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So Halloween came and went... And after any high comes the cleaning, and in this case taking off the costume, the make up, for some the prosthetics, basically - to quote Joe Fish and Unilever - you "need resuscitation" (with the help of Lux shower gel, Vaseline lotion, Sunsilk instant repair, Omo wonder wash, and Signal white now). So yes, events come and go, and people still need to wind down after all the artifice of Halloween, and as the Joe Fish put it, they do need to be resuscitated.
Let's be honest, as soon as you say instant coffee, the first brand that comes to mind is Nescafe. As a matter of fact, it became synonymous with the category at large. Even in its many variations, if one says 3 in 1 (coffee, creamer and sugar) again, the first brand that comes to mind is Nescafe (other brands - such as Tora Bika do exist (here) but again the name does not come to mind when thinking of 3 in 1). Which is a little puzzling to see Nescafe say "3 in 1 means Nescafe". Of course it does, "you need to calm down" as existential philosopher Taylor Swift once observed. Now, if they were saying "3 in 1 is Nescafe too" - they could have added the "too" and stopped with the confusion.
All this is intriguing for such a huge brand to remind everyone that it is top of mind in its category, when obviously, it is top of mind in its category. Then again am ultra diabetic, so perhaps the ad is not even destined for me (no sugar for this writer), so I "need to calm down" as well.
Brands or products which do not make it across different languages are a dime a dozen - Mazda Laputa? Mitsubishi Pajero? (try Spanish for both) Honda Fitta? (try Swedish/Danish/Norwegian) Bing? (try Chinese) and the list goes on endlessly. Sometimes one can be forgiven - Coca-Cola means "bite the wax tadpole" - so eventually the drink giant opted for Kě kǒu kě lè which means "delicious, enjoyable" or "happiness in the mouth". Close enough. So yes, sometimes names of companies or products do not exactly translate well in other languages, cultures.
Well, Kylie Jenner changed her son's name from "Wolf" at birth to "Aire" - which is supposed to be Hebrew for "lion of God", apparently it is not - but what it does mean is "male organ in Arabic slang". But that's Kylie Jenner, she is American, non-Arabic speaking, and well with cousins such as "Psalm" "Chicago" "Saint" - and that's just from half-sister Kim - she is forgiven for trying hard (pardon the pun) to get a name that sands out from the crowd.
Which brings us to Almarai. According to Wikipedia, "Almarai Company is a Saudi multinational dairy company listed on the Tadawul stock exchange. It specializes in food and beverage manufacturing, including distribution. The company's main offices are located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia." In other words, they speak Arabic, they are immersed in Arab culture, and they are distributed in Lebanon via major supermarkets.
Kind note, what Aire is to grown up men, haboor is the equivalent to small children.
Suffice to say they did not make enough research for sure, the comments on their social media are enough reflection of that (here). Basically, from the funny, to the witty, to the bewildered, everyone is trying their own version of the joke.
And seriously if Almarai claims to be as Arab as it is, maybe, just maybe they could have consulted different Arabic-speaking cultures before jumping on this. Kylie Jenner is not a reliable consultant in that case.
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Never mind the "success stories" you see on Linkedin, job hunting - especially in Lebanon - has become a nightmare, and that's not just in advertising, it's the whole she-bang. Clientage (wasta), favoritism, fake job ads (meaning jobs already prefilled), AI (correctly adopted or not does not matter), over-education, age/race/religion/sect issues, and the list goes on endlessly. Patrick Chemali (no relation) has drawn an excellent chart about doing business in Lebanon (here), basically it tells you what you need to know. But since the situation has truly gone backwards.
Even before the crisis, someone was offered a very financially unimpressive job offer to which he said "but I have a masters' degree" - unmoved the HR simply said "ma 7ada allak tekheda!" (no one told you to get it). Of course, one hears appalling stories: A girl working for 250 USD a month had her salary deducted because she asked for a day off to attend her grandmother's funeral. And stories like these abound, inside advertising agencies, and speak not of freelancing where there is none. The Gulf is full of people being let go in massive numbers, and all companies are squeezing their budget spending, relying on AI instead of actual people.
