Remember the previous back to school campaign from Beirut Beer? (here). Beirut Beer is back for more this year, even if a redux of the previous one would have been more advisable. Same two bottles celebrating "school bus is here!". As with the previous campaign, and considering how hard the summer vacation is to coordinate for kids, parents are only relieved that finally kids are back in school. Worth celebrating for sure (even if, for many, this was a little bit of a head-scratcher).
Well, you know when you see people with Chinese tattoos? Likelihood is that they don't even know how to read the letters. Yet, there they are, prominent on their neck, or their forehand, or biceps, supposedly saying "peace" or "heaven" or whatever else platitude they were sold. So now at least you need to trust ANB for what they wrote in their ad. Does it say Japanese craftsmanship? According to AI decoding it does. So now you have it in Japanese and in English. Do I need to read it in both? That is the million Yen question. Well, considering 1 million Yen is USD 6,263 maybe I should have aimed higher.
So Kettaneh Mobility is introducing 212 to the Lebanese market. It is trying to emphasize the brand’s bold identity, military heritage, and adventurous spirit to life with the help of Createagency. So far so good. So the best was to do it is obviously to see the car via urban setting, in cities or cruising through the highway, and also obviously through Lebanon's rugged mountains, surrounded by wolves at night, bypassing fallen trees. That the whole thing was done in AI is baffling to me. If you are going to prove all this, why fake it? It could have been whatever small car in this case. Well, at least in the old days, beauty shots were, well, believable. Now I see this film bragging that it is not, while trying to prove what the car can do, supposedly, in real life. See the film here.
I admit, it took me a full day as to why the Open University ad seemed familiar. A young man and a young woman, with perfect teeth and smile, looking upwards for a glorious future. Wait, I had seen that before, countless times in propaganda posters! First the backstory, in 1938 Maurice Thorez then head of the French communist party uses the sentence "les lendemains qui chantent" - the singing days after - where a bright future awaits the working class. And here we are, just look at the picture in the ad (fine 100% equivalence etc...) but if you look at the photo used this IS propaganda.
Neo from Bank Audi, BO2 from Byblos Bank, DIGI by Bank of Beirut, Wink Pay by Credit Libanais. And now leap by SGBL. Sounds familiar? Sounds like someone trying to get in from the window when they slammed the door shut in your face? Banks who defrauded you are now with a vengeance on the "digital bank" front. Well, sure, with the accounts capped at not-so-high figures and the withdrawal much less than the one in the traditional bank, and with them not truly advertising who the mother bank is, I understand the appeal. Mind you, the original money is still stuck in our traditional accounts. To be honest though "leap into moments" is lame. Very.
Am still trying to figure this one out. Is it about sunset? No. Is it about the end of summer? No. Is it about specific or social moments? Also no. What it's about is filling one's glass with a cheers "to hope". Let me be honest, I am not exactly an optimist by nature, but honestly just counting what the Lebanese population has went through since 2019, in itself, makes being optimistic a delusional affair. So honestly, I have no idea what hope they are cheering to. Or why would this resonate with stressed out parents trying to see how to pay their back to school fees. Or how it would entice a whole population still drowning from the accounts stuck in the bank, six years down the line. If in vino veritas, now we are in the presence of in vino delusio.
Well, what's with everything going digital, it is no wonder Samsung is advertising its tablet for the back to school and it comes with a free backpack. I mean at 139 USD the backpack is hopefully worth it. But again, it seems digital items are now part of the back to school items that students should pack with them. Interestingly, Sweden one of the pioneers of digital transformations at school, is now going back to pen and paper, because you guessed it, it turns out that having the answer without knowing how one got to it destroys your analytical thinking.
Well, whomever thought, executed, approved and otherwise bought ad space for this one deserves to be the "before" image in this silly, sexist, not-very-smart, even-less-respectful ad. So "your wife is bothering you/being naughty? Bring her to Dr. Tarek Mersal" - the before image, dishelved, bad teeth, bags under the eyes. The after, you guessed it. Sexism? Sure. Incitation to domestic aggression? Of course yes. Brand awareness in all the wrong reasons? Duh. What is sad is that no one, as in no one, even bothered to understand how damaging and morally corrupt this ad is.
