Mega Ice cream - Nancy Ajram, Nizar Qabbani, or how Egypt is going bonkers over copyright

Remember the De22ou el Chamasi saga (here)? Now watch the Mega ice cream film here. To be honest the film is well done, very hip and stylish and cool. The issue? Well, apparently Nancy Ajram interprets the song that goes along with the film. Now, the association of artists in Egypt is suing Mega Ice Cream or the company that did the ad (it is not clear from the words of the legal counselor of the association Hussam Loutfi) to the tune of the 10 million Egyptian pounds. 

Here's the background: The song used in the ad was a hit for the late Farid El Atrach, except they changed the words to fit the product. Now, the original song was written by the late Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani. Logically, the estate of the late El Atrach is the only one concerned legally. But nope - the daughter of Qabbani said her father's name should not be put on a product - well, for all his prouesse, mind you the whole song was rewritten so that Qabbani has no legal claim whatsoever. Here is the El Atrach song (here).

Honestly, how all this became a legal saga is beyond me. Because legally, if the rights were bought from the El Atrach family, then everyone is in the clean... But seriously, copyright laws are just so insane in the Middle East as I said prior.

Persil (featuring Nancy Ajram) vs. Nescafe - Compare and Contrast

So this is super interesting. Remember how I already spoke how Persil and Nancy Ajram are match made in branding heaven (here). Well, after a single one-off in Lebanon in January, now the gates of the campaign have been wide open (were are in August mind you!). So apart from the late catch-up, there's also a very strange element: For their comeback Persil decided to reuse the very famous Nescafe line.

Wait, what? Yes, Persil eventually used "sa7se7" - wake up - which has long been the domain of Nescafe. And no, I am not imagining it, the internet is full of images with the famous line. So how come the mix up? Beats me. Honest, they could have used any line (or no line damn it when you use someone as famous as Ajram). But nope, they had to to do a major misstep. Which honestly makes no sense.

Nancy Ajram now a Persil spokesperson - a masterstroke!

Nancy Ajram. Yes, her. I already spoke about her as a "brand" (here). So let's go back to the very beginning, in the mid-aughts when Miss Ajram as she was back then was fronting Coca-Cola. Full of innocence, exuberance, and displaying her infectious giggle - she was the perfect representative of that young, feminine, cool and fresh brand. I truly think at the time they were a perfect match - and to be honest the brand milked their linkage to the extreme.

Hop to 2011, suddenly Ajram - still an incredibly popular singer - was doing an ad for... Nissan Micra? Yes, because by then in 2008 she got married to Dr. Fadi El-Hachem and was already a mother (her eldest daughter Mila was born in 2009, her second Ella in 2011). Micra was a car aimed for a female audience, you know: women who had to drop their kids to daycare or school, who had to do supermarket runs, who had to park easily and so on and so forth. Again, despite the difference with the original Coca-Cola tie-up Ajram was still a good match - a young mother of two, a busy person, a very aspirational character that other women would emulate.

And now? Persil. The clothing detergent. So once more, we are very far off from the Coca-Cola brand. But not far at all from Nancy Ajram herself. She now has three daughters - Lya being born in 2019 - and well like any other mother, she must have a very busy laundry day with a family of five. Which makes Ajram, with her age, daily life, marital status and family life, once more a perfect tie with Persil.

It is interesting that as Ajram ages, brands still find her profile to match different angles. And all of them work.

Nancy Ajram - the brand - is on trial.

A long - long - time ago the incredibly popular singer Nancy Ajram did an interview with a pan-Arab magazine where she said "I did two plastic surgeries to be more beautiful", the second day after the magazine hit the stands, her manager - the very capable  Jiji Lamara - went on damage control mode saying it was just spa sessions she meant. Also a long time ago Nancy Ajram said "no one can stop Nancy except Nancy" - little did she factor a man who would come into her villa at night only for him to end up being dead.
Well, at this stage even the simplest facts surrounding the story seem murky.
Why?
Because Nancy Ajram (and by extension her husband who shot the man) has entered the public realm and became a brand - who is having a real time PR crisis which went totally and completely out of hand. Her name trends on twitter daily every day since the tragedy happened. Speculations abound and rumours swirl around her, her husband, her virtue, and every person seems to have become a Sherlock Holmes noticing things in their security video (a fragment of which was distributed online) that properly trained investigators and coroners did not ("did you see the video at so and so minute and second?" - "did you notice the color of dead man's jacket?" and so on).
Once more, no one is treating her as a person - if she publishes a photo with her children, she is either a "devoted mother" or "the woman who robbed other children of their father" (words quoted verbatim from Twitter) - she is seen as an abstracted version of herself, simply, a brand. People are already issuing legal verdicts, interpreting (or rather misenterpreting) all the legal elements surrounding the case, publishing on social media their thoughts as if they were informed opinions. But that is because, again, Nancy Ajram is not being treated as a person any longer. She is now subjected to the whims and speculations of many issues (it did not help that the man who ended up being dead following what was apparently a theft at the singer's house was actually Syrian - because suddenly anyone who mentions his nationality becomes xenophobic, and anyone who does not, is being biased).
Nancy Ajram, who has many deals with companies is now in a compromised position - brands who in the past were running to be able to have her front their goods and paying her lavishly in the process (Coca-Cola, Nissan, Hwawei, Damas (jewelry) but to name a few...) now see her as "divisive" sadly. Regardless of the legal outcome about her husband shooting the man, people already have their mind set ("she is the wife of a muderer" - "she is the victim of a theft") and as is no brand can afford alienating its customer base having her representing them.
It is a pity the woman (or rather her husband) is no longer afforded the luxury of a trial in the legal sense of the word. Now her trial is the realm of public opinion and this is not something Jiji Lamara can sweep under the rug like he did about her plastic surgeries.