CHErbel Nahas...

Credit: Nadim Zgheib
As the tumult caused by the resignation of labor minister Charbel Nahas has is still stirring (and making waves even within the now baffled audience of the Free Patriotic Movement), in comes this small beauty from the desk of Nadim Zgheib as a tribute to the communist roots of Nahas and an aknowledgements of the left-wing policies he has carried with him... out the door perhaps!

Zahrat al mada2in: To Jerusalem and back....

Research credit: Geoanna Hobeiche
There was a time when not even the prouesse of Hizbullah was needed for Lebanese to go to Jerusalem! All you had to do was to be armed (pardon the pun) with you MEA ticket, show up on time for one of the three daily flights to Jersualem... My, it was a different world, thati s for sure!...

@abou_fouad now tweeting!

Having had his first taste of new media, Abou Fouad is now insatiable...So witht he help of P.A.S Ltd. for internet troubleshooting he has established himself a twitter account. Be the first to follow him and his daily pearls of wisdom at a rate of three/day on @abou_fouad .... You'll be amazed how much an old time can teach the new generation!

Classic burger joint... the truth is out.

Well, finally someone had the courage to say it as it is... We all know that during lent  or al siam (the period of fasting which starts today and last until Saturday before Easter) many Christians abstain from eating "red" meat and focus on "white meats" such as fish which is why international chains give us the fish menu - or the ads of it - during this time (this blog has reviewed them so many times that the matter ended up being "fishy") but finally, someone really said things as they are: "Only during lent" goes the Classic Burger Joint. YES, of course! Why suddenly there's a proliferation of ads about fish menus? Because of the above mentionned reason naturally. Somehow everyone is too shy to say it. And even went a bit further than expected visually and inserted the fish symbol as early Christians used to draw it (which has now become this):

Maybe that's one step too far but well, someone at least has the courage to reveal the reason behind their ad.

Kharif Beirut w rabi3 el cham (Autumn in Beirut and spring in Damascus)

Photo credit: Beirut Drive By shooting

First I joked about it, then I analyzed it marketing-wise, and now comes this! The recent commemoration of the passing away of Rafic Hariri and the ad that is connected to it.... First the ad in itself - well, at least here is some work over there as opposed to some of the blunders we have experienced in the past. Now the message: "if it wasn't for February, there wouldn't have been March, and if it wasn't for March, there wouldn't have been a spring"... Get it? If Rafic Hariri did not die on Feburary 14th, there wouldn't have been March 14th (the event and then the movement) and if it wasn't for that upheaval in Lebanon the whole Arab spring (and specifically the one in Syria) wouldn't have happened six years later (what were they doing in the missing years? How come they took six full years for the dominos to fall and for the impact to spread?)... What else? He also invented nuclear fission! People, stop overstretching the impact of something now stale and gone by.
Also, if you insist so much on a spring, remember the expression "autumn in Beirut and spring in Damascus" - so no wonder things are kicking on their side when ours has gone boring again!

ErAM-hEMA-AMEn....

The Eram ad has been a classic since the 70s - "no woman's body was exploited for the purposes of this ad" - and now here's another ad destined to go stellar for Hema (Dutch retailer for cheap goods), it features MALE model Andrej Pejic for their new push up bra and asks the clientele "if it can do this to a man, imagine what it can do to you". To use male models in female ads is way more shocking than the other way around (there are certain examples such as "Van Gils strictly for men")...

USEK student Andrea Bou Nader wins BLOM competition

USEK student Andrea Bou Nader has cashed - litteraly - the big prize of the BLOM design your own card award. Andrea scoops a debit card worth $2,500 after a jury of high caliber professionals decided it was her design that deserves the first place. Beirut/NTSC managed to get from Andrea the full development of the idea from something scribbled on a sous-plat in a restaurant to the finalized product. Congratulations!

"Yes 3 bi 1" by Abou Fouad now released on 7UPstairs

Welcome to the new release from 7UPstairs Publishing. Advertising legend Abou Fouad (from the "Yes, 3 bi 1" fame) gives us some social linguistic decoding by applying his famous "regle de trois" - one word with three meanings, three idioms to mean the same thing etc... But beware, some people might be offended by the ecclectic choice of the sentences, so read the introduction before barging in.