Wolfofbey has new workshop - the training is for free and the whole thing is to "Start your online business". All of this is fine and dandy, the ads flooded the streets so heavily that in Dora there were three of them at literally three adjacent buildings. Which, honestly, is a bit too much. Now I am all for entrepreurship and all (apparently working 9 to 5 is too old hat!) but please people, seeing the same ad everywhere in town is really, a lot to take.
Is this ad creative? No. Is this ad conceptually interesting? Also no. Is this ad exceptionally art directed? Triple no. What this ad does though is make you look, which in today's world is a rarity. As I said, nothing in the ad is exceptional, but it does what it is devised to do. Stand out, portray the product, and eventually make you buy it. Considering Cosmaline is a Lebanese company, this might attract a lot of people since brand loyalty got thrown from the window since the financial crisis started in 2019 and everyone started counting their pennies. So here's a thought, sometimes you need to go back and trade pseudo-creativity for something that actually sells. Cosmaline just did that.
Well, here's a very basic ad. So basic it actually makes you look. As I said prior so many times, comparative ads are banned in Lebanon, so the slogans need to be "vague" such as the one above "the tastiest coffee" - because "tastiest" as compared to some non-entity without having to support it statistically. So voila, here's the slogan, here's the packshot, here's a red background, thank you very much. Honestly, in a sea of more of less mediocre ads, this one makes sense.
I stand corrected but this unipole is an orphan one. OK, I guess I am the only Lebanese who has not spoken about Tannourine and their predicament. To recap, Tannourine found itself in hot water (no pun!) - with reports claiming their bottled water was contaminated. What happened later was stuff of legend, and included one of the worst crisis management cases. Well at this point it turns out that no, their products were not contaminated, even if the Ministry of Agriculture had issued a decree to recall them from the market, so it all ended up a case of misunderstanding - or so it seems. Long story short, Tannourine, instead of going all out with a major campaign exonerating themselves has gone with this lone one. That's it, nothing else! "More pure than talk" - great line considering the circumstances but honestly someone should tell them what crisis management is.
To be clear I am a proud of alumnus of Sagesse/Hekme Achrafieh school. Also to be clear - what on earth is this?
"You and your heart say Hekme, you and your parents say Hekme, we are now close to you wherever you are" then there is a logo with "basketball and football", a phone number, and also the listing of all the places the club now is on the Lebanese territory.
All in all, a disaster. Too many words, too little design, no one would even read this going on the highway because it is studded with information and barely attracts any attention. Which is a pity because as I said I would have loved for this to work. But honestly, and quite fairly, it does not.
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Ah Sandwich W Noss has a nice ad! "We stole the idea of the shaker and make it tastier" - cheeky one indeed. But it works superbly. Mostly because obviously, the wink they included. Now, I do hope that they will make it of a decent size because their sandwiches were a bit minuscule yet priced the way other places would be more generous in terms of content. But this aside as Picasso said "Good artists borrow, great artists steal" - so, apart from the Louvre, this one was a good theft.
Kassatly Chtaura is having an ad moment. This means that Christmas is approaching because of the liqueur element. Interestingly the ad is about their new look for the bottles (the old ones were the classic large from below and with a long funnel on top, to be honest, like Bols bottles!). Yet the ad, thankfully, goes back to a classic (one that never dies). First, (re)watch the classic ad here. It dates back to 1986 and it has not lost one ounce of its Chutzpah! And the line? The one that never dies: Liqueur moi!
Gandour Cream Cookies has blessed us with a cute one. It simple goes "they're sweet inside out" but the word sweet in Arabic is the same as "beautiful". So yeah a bit of double-entendre that actually works considering Gandour could have pasted this without any line and still got people's attention. Do note that Gandour like all other companies have gone through the loss of brand loyalty since the financial crash, also they dabbled with shrinkflation (here) but Gandour is such an old Lebanese institution (the word applies well to them) and I guess they will survive the crisis after all.
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Almaza is on to something here with its unfiltered ad. "Everyone is buying gold" a wink at the price of gold that everyone has been talking about as of late. Considering they just had a hit (here) the above is another good ad even if, honestly, I don't understand why they're not talking in Arabic. Almaza is playing between languages and not really making strategic sense. I mean as I said, the ad is interesting, and yes it hits on the Almaza forte of talking about current events with a wink, but had this been in Arabic it would have been a smash.
I am all for good causes. This one leaves me a little confused. But perhaps maybe I am not the target audience hence me not being sensitive to a certain angle here. "Dare to do an early (breast) scan, dare to believe in your femininity, breast cancer". I am not sure why this angle specifically was chosen. But once more, I am not the target so perhaps I have no idea how women think about breast scan, and how much this makes them feel un-feminine. If this is the case, good on them. Because then it would make sense to the women not wanting (or daring) to do the scan. Otherwise, I found it strange.
And to those trying to come up with good ads while being "creative" and dabbling for heaven knows what please let me introduce you to this ad by the Association of Lebanese Industrialists. All you have to do is - almost - nothing yet actually it is a lot. "Meet us at the expo of made from the heart of Lebanon". Thank you, everyone can go home now. Not just "made in Lebanon" but made "from the heart of". OK, maybe the heart emoji thingy was a bit too much, but am ready to skip talking about it because of this incredible ad.
