix and mismatch. Almaza used to be - back when they were with Intermarkets - very clear in their tone of voice, visuals and messaging. Interestingly the same creative who was back with Intermarkets is now doing the new ads, yet somehow, the spark seems to be gone. It is very hit and miss. More miss than hit to be honest.

Thursday, August 7, 2025

Burger King and its stacker

This has been the summer of deals, almost everywhere, and from the whole F&B sector. So let Burger King join the fray with its "stacker" - which basically means more meat per burger. Double the meat apparently. Well, as I said, everyone is releasing their own thing prior to back to school hitting back very soon now. Also interesting Burger King is playing a bit catch up, now that its competitor launched several campaigns back to back. Not being too much into fast food, am sure those who are get to pay more attention than me.

Wednesday, August 6, 2025

LIU - show and tell

How do you depict a multi-confessional university? How do you say you have campuses in regions predominantly so and so (meaning both sides of the religious aisle). Well, you just show it, with camera ready students who are easy on the eyes - one of the just just happens to be veiled, the other not, the third can pass off as of any denomination. And yes, LIU with campuses all over Lebanon has also managed to snag some very good faculty and staff so they have something to show for (interestingly, there is also a "through website" as the ad suggest). So, I guess LIU just went with the most suggestive route to strut their stuff. In the end, parents could be drawn to cheaper tuitions though.

Monday, August 4, 2025

Ixsir, another wine, same summer

Along with Ksara (here), Chateau Musar (here), Ixsir is joining the wine summer fray - from what I have seen, a double ad. The first goes "revive every moment" the second "great wines are born to great heights", truth be told this is not a "campaign", how could it be? When there is no creative concept tying them - but then again probably this is asking too much from a summer campaign aimed to sell. Still, and again, not to spoil the Ixsir moment, I also found this ad in downtown Beirut.

The ad is for Go Cola, the line? Revibe the moment. Once more the occurrence of both at the same time is a bit funny. Ixsir went revive and Go Cola went revibe. Oh well, you know the line "great minds think alike" but do you know the other half? "fools sledom differ".

Sunday, August 3, 2025

Dubizzle-OLX-Dubizzle-OLX again.

So some people enjoy playing yes-no-maybe with their name. Introducing Dubizzle which became OLX which became Dubizzle which became OLX. I mean this is more confusing than gender pronouns. I already talked about it here, and compared it to Victor/Victoria with the delightful Julie Andrews quipping - "So, I'm a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman." Considering the case above, you an add "pretending to be a man". So enough of the confusion and name-switching and I honestly do not care if 11 influencers were involved and a 100 thousand votes cast, and that 87% chose OLX because honestly there is so many times you can play with your name switch before it becomes tedious, boring, repetitive, and - incredibly bad for the branding and naming itself. Now, can we please settle on one name without the whole song and dance? Thank you.

Chateau Musar reeks of summer

Now that is an ad that makes sense. Summer. But make it with ice cubes straight from the freezer. You can almost taste the chilled wine - and when you say chilled wine, you imagine loved ones around a table on a boozy lunch that extends to the evening. And yes, this does conjures this image. Also as a back up a beach scene could be inserted - but I can't swim so let's go for boozy lunches. Now, to be clear, I am not accusing Chateau Musar of anything... but, me being me, I immediately remembered this 80s ad from Adidas...



Saturday, August 2, 2025

Army Day - 80 years in dignity

As someone who has, for several years, produced the Army Day (August 1rst) ad, I can assure you, it is difficult to come with different executions when the implementation and the brief is so narrow. This year, with the armed forces celebrating their 80th, their ad seems classic. A flag, on a blue sky background. I remember the years where everyone and anyone was putting camouflage on their products in their ads to for Army Day producing a horrible panoply of visual atrocities. Thankfully, these days are gone. And as someone who has done his military service as an officer, the ad sends a small frisson in me. "For you, we are ready for anything" says the line. Again, sometimes going back to basics yields the best results.

