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| Artwork by Tarek Chemaly |
In case you have not been living under a rock, Ksarak (the beautifully named Arak from Chateau Ksara) had an iconic ad (which you can still see here). The ad had the highest budget at the time and in many ways helped usher the Lebanese advertising industry intro new grounds. But also, it had a jingle/song from Mansour Rahbani. Just to be clear, the brother in the family who specialized in ads/jingles was Elias producing such incredible specimen such as Picon, Re-O-Vac, Tatra, Nido (yes, that Nido ad!) or the Barilla masterpiece (which had a curious double life as I spoke of here). So for the great Mansour to do an ad jingle was a rarity.
However, Mansour (RIP) was actually known as one-half of the duo "Rahbani Brothers", the other half being the late incomparable Assi (who died in 1986). But here's a small unknown story: the two brothers actually composed a jingle (which sadly I do not have in my archive), long, long ago for the electronics brand Zanussi. The jingle in question went:
زانوسي زانوسي بالدار بيرقصلي
Zanussi, Zanussi dances for me in the salon.
The reason this analogy was used is because old refrigerators used to produce a great "shaking" hum whenever their generator would work.
So, whereas Ksarak is indeed a masterpiece - there has been a precedent.