Promarché - now in back to school mode. Actually this is too subtle - pack to school. Sure the apple as earth globe and the pain de pie as cover of the backpack gives it away a bit more, but the smartness is there. Perhaps it is a case of blink and you'll miss it, but I love how this turns out to be. Well in the end the message is clear, creative and hopefully easily readable on the highway as cars speed by.
Another teaser-revealer, this time the culprit is Xtra, the juice brand which has been missing from the airwaves for a long while (speaking of airwaves it seems the jingle is great on the radio, but did not hear it myself). Now I tried to long in to social media but seriously, Xtra is almost non-existent (their intsagram account is actually new! here). In other words the ad, the jingle, nothing is out there apart from billboards.
So to go back to the ad, they go with the popular expression (to be honest not so popular these days!) "tibrid tibrid tibrid ta3" (tibrid is short for... ta3 bawred - come and refresh yourself and ta3 means "come"). So the revealer is the continuation of the expression "ta3 bawred, ta3 bawred, ta3 bawred, ta3".
So here we are - Xtra is a bit late in the game and trying to catch up. How this will translate on the ground is a different story though. Interestingly, Xtra is lower price that higher end brands like Maccaw or Libbys so perhaps it is a fighter brand and with all Lebanese trying to save a buck it might resonate with them.
Well, just to be clear, the math is wrong. The geography too. But I guess this was the point. Even if, sadly, as you pass by in your car while trying to calm the kids, answer whatsapp, bicker with your spouse, or speed to get your home (maybe all at the same time). To be clear anything to the power 0 is 1, and there are 6 continents. But, with the dwindling knowledge these days, with kids hooked to their phone/ipad and parents having forgotten their math and geography, maybe these "alternative facts" won't register at all. On the bright side, no more riddles from Maliks!
Honestly, everyone wants to ride the same wave at the same time, and it is ridiculous and stupid. Flick through instagram and you get - at least - 7 different businesses doing the same "so and so, you didn't pay for your order" (followed with "we tried to contact you personally to resolve the matter but you left us no choice"). Then inside the post you have 7-8 slides of the business' best selling articles (food etc)... with an end slide that goes "so and so didn't exist, we tricked you".
Now, when you know, that this is how the "ad" works, you stop clicking on it because it is the umpteenth same formula. You know the proverb "he cheated it on me once, shame on him, he cheated on me twice, shame on me". Well, thankfully I am part of the shame on him breed.
This is ridiculous people. Just stop riding idiotic tends.
Could Toters have cracked the Fairouz pun without looking cheap, overdone and chi chi. By God they have! All right first the original reference "habaitak bil sayf, habaitak bil chiti" (I loved you in the summer, I love you in winter) which became "had baitak bil sayf, had baytak bil chiti" (near your house in the summer, near your house in winter), just read how phonetically close these two sentences are. Incredible! But as they say in France "il fallait y penser" (one should have simply thought of it). And the fact that no one caught this before 2026 is a miracle onto itself.
Al Wadi Al Akhdar is launching an initiative whereby "Lebanon is with you, on every can". And what it says it is, it does. For each of their products, they dipped (sorry for the bad pun) the can with a certain known Lebanese area. Apparently there are 8 collectable variants, the kind of boxes nostalgia resellers will keep as is to exhibit them years down the line among their paraphernalia. So, without further ado, and in no particular order: Baalbeck, Beirut, Beiteddine, Byblos, Cedars, Douma, Sidon, and Tripoli (OK, fine I placed them in alphabetical order). Well, I believe these are paper prints on the cans as opposed to them being printed on the cans direct (much more cost-effective). So as I said, this is indeed the kind of marketing gimmicks that would push people to collect and resell, but ordinary folks will just go for the price factor.
You know how I always harp about advertising that used to be smart without being too contrived, convoluted or pseudo-creative? Take this for an example. The date is unknown and I got it from this source (here). My guess the ad was in the 80s because already in the 90s Juicy Burger had a branch in Kaslik, and even more so, in the early 90s Juicy Burger was shutting down its branches. But that's just estimation. Still, isn't that ad brilliant? Two consecutive panels, one attached burger, a very easy to follow and understand concept, and a lot of freshness in the vibe.