Tannour el 3asr, cheesy ad that does not sell cheese

Interesting, a bread campaign on too many billboards. Introducing, Tannour el 3asr (for those of you who do not know tannour is a round open-air oven used to make bread and other such items, usually made of clay), a bread - according to the ad - easy to digest, colorant and sugar-free, and very rich in fibers - (do note, these attributes are not exaggerations, there is a strong scientific backing behind this). So far all well and dandy, until we get to the visual and the headline "Tannour el 3asr for the waist to shrink" (in Arabic it rhymes). The visual is obviously the bread with a shrinking waist. The cheesy part? All this. I mean seriously, as a diabetic (or as anyone who is health-conscious), such bread could be of interest to me so why didn't they keep it scientific and well-researched, but no - they had to dip it in a line and visual that make it silly. Pity.

Friday, August 1, 2025

Beirut Beer - strategy overflow.

Remember that corny Almaza ad (here) for the summer? Beirut Beer, for once did not seem to be answering them, but rather branching smartly on their own: A trilingual welcoming ad for all visitors and expats coming to Lebanon, dignified, smart, and quite friendly. Now, not to rain on their parade, but I personally would have modified all three ads to "we are pleased and honored to welcome you to" (because then Beirut would be both the brand and the city). And yes, it works in all three languages (this is the copywriter in me speaking).

Maliks goes Mandarin, no not the fruit

Another of those ads which are either too smart or not too smart. Malik's goes on with its "ma7loule" streak (ma7loule means "the answer is easy"). This one however, has a problem, not in the answer, but in the problem itself. It took so far 5 people to decode this, all of us armed with decades of working in advertising, to arrive to - nothing. No one could make head or tails of this. It was all Chinese to us. No wait, this is Chinese!

Dunk in - is this even legal and doable?

Well, it is a marketing fact - you rarely, if ever, resort to distorting your logo (some applications are permissible - lately Coca-Cola did it to indicate its cans can be crushed and recycled, ArabAd did it when Gibran Tueni and later Walid Azzi passed away with ArabSad, but examples are too far and in between). So this caught me aback, and again I stand corrected - Dunk In. Not Dunkin' (formerly known as Dunkin Donuts). So I am rather perplexed if this is even "legal" and doable. on the upside, we all know the brand. On the downside, the logo is distorted. Interestingly, the original logo is nowhere to be found.

Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Halabi goes nuts - and not very smart

File under "advertising is getting too smart for me" - because honestly, either this is too smart or me getting too dumb. So let's recap, "a mix-and-match whose worry is - beach and mountain" for beach you get a bodybuilder (good to know someone has a bigger nose than me) and for the mountain you get a hiker (good to know there is someone thinner than me). All of this with obviously a background of beach and mountain. Seriously, all of this is so first degree, not single-minded, and honestly goes in 19 directions at once. People, please.

Monday, July 28, 2025

Unpopular opinion - the late Ziad Rahbani was not a good fit for Almaza

All right, the cat is out of the bag. The late Ziad Rahbani has graced us with two ads - Almaza and Bankers Insurance. That he was a natural born copywriter is not even a question, and - judging by the amount of people seeing any of his television appearances - the man could be extremely present, has brilliant zingers, and incredible comebacks. The problem? You cannot bring an alcoholic to a beer ad.

And yes, the man himself admitted on television, that his liver processes alcohol like water, which is why he was able to consume gigantic quantities - once more, I have an OCD memory, and I can quote snippets of discussions I have seen on television. So when the man himself admits he is an alcoholic... how is he a spokesperson for a beer brand.

Please note, one's genius with words - and being someone who appreciates his songs' texts - does not negate the other. And if this is an unpopular opinion so be it. One should not speak bad of the dead. All right, Bette Davis being an exception - her own lyrical genius deserves it (When Joan Crawford died, Bette Davis famously quipped, "You should never say bad things about the dead, only good. Joan Crawford is dead. Good.")

Long live the legacy of Ziad Rahbani. The man who was larger than life, but sadly, smaller than death. But I stand by every word in this post.

