Digi Bank - when life hands you lemons, you do a bank ad.

OK let's admit it. In Lebanon, hating banks is par for the course. Everyone does it. To be clear, I only have one bank account having closed all other accounts (within the same bank so now I am just withdrawing my money and salvaging what is salvageable). Every bank is issuing its own digital wallet - because you can't get rid of them easily (well, am trying to but that's another story). So Bank of Beirut has Digi its own digital wallet. And it fell on Mink to make it more palatable. So they went to - well - the real situation and basically promised "a bank without a bank" - because if Digi can give you anything it is the ability to escape long tines, or what the ad referred to as a "national sport" (which in many ways it is!). Watch the cute short ad here - so despite the controversial topic one has to admit it was a fun way to portray it.

Neo goes banking on Ziad Rahbani

Neo, the digital wallet of Audi Bank (cough, ahem!) has a new ad which basically riffs on the late Ziad Rahbani in a timely (even if catching it by the end of the time - because the funeral has been off for a while). To explain "bala wala fee" is a wink to his hit "bala wala chi" (which translates into "without anything"). I do understand the people's urge to start humming (me humming off key if you want to know), but also this is forgettable. It does not enter into the annals of ads. And yes, this being a subsidiary of a bank makes it an case of adding insult to injury.

Mymonty has a crystal ball!

File this under do-you-know-something-I-don't? Because MyMonty is already on its Christmas message - or festive message depending where you stand. "Everything's gonna be alright". OK so Lebanese are stretched, stressed, worried, some of them literally sleeping in the rough, and we are still reeling from the many consecutive catastrophes which befell on us singe October 2019 - financial, health-wise, terror-wise, and all else. But hey MyMonty seems blandly reassuring. Good for them I guess, for the rest of us? Not so sure. Just look around you!