All this crammed in a very tight space, with a lot of creativity and a minimum mental effort for the end target audience to understand. Now, can I have some Raymis ice cream? Because, if you know, you know.
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| Artwork by Tarek Chemaly |
Yesterday, it was pointed out to me that someone else's work has a whiff of my own in their writing. To be very clear, from one angle, I am very proud of that because this is a former student, but also it bothers me as it would be taking credit of something I did not do (considering a lot of people took credit of my work, I know how it feels). But, as Nietzsche said "One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil", I find it sad that after all the pushing, the huffing, the puffing, to make the students excel, they go into a market where the bar is getting lower and lower.
Clients are uneducated, agencies are run but not-exactly-bright stuffed suits, marketing departments barely understand the word, briefs keep changing, words such as "AI can do it better" are thrown around, insults and pressure leading to burnout are rampant. It is not like I am inventing gunpowder here, but you know what I am pointing out.
I have a famous saying to my former students "the day you become better than me, I retire". Make no mistake, I am truly proud of my students, all of them, no matter what their choices were. I once had a brilliant student, I saw her later at a mall with two small kids in tow, she looks at me and say "I've done a mistake" pointing to her kids. And I answered with, "yes, you should have been at a shitty agency under an ignorant creative director instead of having two charming kids".
But still, in today's advertising and marketing scenes, I can see what the students were and what they are now. A pale imitation of the brilliant concepts I have pushed them to do. When I was still teaching, one reproach other faculty members would throw at me would be "it's your work, not theirs" (and I have seen a teacher do the work for students on their PC, give it back to them and grade them subsequently). Actually, no, it was never my work, it was the relentless drive to push the students so hard (or what I not very charmingly call "beat them to the pulp" - figuratively, thankfully) so that they "spit it out".
I remember one student who once said "my sister works at (insert prestigious agency) and she loved the lines you rejected last time" to which I replied "but you came up with better ones, right?" and she goes "but according to their standards even the ones rejected were great", I sighed and said "well, not my fault my standards are higher than their agency's!".
And at the end of every course, I always ask "was it your work or mine?" the anonymous answer would be "our work", and then I ask again "did you know you had it in you?", and once more the ubiquitous reply is "no". I simply know the students had it in them. I simply know that the red-haired girl everyone pitied me when I said she was in my class was simply neglected not uncreative. The proof is that she got 95 on one of her assignments (part of the very rare 95 I have given in all my teaching career), how the class erupted after that was honestly something one cannot put in words.
I want my students to surpass me. I do. But the more I look at today's output, even if some of it is here and there brilliant, and I make every effort to highlight it, I still know, know, that the initial potential was bigger and of higher caliber than what is dumbed out.
The reason I know? I was there to push them to the abyss, and I threw them over the edge, they discovered they had wings and could fly.
Sagesse University is positioning itself as a hub for leadership, and why not? At least they are picking a distinct lane to fight in. Interestingly "Universite la Sagesse" was - for a very long time - only centered on law. Until obviously they expanded to other degrees as well. The university was founded by the Maronite Archdiocese of Beirut, and has been around for - according to the ad 150 years (if you look at the logo) or 151 years according to the website. And yes, as I said, there are several faculties at this point and with youth (and their parents) trying to pick a university (as we are in August) from a very crowded and uneven marketplace, Sagesse University is trying to seduce its audience.
Please welcome, the art of inserting any concept on any product and pretending it works (hint: it does not). OK first let's define "raha w biscuit" a light treat which is basically Turkish lokum inside two round biscuits, preferably Gandour 555. Raha also means comfort in Arabic. So for City furniture, "the "comfort/raha" is on us, the biscuit on you". How this has anything to do with houses, with furniture, with sofas, with chairs, is beyond me (unless you are counting dropping sugar or bits of biscuits on said furniture or what not). So on the whole... Nothing comfort-ing here, and nothing biscuit-y either.