First there was those (here), and now the one above. OK, the one above is easy to decipher (العلم نور) considering the other ones took forever to be solved (at least by me and I STILL do not understand why one way of reading is better than the other!)
Personally, I managed to understand one as "it is a headcracker to teach your kids now that you brought them to the world" (Kasser rassak ta t3alem wledak). Why? I happened to read the billboard from left to right (the Latin way) not right to left (the Arabic way). A mistake which is forgivable considering the ad does not make sense - head tail (or whatever way you are reading it).
Ah the difficult life of a diabetic. Temptations everywhere. So Nesquik, courtesy of Nestle, but make it in cereal form. Now apparently the "classic" Nesquik - you know the milk chocolate one - was discontinued, due to "lack of demand and low sales" (according to the net), but what did not work as a drink can actually work as cereals (I think, so does Nestle). Which brings us to this unipole placed in an incredibly strategic - and pricey - place. But of course they had to add the bland "to the last bite". As if the message was not clear enough - which, to my mind, reminds me of Maxwell Coffee "good to the last drop" (wait, that's one chocolate drink winking to one coffee brand? Either am seeing too much or they are seeing too little).
Look, sometimes it's not really creative let's face it. And sometimes "not really creative" is what is needed. So, and I know this is sacrilegious, pasta is pasta (if you know how to cook it I guess, and again, just my opinion), and for this specific pasta - the name wins by a mile.
Which I presume is the only creative part in the ad. And yes, "nonna" is grandma in Italian - hence the wink to families and affection and all. Pity it was not explained because honestly not many Lebanese know this. I think with a better selling line, this would have been a smash, as is - a small wasted opportunity.
Head & Shoulders have a new one in town, could be it they were away too long? Or maybe some other brand is "Clear"ly on their tail? Whatever the reason they felt they needed a reminder in the market as it has been - ages! - since I saw anything of them in terms of advertising. Sure, the brand is drilled into the skulls of people - or at least used to be - when it comes to dandruff elimination. Do not this is exactly what the line riffs at "It doesn't have to be a head-scratcher" - literally and figuratively. Literally because this is what you do if you have dandruff, figuratively because you don't need to think a lot to pick the Head & Shoulders. I think this is a campaign what was thought of purely in Arabic, because it is very socially rooted in the language.
Puidor is - launching (and I stand corrected) - its molasses. Well, originally in the ketchup category, jumping to molasses is a small step - and in case anyone does not want the fancy English version we are talking about "debs el remmen" - which, no surprises there is based on pomegranate (somehow Armenia's symbol).
Puidor comes out with the slogan "the richest one in pomegranate" (in terms of concentration? Percentage? to be honest not sure how to substantiate the line). But again, if the purpose of any ad is to stand out from the crowd, this one does so - without being tacky.
I am not saying they did, I am not saying they didn't, but the new label SV by Saudia reminded me immediately of Jean-Charles de Castelbajac for Rossignol.
Apparently, on the ground this has not been smooth sailing, but I am not here to judge how the operation went, but rather the ads that preceded it. Libanpost and General Security as back in full swing (I distinctly remember they were so long ago, this is how I got my passport renewed back in the day). "Without begging or emotional blackmail", "ask for it and it shall be delivered", the ads are quite fierce it terms of how things used to go. I know someone who knows someone who can get you an early/privileged access.
So this is how it Libanpost tried to sway people to get their operations done in Lebanon. Apparently it worked, but Lebanon being Lebanon, there was power cuts, one employee for a full line of people, and a lot of chaos as to how things were to be done. But well, I guess the intentions were good.
How about this for a brilliant ad? (here) Is there an oil well in every backyard? Do people go to work riding camels? Is it all a sahara? Do they speak English? Do they live in tents? Is it safe out there?
Answer? Yes there are oil wells... in the desert, they ride camels till the finish line (in races!), you can rent a tent for a night, they don't just speak English, they speak languages, and it is only unsafe if you are playing hide and seek. The Arabic copy takes the cake here, the slang is so totally incredible - it is obvious it was thought of as Arabic first.
The ad walks the smart fine line between stereotype and flipping it on its head. It could have been total pastiche or gimmick but the execution is so brilliant it leaves an incredible final product.
The whole idea is: What did you hear about us?... Until the end which goes "it's not about what you hear, it's about being here".
I know this was done for Saudi National Day so I caught it very very late, but seriously, for this to fall to through the cracks is unforgivable.
Well, you can buy and sell anything online! Lebanon has gotten very professional about it. What started off during Covid has become a burgeoning industry on all levels - clothes, cooking items, supermarket loads and groceries, you name it - you can get it online. And well, why not cars too? Autotrader apparently promises that. Of course it scares the hell out of me how this works because well, cars are not exactly like clothing or condiments or mouneh items or oil. They are, a bit more complicated than that, but hey, there's an app for that apparently. Introducing "Autotrader" the "fastest way to buy and sell a car". Well, I know for a fact that selling cars requires a lot of inspection and bartering so all this is a little confusing for me. But what do I know?