Marie - from biscuits to Aunt

Interesting. Mastro has a new ad for their Marie biscuit. A part of any childhood along the 555 from competing Gandour (here). Well, the idea - coming from Mink ad agency - is that they made "Marie" into "Tante Marie" - a generous, kind, and very welcoming neighborhood aunt/grandma who is not bothered with the ball falls on her balcony, or the towel, or the singlet, or... Wait is the boy doing this on purpose? I mean - the lady does have a few tricks up her sleeve with the biscuit thingy so it is tempting to just keep knocking on her door. Well the final line is very generic "for every nice moment". Lovely, genuine ad - with one small flaw is that Marie has always been associated with the "other" brand, so not sure how one could switch up to Mastro. See the ad here.

Tarboosh hangs on to its youth by a thread

Tarboosh - yes the pastry-formerly-known-as-you-know-what - is back with many ads cut from the same cloth, or same wrapper. The ides is still the same "never grow up" which has been around for a very long time, except now the executions play around the wrapper - under many shapes and forms, some work some not - but at least there seems to be consistency (here). Interestingly, in some of the posts, comments keep calling the pastry by its old racist name. Actually, when I saw these in Slovenia and told my friends there about the rebrand, on Slovenian lady simply said "it is OK Tarek, here we call them Indians."

Gandour Cream Cookies - a cute one indeed

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.

Shrinkflation: Try Gandour 555 for size

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly

You know shrinkflation? If you don't now is the time to explore the concept here.

For some odd reason, lately Gandour 555 biscuits were not being stocked in the shops near me in the village where I am. I am not sure why though they were for a long time. Mind you Gandour 555 biscuits are a staple (or were) in the Lebanese diet. You can fill them with loukoum, put them next to coffee or tea, have them on their own, insert them at the bottom or top of custard bowls - the possibilities are limitless.

Long story short, I found a box just a few days ago and it said "15% free". Well, even with the 15% free I am having my doubts. Why? Because, when I opened the box the biscuits were... minuscule. As in almost Oreo small, brittle, and... not very filling.

Long time ago, Patrick Chemali - my digital consultant and no, no relation apart from friendship - came up with the joke that "Daher foods" (which owns Master potato chips) has bought Gandour because both products shrunk in content and offer much less "inside" despite keeping the same packaging.

So the 15% increase could - barely - recup the losses when compared to the original product which was known to the Lebanese for such a long period of time (very oddly the box I currently have does not list the weight per packet on the outside). And if you do not believe me? The current (or at least newer) box of 555 is 82 grams x 8 packets (here)... versus 107 grams x 8 packets long ago (here). So the newer box has 76% weight per packet of the old one - so no, I am not imagining it.

Gandour Foods excels in tags

Gandour Foods aces when it comes to hashtags. Now am not a believer in the power of tags, still, at least this one is interesting copy wise. It all started with Gandour foods deciding to team up with coach Adam Khoury to entice its clients to take better care of their health. Health in Arabic means "so7a". And well, when one eats, instead of saying bon appetit, we say "so7tein" (two healths - Arabic, like Slovenian and a small part of the Serbian language has singular, dual, and plural). Which gave rise to the Gandour tag #الصحة_صارت_صحتين - health becomes two healthy. Again, not sure how effective but at least well done. See video here.

Those Unica ads must mean something, right?

Well, in a shining example of what advertising is in 2020 in Lebanon, please meet Unica. The two ads are not a campaign mind you despite sharing a common visual style (one went online in July, one yesterday). OK I could, with difficulty swallow the one about friendship. The newer one about the passage of time is totally unpalatable.

But again, in Lebanon, in 2020, this is what advertising is. Throw it and see if it sticks. Concepts, strategy, and anything else than a visual element (even that is not always there!) are disposed of. Of course the ads could be brilliant and am the one not seeing it. Who knows, even as a juror in two international festivals, perhaps advertising has grown too smart for me (Insert man shrugging emoji here).