SHATTERED DREAMS AND BROKEN HEARTS

CENTRED ON THE AREAS CLOSEST TO THE PORT OF BEIRUT, THE CITY’S ADVERTISING AND MEDIA COMMUNITY WAS HIT HARD BY

THE EXPLOSION

THAT DEVASTATED THE CITY ON

AUGUST 4. ARABAD INVESTIGATES

THE HUMAN AND MATERIAL COST OF THE BLAST, THE EFFORTS TO REBUILD, AND ASKS WHETHER THERE’S ANY HOPE FOR THE FUTURE.

I have always had a plan to open a branch of Mink in the region. The August 4th explosion simply fast-tracked WKDW SODQ :H KDYH RIÀFLDOO\ RSHQHG LQ WKH 8$( and we are currently scouting for a new creative space WR FDOO KRPH IRU WKH WHDP RXU FOLHQWV DQG IULHQGV 2XU creative kitchen and hub will forever remain in Bei-rut. 5HJDUGOHVV RI LWV ÁDZV QR RWKHU FLW\ LQ WKH ZRUOG FDQ EH as invigorating and as inspiring as Beirut. Moe Minkara, creative director and founder, Mink

At roughly 5.53pm on August 4, Moe Minkara and the team at marketing communications agency Mink left their office overlooking the Port of Beirut. It was the first time since the agency had moved to Saifi that they left work before 6pm. Everyone knows what happened next. At 6.08pm, an estimated 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored in the port’s hangar 12 exploded, causing at least

200 deaths, 6,500 injuries, and displacing more than

300,000 people. “There are no words that can properly describe my reaction to the explosion,” says Minkara, Mink’s founder and creative director. “As anyone would, when the explosion took place all I could do at the time was gather up the strength to rush to my family. I honestly didn’t think about the office until later that evening when I saw our office building on the news. It was at that point that I realised that Mink got badly hurt. I tried reaching that night with no luck. The very next morning at dawn, I

2019/2020 was one of the toughest years ever. Yet we managed to keep our business up and running. We have solid FOLHQWV ZH IRFXVVHG PRUH RQ RXU UH JLRQDO FOLHQWV DQG ZH KDYH an amazing team. I would like to take this opportuni-ty to praise WKHLU WDOHQW WKHLU XQGLYLGHG FRPPLWPHQW WKHLU FRXUDJH ² working be-yond the call of duty. We are particularly grateful for their uninterrupted standard of H[FHOOHQFH UHVLOLHQFH DQG ÀJKWLQJ spirit. This is the Leo spirit. Nada Abisaleh, managing director, Leo Burnett Beirut

saw the damage first hand and it has haunted me since.”

Not everyone got out in time. At M&C Saatchi, 31 employees were still at the agency’s offices in Sursock Street at the time of the explosion. Of those, 26 were injured, some of them seriously, including HR manager

Rania Feghaly and Shermine Hraoui, the agency’s business development director. Ten guests were also wounded. At the other end of Sursock Street, three members of Spirit were caught in the explosion, one of whom was badly injured and is still recovering.

In Armenia Street, 20 employees of Omnicom Media Group

(OMG) had not yet left the AYA Tower. Five of them were injured and a further four wounded at home. Of the seven people who remained at the offices of Leo Burnett in Achrafieh, four were injured, including Youssef Naaman, chief operating officer of Publicis Communications Levant. “I don’t want to imagine what would have happened if we were not operating from home due to Covid-19,” says Nada

Abisaleh, managing director of Leo Burnett Beirut. At D-beirut, all of the building’s tenants, including Hopscotch, had agreed to work from home the night before the explosion thanks to Covid-19 disinfection work. A decision that in all likelihood saved their lives.

“Glass, concrete, wood, heavy steel doors, expensive art pieces and designer furniture, all gone,” says Omar Nasreddine, the agency’s chief executive and managing partner. “We even had large shards of glass pierce the concrete and become wedged half-way through the walls.”

Walid Kanaan, chief creative officer at TBWA\RAAD, who was on a conference call at home overlooking Beirut at the time of the explosion, began checking on his staff and their families in the immediate aftermath of the blast. None had been at their offices at the entrance to Gemmayze Street, nor had the employees of Interesting Times, Joe Fish or Stro’berry Advertising been at work, thanks to Covid-19 and a policy of working from home. Yet some employees, including those of Publicis Media, Impact BBDO and TBWA\RAAD, were injured in their place of residence.

As the scale of the disaster unfolded, it became clear that the most affected agencies were those located in Mar Mikhael, Gemmayze and Achrafieh

(three of the closest areas to the port aside from Karantina and Downtown), while homes and businesses up to 10 kilometres

from the epicentre were either destroyed or badly damaged.

“When I was walking up the stairs the day after the explosion, I remember thinking to myself that maybe it’s just some broken glass here and there,” says Rami

Traboulsi, founder and creative director at Joe Fish. “Once I reached the door, which was broken in half and open all the way, I saw our once beautiful offices destroyed, grey, gloomy and sad. Our beautiful offices were gone. It felt like a shattered dream.” A similar feeling swept over the staff of Mink, who returned to their office on Pasteur Street the day after the explosion, despite being told to stay at home. “With tears and disbelief in their eyes they dug through the rubble in search of their personal belongings,” says Minkara. “But mainly they all showed up to say goodbye. And even though all of us are filled with gratitude that we were not there at 6.08pm, we are also drenched in guilt that others were. Friends, neighbours, clients, the guardian of the building that we considered part of us. They were all there and they were all affected.”

Minkara salvaged what he could from the wreckage, including the agency’s server, which had been saved by a set of bulky bookcases, and immediately began working from his apartment. “That office meant everything to me personally as I built it from scratch. When I first started Mink,