Fadi Mouannes: Intermarkets Kuwait was established in 1968, long before the invasion of Kuwait and was among the first agencies to resume activities after the liberaton. Since then, we have been steadily growing and we have been recognised as the first agency in terms of media spending, especially with newspapers who swallow up to 60 percent of the advertising budgets.

We are a full-fledged agency that offers all the services the market requires. Our 35-strong staff are equipped to offer all kinds of services the market needs and at the same time we enjoy the full support of the Intermarkets network. Eighty percent of the accounts we handle are local. On the creative level, we have recently won six awards at the Al-Anba’a Advertising Awards.

ArabAd: How do you deal with a market said to be “unsophisticated”?

Fadi Mouannes: What does unsophisticated mean? All Kuwaiti clients are looking for quality services. If they find them in simple concepts, so be it. They want to have the best creative service, the best media plan, the best promotional ideas, the best art work… Our challenge is to meet their quest for the best.

There are two types of clients. Those who know what they want. They understand the business and are professional enough to understand our business to know what we should give and to know what we are giving. There are also those who want the best but do not understand the business. They leave it to us to come up with ideas that would fulfill their objectives. So it is a challenge either way and it is very important that educated people — and there is a majority who are educated — take the leadership.

Originally published in ArabAd, December 1998

Erwin Guerrovich: clients will have to be more adaptable

Intermarkets founder, chairman and CEO Erwin Guerrovich gave Karen Thomas a progress report on how Lebanon’s reconstruction is effecting agencies and the media.

Israel’s bombardment of southern Lebanon and Likud’s subsequent election victory have hit Lebanese business confidence hard. Despite these setbacks, the international business community has kept faith in the reconstruction process and in Lebanon’s ability to pay back its debts. However, after 17 years of war, Lebanon has learned to function on psychological rather than economic factors says Intermarkets chairman and CEO Erwin Guerrovich.

Israeli raids on southern Lebanon led to a crisis in consumer confidence during the critical spring peak of March-June, he told GMR in an exclusive interview in Beirut.
Lebanese advertising expenditure fell dramatically after the south was evacuated and consumer confidence slumped to its lowest ebb in years. Agencies will not start to recoup their losses until the second annual peak from October to December, if then, Guerrovich said.

“When there are a few months of calm on the political front, the Lebanese start to become over-excited consumers,” Guerrovich said. “But when something like the crisis in the south happens, you suddenly get a situation where the Lebanese immediately go back to war psychology where money is better in pockets, rather than being spent.”

“The first period of the year was hit hard and the result is that it will pick up again, if it does pick up, in October.” Guerrovich likens Lebanon in 1996 to Saudi Arabia in the early oil-booming Seventies, awash with huge infrastructure contracts and over-run with building sites, but lacking an affluent, spendthrift middle class.

Crucially, though, Lebanon lacks oil. What it does have is growing inward investment from the far-flung Lebanese diaspora, a vote of confidence from international financiers and a wealth of local talent waiting to return from overseas.

It lacks a heavy industrial base, but new service-based industries are showing signs of growth.
Lebanon is emerging as a major production centre for 35mm films and commercials, Guerrovich says. Production houses are springing up to take advantage of the republic’s ample supply of talent so that more commercials are being produced locally, rather than in Europe.

“More and more companies are making their commercials here, because they find that our quality compared to price is very interesting,” Guerrovich says. “Now, agencies in the Gulf are doing their production work in Lebanon – and not just the ones with Lebanese managers, but the expatriate agencies as well.”

Middle Eastern advertising first took root in Lebanon and Guerrovich set up one of its first agencies. He founded Middle East Marketing and Advertising Services (MEMAS) in the early 1960s.
After steady growth and several strategic mergers, MEMAS spawned Intermarkets. Today the organisation handles both advertising and public relations and has branches in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE, Jordan, Syria and Yemen.

Today, Intermarkets’ regional stable of advertising and PR clients includes Lancome, Polaroid, Visa International, Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa, Unilever Gulf, Grundig and Tag Heuer.
Agencies’ other preoccupation is the restructuring of Lebanon’s media. “There has been a war in this country between the television stations which represent the bulk of advertising expenditure and this war has led all the television stations to have super conditions officially on the rate card for clients,” Guerrovich says.

