 The television commercial industry is booming, but instability in Lebanon may shift production to elsewhere in the region.
In a Cairo street, a man wearing a white galabeya sits on the pavement, barely pausing in his song to take money pressed into his hand by a passerby. He turns to flourish the bill at the camera. “I’m not that innocent” he sings with a wicked grin –cue Britney Spears’ rather more tuneful rendition of her hit “Oops, I did it again.”
The promotional advertisements for Melody Tunes, an English-language offshoot of the Melody Hits music channel, have set tongues wagging and not only captured imaginations, but also a mood in Middle East advertising.
“There’s definitely a trend for TV commercials to be more local, showing a local flavor rather than an American one,” says Toufic Traboulsi, Executive Producer for Independent Productions, “just as most of the regional films that are successful abroad are those that go back to their roots.” It may be a backlash against globalized culture, or simply a sign of the region’s industry maturing and gaining a more sophisticated understanding of the tastes of its audience.
Bigger and better
 The industry has grown up fast. Still small-scale and local in the early 1990s, the television commercial (TVC) took off with the advent of pan-Arab satellite channels, which still air most of the high-budget commercials and garner about 80 percent of TV advertising. 2006 saw a slump in Lebanese production because of the summer war. Nonetheless, Regional Media Director of the Ipsos research company, Elie Aoun, wrote in ArabAd magazine this February that overall media ad expenditure (including the popular billboard, radio and print markets) had risen 22 percent in 2006 from the previous year, with the pan-Arab market alone growing 31 percent. This year is on track for a boom.
“More and more TV commercials are being done, and budgets are getting bigger,” says Gabriel Chamoun, CEO of The Talkies production house. “Most countries in the region have growing economies and new sectors are always coming in.” Two to three years ago, Chamoun says, a TVC production budget of $200 thousand to $250 thousand was “something to talk about.” Now, such figures are common for a quality commercial, although the costs of a production in Lebanon can be as low as $30 thousand or hit the million-dollar mark for a regional bank or real estate company.
Creativity is blossoming with increasing budgets and experience. AbdelSalam Akkad, managing partner of Greyscale Productions in Amman, recalls an International Advertising Association forum three or four years ago that focused on finding a local niche and appealing to the target society. Demonstrating the irrepressible humor for which the Egyptians are celebrated, Leo Burnett – Cairo’s Melody Tunes ads (“all Ang-a-lesh, all za time!”) show how the burgeoning Cairo production industry is finding its niche. “The Egyptians are getting really creative,” Akkad says. “The TV commercial industry resembles any other creative industry; it reflects the culture it’s operating in. And because the Egyptians have a strong cultural identity, with their inside jokes and anecdotes and their own image, they’ve created a uniqueness in the market.” Dubai, he says, tends to be more corporate. Because Lebanon traditionally services the Gulf, its own flavor rarely comes across, perhaps only for beauty and style-related products.
However, Sten Walegren, managing director of The Gate film lab on the hills outside Beirut, says the local twist can be superficial. “A big share of commercials are an adaptation of a global concept drawn up somewhere else. After a while, they all start to look the same. We need to change the concept that everything’s better outside the region.” Chamoun says social restrictions can also place barriers on producers. “People are a little conservative in the Middle East, which makes it harder to be really creative,” he says.
Technical know-how continues to improve, producers say. “Special effects are getting more sophisticated, so is post-production,” Chamoun says. Computer-generated enhancements are becoming more common. As companies grow, industry professionals are also specializing in one aspect of producing a commercial, be it focus-pulling or food-styling. This remains a growth area, however, since many animations or 3-D effects are added in Europe.
After TV commercial production started in earnest in the Arab world about ten years ago, says Traboulsi, its quality quickly overshadowed that of most regional TV series, “because only advertisers had the budgets and the know-how,” he says. “In advertising, every second is a very expensive image, unlike in television series or music videos.” Advertising expertise spurred the TVC’s junior sibling, the music video-clip, he says, with sponsors’ product placement of cars, soft drinks, or mobile phones in clips reinforcing the link. “The music industry noticed there were some talented people working in advertising,” Traboulsi says.
