Alain Shoucair
Regional ECD - Drive Dentsu
It was a different ball game. Big clients, big budgets, million dollars productions… Crazy times.
How and why I joined the ad industry…
I started at Leo Burnett as a trainee in 1991 upon a teacher’s invitation to do a summer internship while I was still at university. I guess I was so good at the photocopy machine at the time, they decided to pay me the internship and make me an offer to stay with them, which I did for two years as a part-time art director. Great people. Great work. Great times. Great beginning.
The one thing I have always loved and still do about this profession…
Finding creative solutions to problems or coming up with ideas of course. People outside the industry think our job is the coolest ever. It is indeed, but they don’t know how stressful and frustrating it can get sometimes. Finding a great idea, selling it to the client, crafting it and watching it come to life, is always exciting and very rewarding. I guess it’s the one thing that keeps you going on and on in this business.
The good old things about the ad business back in the 1990s, which no longer exist today…
Everything was much simpler back then. A full-fledged campaign consisted of TV, print, radio and in the worst case some additional ambient and BTL stuff. Layouts were rough sketches, so it was much more challenging to finalise them, and there was a certain charm in working with films before the digital age. Our job ended when it was on air or in print. Today, the social media revolution and new technologies have changed everything. There are so many things to think of and so many channels to consider. We have to be more entertaining, more visible, more competitive, much faster and less expensive. And to top it all off, anyone has the right to judge you and comment on your work in real time. But even though things seem a little harder these days, advertising has always been about challenges, so bring it on!
My ‘Wonder Years’ in advertising…
were the first four years I worked at Grey from 2003 till 2007, as I had the chance to meet some of the most talented people of the industry, and to create and produce some of my finest works.
The craziest story to come out of all my time of service…
Just for the anecdote in 2005, our CEO Philippe Skaff had brought folding beds to the creative department because we were practically spending every weekend there. It was the year I rented a chalet in Faraya but only got the chance to use it for New Year’s Eve, which makes it by far the most expensive investment I ever made. But it was also the year we won 14 pitches in a row. Asian Games, Qtel, Alarabiya… to name a few. So it was a different ball game. Big clients, big budgets, million dollars productions, travelling to far away countries, discovering new places and cultures and meeting interesting people… crazy times. On a much sadder note but just as crazy, I was devastated in end of 2005 by the assassination of Gebran Tueini who had been my client for two years. Paradoxically it fell on me to conceive his commemoration film; ‘Voice of Freedom’ became the piece of work I’m most proud of, maybe because it’s much more than an ad .
People outside the industry think our job is the coolest ever.