Khoury Home nails its copy

Well, one has to give it out to Khoury Home - the copy is simply very good. First the admission "mich wa2to" - slang for "this is not the time" (you know with Lebanese being besieged with so many expenses and bills it is only normal for them to feel financially overwhelmed especially that most have lost their livelihoods and stashed money to the banks but also the official Black Friday which is after thanksgiving is way off - for info about Lebanese and Black Friday visit here) then the redeemer part "bas bi wa2to" which translated to "but it is right on time" (again with prices so low how much can you delay a new stove or fridge or a piece of electronics). Hats off indeed, one needs to know the market perfectly well to come up with this!

Saturday, July 26, 2025

Ziad Rahbani - RIP

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly, part of the project "national identity via pop culture"

 Are there words enough? Ziad Rahbani RIP.

Friday, July 25, 2025

The seven veils of Dany Bustros #flashback

The image is part of a personal memento the late Dany Bustros gave to me in 1995

This article was originally printed at the end of 1998 in Campus magazine:

It still strikes me that, after three years of its publication, people still remember the interview I did with Dany Bustros. Recently, an AUB student asked me if I ever saw her again, which was somehow peculiar because I had the intention of doing another interview with her.

I now have difficulty recalling the general looks of some of the most prominent figures I have interviewed but that I can still remember what Dany Bustros was wearing during the interview. Leopard printed tights and a black stretch body.

Boy George, famous cross dresser of the eighties and lead singer of pop band culture club, wrote: “Jimi Hendrix was more than a guitar solo, Ziggy was more than his stardust, Prince is more than a pair of Cuban heels. Boy George is more than his eyebrows”.

And Dany Boutsros was more than her dancing outfits.

Few people know that Bustros is a graduate of the fine arts academy in Lebanon, and that she was so good she was accepted directly as a second year student. When I asked her three years back about her painting career, she confessed that it had been a while since she did anything serious.

Bustros also took courses at the Actors’ studio, that’s where people like Robert de Niro graduated from. As a matter of fact, she was once called by Alain Delon’s agent and was offered a role in one of his movies. The movie never became a reality through. At the time when asked about why she used acting during her dance routines, through slight eye or mouth movements, Bustros said that “dance is expressive in itself, the hands, waist, eyes and mouth all merge to transmit it”.

Officially, her professional career began at the 1987 Jarash festival in front of fourteen thousand people. However, the first time she danced for money was when she was away on a trip and ended up broke so she danced at the club of the hotel she was staying at to finance the rest of her staying.

Bustros redefined oriental dancing and single handedly helped give a new identity to the women who practiced it by changing the title of her profession from vulgarly known “rakkassa” (common dancer) to “rakissa” (The dancer) and forging herself a graceful image in the sensual world of oriental dancing, also known as “belly dancing”. Very few dancers could perform the traditional Egyptian Saiidi dance dressed in a abaya from head to toe yet at the same time highlighting every inch of her svelte body.

Her charm appealed, not only to young men like myself who saw in her the mature and educated woman she was, but also to older people. The Monday that followed the interview, which took place over the weekend, my sixty year old teacher called upon me and said: “Ya walad, I heard you spent some quality time this weekend”. Then, showing him the authographed photograph she gave me, he repeated whet she had written: “To Tarek: All the best in God”. And then added, “A truly remarkable woman”.

It all seems too easy. But it wasn’t.

The Bustros family is one of the most aristocratic families of Beirut. It is one of the “seven families” who constituted the Beiruti high class, and who traditionally owned the keys to the doors of Beirut, when the wall around the city still stood. Bustros was given the classic education a girl of her background should have, an education that clearly set her apart from all other artists on the Lebanese scene. One of Bustros’s hobbies was to collect miniature liquor bottles.

But Bustros did not settle for this. She was inhabited by the rhythm, but it was a taboo to show it since oriental dancing was not to women of her standing. There are reports of suicide attempts as early as when she was sixteen. Poor little rich girl!