The other day on Linkedin someone wanted a logo, a selling line (even if the person in question labeled it "phrase"), all the deliverables (meaning card, envelopes, stationary), all for a (measly) 400 USD. The issue is that there are people ready to do all this for that price. Something which normally took agencies ages in gestation (I remember those 40 page-documents we used to send which detailed how logos would be used and adapted and how they would look on different backgrounds, the do's and dont's etc....). But there you go, 400 USD and Bob's your uncle.
A major hotel chain - with several hotels in the Gulf region - has let go of all of its regional marketing team keeping only the positions in France to manage everything from there. The former team, despite their extensive experience - and this is literally a full year ago - still did not find alternative positions or employment.
Someone told me yesterday that he knew people getting recruited in senior positions in the Gulf (in this case it was Dubai, UAE) for the same salary he started off with in 2003: 2300 USD. And the squeeze continues, and no, these are not imagined numbers or falsified tales.
This is what is happening, if you shield your face like an ostrich it does not mean this will alter the current reality.
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| Artwork by Tarek Chemaly |
Sigh. OK, let's start backwards, I joined Facebook so late to avoid reading people's corny posts. By late I mean very late. Also, I discovered a loop - only "friends of friends" can add me as a friend, so I added one friend and deleted him, so basically my profile is ghost and only serves to manage the official page of this blog there. X? I follow no one. Instagram - 26 people - but basically lost most of my audience when my account got hacked. Linkedin is a different story, I used to enjoy there. Now it is just a dump of all the facebook cast-offs.
I admit though, even if the amount of people I follow on Instagram was very restricted I used to love scrolling and just calm my mind from the different causes of stress in my life, which not only all Lebanese face, but also have some very specific to my life. It was an escape and a release. Bit by bit though, with everything becoming video and AI, the compulsion to numb my brain started becoming irritating. As I try to find the latest posts about retro toys, or the broadcast of the newest men's Prada show, I had to endure an enormous amount of senseless videos, erroneous information, a lot of interjected threads stories (mostly written by AI) and so on.
So all in all, whereas I was very sheltered - no Facebook friends, no people to follow on X, relatively few additions to my Instagram original feed, and - what otherwise was pleasurable posts on Linkedin... Now I am suffering from extreme social media fatigue what's with everything becoming clogged with extra unneeded information.
I own a very old iPhone 7SE (yes, I know i must change it but I keep delaying that), but it also has two screens one after the other - yesterday I moved Instagram to the other unseen page to avoid seeing the app and (absent-mindedly) check it. Also, I own a one-thousand plus book strong library of which about 600 were already read. I took some extra books. I may or may not read them but at least my OCD personality cannot notice Instagram and be triggered. As for Linkedin, sadly the people I love to read there get lost in the new algorithm offering me posts I never signed up for. I just checked as to how many people I unfollowed and the list is humongous but the new algorithm just keeps spewing posts from people I never signed up for.
There's too much lecturing, too much drawing conclusions - either on Instagram or Linkedin - from facts that never align. Sure like with anywhere, there is a very interesting amount of information, the problem is now finding it and sorting it when there is little time or patience for that.
I am truly suffering from information, or rather useless information, fatigue.
Someone offered my a copy of Ulysses by James Joyce a long time ago. I shall begin to read it in earnest "I will yes" (if you know you know).
Solet Tapis, right bang on time for when people put their carpets (here) is out with a new one. "Our carpets are such a story" - the line I need to admit does work, it is homely and inviting. For the illustration part - I had expected the carpets to be on the cover of books (makes more sense creatively) - Solet went somewhere else: The paparazzi shooting the carpet as it were a star. Sure, names such as Solet and Tapirama (here) are encrusted in the Lebanese collective memory, but make no mistake, this year - trying to explore if I change a carpet - I was met with a flurry of shops, offers and brands from all across the country selling (sadly) the same models and shapes. Which means that competition is fierce and - in today's Lebanon - people will go to the cheapest.
