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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 May - 2 June 1999 Issue No. 431 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 May - 2 June 1999 Issue No. 431
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Living Features Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Advertising with a heart
by Tarek AtiaThe ad business in Egypt has just had its society debut. Perhaps you were too busy watching TV to notice. But in that case, you knew all about it anyway; that the ad business has grown up, settled in, filled out, and taken its proper place in determining Egypt's economics, and more.
The industry's pioneers, the heavy competitors who lead the field in both revenues and awards, are now up on the same podium, discussing the future of an industry which gives products their power, and people their desires.
At a seminar held at Al-Ahram this past week and sponsored by the International Advertising Association's (IAA) Egyptian branch, the big boys were drawing up the rules for the next millennium.
The topic was the ad agency's role in the new global world. Hardly a discussion of details, the seminar was more like the advertisement of the master plan since the major players were running the show.
Hassan Hamdi, who heads the country's largest ad agency, Al-Ahram, and who is the president of the IAA's Cairo branch, chaired the panel. Hamdi outlined the main topics to be discussed: old problems, new solutions and a dive into the eternal debate between creativity and research. He encouraged the audience, a full house of advertising professionals, to move quickly into the cyber age and constantly be on the lookout for new mediums.
Top (l to r), Ibrahim Hegazi, Hazem Dera, Hassan Hamdi, Tarek Nour, Randa Abdu; bottom, Hisham Abbas
Private agency owners Tarek Nour (Tarek Nour Communications) and Hazem Dera (Look) were the seminar's main speakers, along with marketing expert Randa Abdu (Marketing Mix).
The moderator, American University in Cairo (AUC) Marketing Professor Ibrahim Hegazi, told the audience that Advertising Age magazine ranked Nour and Dera's companies as Egypt's numbers one and two for revenue billing. With Al-Ahram up top in a league of its own, Nour and Dera, along with the other leading billers who are all affiliated with major international ad players, reign over the rest of a growing market.
As he's done for decades on TV screens and billboards, Nour stole the show at the seminar where, with the help of Microsoft Power Point and a gigantic screen, he showed his own commercials to prove his points. Rule number one was that even with the multinationals aiming for a no-barriers consumer, an every-person anywhere in the world who buys the same things, these global products would always need a local, very specific form of advertising to appeal to the Egyptian consumer.
And slick wasn't always the way to go, Nour claimed. "Successful advertisers know the Arab world goes for awatif [feelings or emotions] and heart rather than logic." Nour emphasised this point by comparing Western and Egyptian ads for a Korean car. Fact-filled graphic-enhanced footage of the car would probably never have gone over here as well as the less expensive Egyptian ad where five pregnant women happily pile into the car while the voice-over says, "The car that seats 10, for the successful woman."
Nour said Egyptians also went for his sappy Stevie Wonder rip-off mobile phone ad over the fast, fact-filled, graphic-enhanced pitch the competitor chose to go with.
And so it was that at the IAA's annual awards, held the night after the seminar, Nour was consistently the one who won a gold statue for his 'awatif' pitch, while the logical approach came in second.
At the seminar, Nour pointed out that the slogan "finger lickin' good" bombed in China when it translated as "eat your fingers off", and that a soft drink giant's slogan ended up translating as "it will wake your ancestors from the dead".
After seeing several examples of a successful laundry detergent campaign that relies on the gimmick of a famous actress trying to explain to an old Saeedi (Upper Egyptian) man that by changing part of the product's name, you get the word 'wash' in Arabic, 'ghaseel', it became clear, via Nour's ingenious use of English subtitles with the ad, that local concepts will often seem totally ludicrous if taken out of their local context.
Nour had prepared the presentation for an international conference in Mexico from which he had just returned. There, as at the seminar, he showed yet another detergent ad where the same actress plays twins, one from the city, the other a country girl. This one was one of a kind, for he actually dubbed the dialogue into a ludicrously strange English translation, complete with the country girl speaking in a southern US accent, to seal the point that global products need local appeal.
Hazem Dera also did his part for cultural specificity. In his presentation to the seminar audience, Dera drove home the point that Egypt has become the centre of Middle East advertising, replacing Dubai. Dera showed several examples of ads made in Egypt that are used all over the Arab world.
At the ceremony the next night, those same ads won a healthy share of awards. As did the ads that helped Dera's company change a multinational soft drink giant's outlook on local appeal, first by Arabising their standard, universal jingle, then later creating a highly contagious new one with the help of local pop star Hisham Abbas and a cast of sexy teens on the beach.
At the awards ceremony, everyone in the audience clapped and sang along with the winning soft drink ad, perhaps proving what Hassan Hamdi said about how the industry had entered into a new era of honest competition.
The ad business has become "better than respectable", Hamdi said.
The awards ceremony itself was like a mini-Oscars, complete with scenes such as film-maker Tarek El-Erian dramatically strolling into the ceremony just as his name was being called for an award, then leaving soon afterwards. The businessmen who buy the ads were also in attendance, getting their own prizes when the ads they had commissioned won.
Randa Abdu, the final speaker at the previous night's seminar, got an award for her market research company's efforts on behalf of a major potato chip maker trying to keep a steady grip on its market share against a multinational's vigorous attempts to penetrate. Abdu's campaign actually politicised the chip, implying its consumers were more nationalistic in a brilliant twist on the 'Ahlawi' and 'Zamalkawi' soccer rivalry. The slogan in the ads is sure to remain part of popular jargon for years to come, and has already forced the multinational competition to attempt a pale imitation of the same concept.
It may be revealing that while both Dera and Nour started off their careers at Al-Ahram ad agency, Abdu -- who compared the industry to a war several times during her remarks -- started off with Tarek Nour's company.
"When I started working with Tarek Nour, he always used to tell me, 'We don't bargain with ads because we're not selling tomatoes'. Now," she said with a chuckle, "I'm literally selling potatoes!"