A stellar example is Nadine Labaki, who moved from TVCs to music videos, most famously launching pop starlet Nancy Ajram’s distinctive “girl-next-door” brand. From there, Labaki broke into feature films with her acclaimed directorial debut Caramel, which premiered at Cannes this year. The film, set in a warmly colored and whimsical
Beirut, is likely in turn to influence
future advertising.
With the advent of satellite channels, dominated by MBC1, MBC2 and LBC International, Ramadan became the annual focus for advertising. This is true even in Lebanon, where the Christmas season was the target until the late 1990s, says Sally Rahme, senior media manager for Ipsos Beirut. Advertising spending in October 2006, which coincided with Ramadan, was nearly $400 million, almost double that of November. “Now we see thousands of new TV spots on the first day of Ramadan and huge sponsorship of the Ramadan series.” Beauty and hygiene products are the most frequent ads on pan-Arab channels, according to Ipsos, followed by food and telecom services, particularly mobile phone networks.
Overtaking Beirut?
Despite the regional growth, if the bottom-line dominated TV commercial industry can be said to have a spiritual home, producers agree it remains Lebanon. “Dubai has the volume now but Lebanon is still better for cost, the availability of talent and the variety of locations,” Chamoun says. Producing in Lebanon remains about 30 percent cheaper, he estimates. To cover their bases, most of the main production houses have opened offices in several capitals. Chamoun’s The Talkies, one of the region’s big players, is based in Beirut, Dubai and Cairo. In Dubai, says Walegren, Lebanese dominate the creative positions in TVC production.
Walegren says the bulk of quality TVC production remains in Lebanon, with 95 percent of that servicing the region, mainly pan-Arab satellites.
He estimates that Lebanon handles 50 to 55 percent of TVCs for the pan-Arab market, followed by Egypt at 30 percent and Dubai at about ten percent. Lebanon produced 250 commercials even during the war in 2006. By early October this year, it had already surpassed that total, Walegren said, adding that it even compared favorably with France, for example.
But last summer’s war with Israel and the string of assassinations is scaring away Lebanon’s creative brains and deterring regional and international clients. “If we continue like this, we’ll lose a lot of market share because someone else will step in, whether it’s Cairo, Amman, wherever,” says Chamoun. Walegren agrees. “Lebanon has it all: creativity, talent and an open-minded society. The only thing missing is
stability.”
Other, more dependable countries are filling the gap, but they will take time to evolve. Lebanon’s film schools are competitive, industry professionals say, and Dubai and Egypt still have to import – often from Beirut – many of their producers and directors of photography, focus-pullers, and other skilled professionals.
Although gaining an edge, Egypt’s industry can be protectionist and business procedures are opaque to outsiders, Chamoun says. Although Cairo is often described as a regional advertising hub, and it is growing, many of its mass-production TVCs are low-budget, shot on video, and made for local channels, Walegren says.
Dubai’s comparatively small volume, on the other hand, belies its weightier budgets.
“The heavy gunners are in Dubai: the multi-nationals, the banks, the car firms,” says Walid Azzi, Editor-in-Chief of ArabAd magazine. Greyscale’s Akkad says Amman is evolving, but remains far from having the infrastructure and equipment, partly because no regional satellite channels broadcast from there. Figures remain low on a global scale, industry professionals complain. Although there are about 250 million consumers in the Arab world, TV advertising expenditures last year were nearly $3 billion, according to Ipsos. Azzi says that Israel, by contrast, spends about $10 billion per year on a population of around 6.5 million.
Azzi blames the proliferation of media. For example, a report released by the Arab Advisors Group in August put the number of free-to-air channels at 370. Bar the top advertising revenue earners such as MBC1, MBC2 and LBC satellite, few are believed to turn a profit. And advertising prices are high, considering the low reach and fickle audiences, many of whom are as likely to tune into an international channel as they are a regional one. Accordingly, many clients opt for billboard and print advertising.
But most predict an upward swing. “I’m optimistic for the industry as a whole, although Lebanon’s share depends on the political situation.” says Chamoun. “Regionally, I think it will grow for at least the next five years.” |