All right, everyone can go home. Barista just showed everyone how it is done. A msterpiece in design, culture thinking and basically encapsulating the city at large. Just insert the design of a classic coffee cup found in basically any household. Billiant. The best design seems like no design at all.
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| Linkedin - from my series "Tanaklogia" dated 2013 |
I have been in the communication scene long enough, and I have read the words "old advertising is dead" more often than is healthily possible. Anything from the prisma buildboards (remember those rotating ones which would accomodate, not one, not two but three ads at once?), to the electronic diplays which could accommodate even more than three, to the splintering of TV into many in one household, to advent of social media, and now the explosive ubiquitous presence of AI, and so on and so forth.
When my cousin who studied arts in the US came back to Lebanon sometime in the mid-80s, he took me for a ride and in one of those small villages in Mount Lebanon he looked at the banner above a small shop and simply said "that's advertising! Anything out of the ordinary is advertising!" - the beauty of it is that the banner was one of those that simply said so-and-so shop no more no less, but the street was otherwise barren from any other such sign, which made it very striking in the middle of that road.
Today everyone is going "if they can do it, why can't we?". Everyone who is anyone is trying to keep up with - to be honest I don't even know with what. Sure, sure, I ranted about client servicing in agencies dumbing down creative work out of fear of losing accounts, I have spoken about creatives not being creative because they've been outvoted too many times, about ignorant marketing department heads who have no clue what they are doing, about impolite clients thinking they own the agency just because they end up - very very bleatingly paying their bills. But this is different, there is a huge of sense of we-lost-the-plot-and-we-have-no-idea-what-we-are-doing.
Obviously, don't let me start with Linkedin where everyone is an award-winner and each member there posting silly AI slops and glorifying mundane happenings, and trying to exalt "lessons" from things that otherwise wouldn't register on the radar because "they are building personal brands".
What am I harping about here? I am just saying that eventually, advertising purposes have not changed. Any advertising no matter what the "brand" is does 3 things: 1) introduce the product 2) tell you the product is in the market 3) invite you to try the product. Still, even those simple, ubiquitous and very simple aims end up not being fulfilled.
I am all for creativity believe me. But what is bothering me is the fact that everyone is going for style over substance. I can barely recall any ad that stood out as of late. Has there been any? I am sure there has been, but they are more and more difficult to locate and remember. And throughout it all, the fatigue gets more and more intense.
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| Artwork by Tarek Chemaly, first released as cover of ArabAd in 2024 |
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| Artwork by Tarek Chemaly |
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| Artwork by Tarek Chemaly |
So the student manifestations are raging - and all the rage - in France. Note, I am not French, I don't have a Schengen visa, so all of this is foreign to me. Anyone who is anyone on the net seems to have an opinion though - anywhere from agreeing with the students to the usual "useful idiots" activated by someone else et je passe. Interestingly, what started off as a student movement has splintered to something else, with looting agents and many breaking into high end stores (one has to give them that they have taste - Hermes and Celine apparently - from what I understood not Dior though which either did not seduce the masses or that LVMH (parent company) had its own security for the shop). Still, all of this transports me back to Spinneys, which had a very elegant department store in Jnah, the place where the well-to-do Lebanese used to shop.
And with the beginning of the civil war, specifically January 1976 (war broke out officially in April 1975 though it was a long time coming), both the Verdun and the Jnah branches were looted. There is an urban legend, which I have read obliquely and heard from oral sources as well, that when the looters encountered cans of cat food, they still stole them and took them and ate them refusing to believe anyone in their right might would actually have food specifically destined to cats.
All of this is an old tale, but Lebanon is Lebanon, and make no mistake, if you peel off the instagram facade of people having fun and the same crowd going from newly-opened restaurant to newly-opened restaurant, Lebanon still has a very large chunk of have-nots. Watch out for those cat food cans.
