I see ad agencies
We need ad agencies like I need cancer.
We are bombarded and berated with bright neon lights purloining everything from hand sanitizer through to funeral care. Yet we tolerate their existence. We even endorse them at certain points in our life.
Could advertising be some sort of reflection of humanity, that we are unable to shuffle away from?
In other words are ads part of life’s bare essentials.
As base and core to life as bread or water?
Sounds a preposterous notion but at the same time, let’s put it to the test.
Let’s go to places on planet earth that have had the most basic of luxuries stripped and exfoliated away from their existence.
Why don’t we go to Gaza.
Are there any ad agencies in Gaza?
I went to the Middle East yellow pages and after a bit of sleuthing found http://www.lemon.ps/
It’s a ‘creative house’ specializing in graphic design, print, as well as basic photo retouching. An outreach of a Turkish agency, it has a General Manager, Ahmad Jabari, and it services ad sites in Gaza, but on further exploring I found it was located in Hebron.
Not being particularly adept at middle eastern geography I checked the distance from Hebron to Gaza. 60.15km. Of which you had to navigate through Israel. No, this will not do.
Next up I switched my default google so I was now searching via the Palestinian Google. I then changed my web browser and let it translate Arabic back into some form of English (some I understood, some I didn’t). Then I tried again.
Jackpot.
Maybe.
I found the Malak Palestine Office for Public & Advertising Services. Nadia for Printing Publishing & Advertising. But these were in Ramallah. I checked the maps. Was this in Gaza? Sadly no. Even further away. 97 kilometres away and up in the West Bank.
I’ll try again. Al-bireh – home to A. Al-Azzeh Advertising & Sign Co . and Pal Life Co. for Advertising – as well as Triangle Inc. http://www.triangleinc.net/ that actually looked half decent. Where was this? Seems this too was in the West Bank. This is not to negate the fact that I’m sure all do ads which are displayed in Gaza – but I wanted to find the real McCoy, an ad agency that works on the edge of a knife edge, a place where antibiotics are in short supply and children get bombed on the way to the shops for a loaf of bread.
When all was lost through my search, I stumbled across an entry:
Tasawaq Co. for Marketing, Services & General Tarding
Hmeid Crossroad
Al-naser,
GAZA.
Tel: 08-2896614
Website: http://tasawaq.ps
I did it. I found what could well be the only ad agency in Gaza. Where life is, ads exist. And they do General Tarding as well.
When I worked in Saudi Arabia I heard there was a job going for a creative based in Iraq. It seemed in 2010, there was money to be made from it too. From memory they were willing to pay $20,000 USD tax free a month. I was tempted. Sadly, they weren’t. A guy who couldn’t speak Arabic yet alone look it. Madness. “We don’t want your blood on our hands.” It was a deal breaker. I sloped back to my desk in Riyadh.