With her ever defiant attitude she married without the approval of her family to start a journey filled with highs and lows. Reportedly, and according to someone who chose anonymity, it was at this point that her relationship with the family took an irreconcilable differences turn. Bustros rarely talks of that marriage, especially that it was followed by a divorce, and briefly told me that her marriage was a  “youth mistake as a result of defiance and recklessness”.

As a result of the marriage, Bustros had a son; George. Five years back, when she had a show at a summer resort in north Lebanon, George - then eleven years old - died as a result of underwater suffocation. Bustros was devastated. At the time of our interview, when I brought the subject of her son, it was a serene and pragmatic woman who answered that she knew why God had taken George, it was because he was suffering from living a dual life with his divorced parents and that he was torn between the love of both of them that ‘s why God chose to relief him. She also announced in a television show that she felt the spirit of her son next to her up until the fortieth day after his death when it left the to heaven.

Only a deep believer could come up with such a conclusion. Bustros, known to be a mystical person, was according to her “not only a deist, but a Christian”. God, still according to her, was a friend  to whom she explains what she does. Bustros spent several extended stayings in convents and during one time wanted to be a nun. “I abide by the ten commandments” she told me.

But she confessed to me that once, and only once, she lost faith in the existence of God, it was the day after George’s death. Repeatedly, Bustros criticized Madonna’s (The western Madonna’s that is) attitude towards the church and the sexual gestures she performs over the cross and called upon her “to repent”.

Suicide, according to Christian beliefs, is considered a sin. Never the less, Bustros attempted suicide several times after the death of her son. A priest in the Greek Orthodox church, of which the Bustros family is part of, said that “up until recently, people who committed suicide were denied Christian burials and that the cross was forbidden to decorate their coffins. But a decision was taken, that minimal services should be given since it was up to God, not Humans, to judge”. Burial ceremonies took place on the 28th of December 1998 without the archbishop's attendance since the cause of death was suicide.

The cause of death was attributed to a financial jam Bustros was going through. Bustros was living off her “own earnings, not the De Bustros fortune” as she had explained to me. Recently, business was slow and Bustros made serious investments in her own piano bar “Le Dany”. Reportedly, what drove her over the edge was low reservations for her new year’s eve show she was supposed to throw with singer George Karam in the Al Sabil restaurant at the Regency Palace Hotel complex.

On the morning of Monday the 28 of December 1998, newspapers came out after two days of absence, one of them being Sunday and the other the Christmas holiday, bearing along with the news of the death of Bustros, an advertisement for the said new year show. Annahar newspaper featured the advertisement keeping the photograph of Bustros with Karam but deleting her name by an obvious printing utility cut. Other newspapers kept the advertisement as is.

Contact with the management of Al Sabil confirmed the forced change of program. Karam will still be singing but dancer Jihane Al Masri will replace Bustros.

The Show must go on. Without Bustros on board.       


Thursday, July 24, 2025

Haagen Dazs: An ugly ad which fulfills its function wonderfully.

Is it ugly? Yes. Very ugly? Also yes. Do I want 2 Hagen Dazs for 3 USD? Please yes.

As I said, this is a strange one - the ad is very meh in terms of design. Basic. More basic that the fast food restaurant ads. But it works like a charm. You can already taste the chocolate coating (with apparently almonds inside) breaking into your mouth to reveal the rich ice cream - with enough consistency but also lovely to crunch (yes, I do not lick ice cream I crunch it). Great, now I really want 2 Haagen Hazs - forget the price - just 2 Haagen Dazs!

Wednesday, July 23, 2025

La Maison, make way for a visually beautiful ad

Sometimes you look at an ad, and it breathes sunshine, fare niente, and all that "le temps devant soi", it just translates lingering summer days, and that louche feeling of a calm gathering among family and friends. Actually, there is a second ad for "La Maison" (that would be the home decoration department of Khoury Home) which features a lot of models doing precisely that, but the beauty of this one? It suggests rather than shows. You can immediately fill it with loved ones, and long summer lunches. Or just some time alone without the fracas. "Make room for serenity" indeed.