Lebanon’s media shake-up is not the only change on the horizon. The signs are that advertising agencies and their clients will also have to adapt to the new, more commercial environment, Guerrovich predicts.

All the signs are that these changes have already started. Earlier this year, the country’s largest agencies set up a syndicate to promote greater transparency in their dealings with the media.
Traditionally, multinational companies have relied on local agents to buy airtime. Those agents have spread their bookings between a large number of channels, often going through small advertising agencies whose lower overheads could easily undercut their larger rivals.

In a future with fewer channels, Lebanese agencies want to bypass the agent and approach the client directly. Clients will have to work with larger, more professional agencies to buy airtime more effectively, Guerrovich hopes. “Today, we have a situation where the leading agencies are strongly structured and offer more professionalism than the market needs. And the market is not following with the development of ad volumes and the mentality of the clients,” Guerrovich says.

With these kinds of imbalances, the Lebanese advertising industry will have to brace itself for further restructuring, mergers and closures. And as the biggest agencies club together, small agencies with narrow margins will bear the brunt of these changes.

Originally published in Agencies

The Intermarkets Advertising Management Group recently held their annual meeting at the Royal Abjar Hotel in Dubai. The meeting reviewed the group’s achievements during the past six months, which saw the winning of such prestigious accounts as Rothmans of Pall Mall, the British Bank of the Middle East, Trisa and Alberto Culver, in addition to a number of other local accounts in the respective offices of the Intermarkets network.

The Group also reviewed the final plans for the introduction of direct/integrated marketing services via the joint venture company Tequila Middle East, which will operate as a sister company much like the highly successful Intermarkets Public Relations, the Middle East affiliate of Burson-Marsteller, the world’s largest public relations consultancy. The meeting finalized Intermarkets’ expansion strategy up to the year 2000, a strategy aimed at fulfilling the group’s goal “To Be The Best”.

Intermarkets is one of the longest established advertising agencies in the Middle East. Started in Lebanon 35 years ago, Intermarkets set up its Dubai office 20 years ago. The agency also boasts fully-fledged offices offering integrated marketing services in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen and Syria.

Attending the meeting were Messrs. Erwin Guenovich, Intermarkets Group CEO; Ramzi Raad, Executive Vice-President and Managing Director of Intermarkets Dubai; Joe Ayoub, Managing Director of Intermarkets Lebanon; Jihad Abbouchi. Managing Director of Intermarkets Saudi Arabia; Fady Mouannes, Managing Director of Intermarkets Kuwait; Bassem Dajani, Managing Director of Intermarkets Jordan; Makram Zeenny, Managing Director of Intermarkets Syria; Galal Zaki, Managing Director of Intermarkets Egypt; Khalil Bitar, the Group’s Senior Vice-President Finance; and Nadim Sfeir, Vice-President Levant Area and Saudi Arabia.

Originally published in Monday Morning, March 1994

Ramzi R. Raad, IAA vice-president, area director for Middle East & Africa, executive vice-president of the Intermarkets Group

The Lebanese communication industry has been unique in its struggle to develop and expand, despite all the destruction that was inflicted on the country, and its other business sectors over the past 16 years. Accordingly I hasten to salute your forum on “Gateways to Reconstruction”, its organizers and distinguished participants, your gathering today is a further demonstration on the leadership of Lebanon’s Chapter of the International Advertising Association.

Rebuilding for us as communicators, entails the encouragement of our members that are abroad to actively return to their homeland. Of more importance however, is the need for all participants at this Forum to cooperate in order to ensure that the self-regulation, the disciplines and the professional upgrading tools that we have introduced to the Arab advertising industry, are revived and adapted in Lebanon, where all of these were started.

I sincerely regret not being able to join you at this Forum, however I wish you and Lebanon great success. I seize this opportunity to remind you that while all of you are meeting to develop more Big Ideas for the reconstruction of Lebanon; other members and graduates of the Lebanon Chapter remain to be very active overseas — at this specific moment — rebuilding the image of Lebanon through their voluntary work and dedication to the International Advertising Association and what it stands for. (Ramzi RAAD)

Originally published in GATEWAYS to Reconstruction, September 1991