All right sometimes it works, sometimes - rather most of the time - it does not. This one actually works, sure it is full of cliches, self-aggrandizing statements, stereotypes about the Lebanese, about the immigrants which apparently make it everywhere, yet for all its mushiness this one stands on its feet - it could be the combination of the bon-enfant atmosphere, or the auto-flattering copy which for all of its bravado seems not to take itself - too - seriously. Or, they = like that Indian man - were having on good manouche! See the ad here.
To be honest I have no direct experience in the area but I heard it outright that the location (apparently facing LAU Kraytem) is cursed. No business managed to get past the 2-year stretch. But this not the scope of this post. As soon as I saw it, I recognized that Marché has a whiff of copywriting genius. "Ready, set, Marché..." in case you didn't get it, it is a mix of English and French, instead of "Ready, Set, Go/Walk" it uses the shop's name "Marché" instead of the French "Marchez" (walk). So there's really something very exciting there.
Maliks said it without much evidence (here) but with Fiat the facts are solid. With Fiat (and sadly the non-photographed Jeep) we know exactly where the showroom is. You turn right and 50 meters on, and then bang. Funnily for a whole generation of Lebanese the Fiat showroom gave its name to a well-known overpass located in Beirut, Lebanon, near Corniche El-Nahr and Pierre Gemayel Avenue, right next to Souk el Ahad. Back then Fiat was under the Saad and Trad dealership. Well, now that the brand has migrated to Gargour Group, the address has changed. The bridge naming did not however even if Saad and Trad have now focused on Jaguar, Bentley and Lamborghini. Yes, that Jaguar.
Pity I could not shoot this at night. Well, here's the idea, at night the lights of the Xpeng GX Erev are actually lit! (OK, along with the price - 58,900 USD - but hey, an ad is done to sell). To be clear am not here to discuss the technical specs of the car, but the ad is indeed a novelty. A novelty that could not have happened on a billboard or unipole. I shall let the mechanics of it a mystery but again, something is indeed impressive with the idea. Sometimes you wonder how come no one thought of that before.
Well, like every Lebanese, I threw brand loyalty out the window. Yet, little by little, you start buying the "other" products because you've done your research. Within that category Puidor has been a classic, because after comparing prices and quantities (and yes, qualities), Puidor delivers a lot of product for your buck. So now Puidor is veering from the more usable Tomato Puree and Ketchup to emphasize on their sauces (Pizza sauce · Pasta sauce · Pesto sauce · Salsa dips · Tomato paste/ Tomato purée · Lebanese cooking sauce - Condiment sauces - salad dressings). Perhaps the fact that they are a Lebanese product (produced by Meptico) allows them to compete on price/quantity level (some other brands, famous and less famous are competing on the price level because Lebanese people - apart from the uppity crowd you see on instagram - are truly financially squeezed).
Mercedes-Benz has gone winter mode, and by that I mean changing tires. Now, the ad is pretty low-key offering 4 tires for the price of 3. An unusual move from a behemoth such as Mercedes. But desperate times call for desperate moves. So I guess even the high-end Mercedes customers need to be enticed to change their tires what's with the financial crisis hitting everyone left and right - yes, even at the upper echelon of society. In a smaller font though, the service is available at their Thoum Service Center and - in case you didn't know it - only valid for Mercedes-Benz vehicles.
Let's be honest, you are not going to register the offers of Happy supermarket but you are going to be submitted to the barrage of its different visuals on the highway convincing you that yes, there are "uff" offers with stimulating prices. Note that I never compared the prices to any other supermarket or shop. Back in June - Happy and Tawfeer were both vying for the wallet of the defrauded Lebanese (here) and now that the price of petrol has gone sky high, the wallets are tightening further and further so Happy seems to be more accessible than other supermarkets. With Tawfeer this time not being on the ad menu there is no enticement to compare prices, but Happy has always built its fame on more competitive prices.