he Nazif government acknowledged last month that image is, on occasion, everything: General Authority for Investment and Free Zones (GAFI) chief Ziad Bahaa El-Din announced the kickoff of its first investment promotion campaign.
The news came after business leaders called, in the pages of bt’s June 2005 issue, for a Brand Egypt campaign patterned at least in part on the highly successful Irish investment promotion model. The new GAFI campaign is being run by the Dublin office of international PR powerhouse Fleishman-Hillard (FH).
The launch of the campaign ends months of speculation about whether the government would get serious about burnishing the nation’s image abroad after a sudden spate of terror attacks and persistent criticism from the United States and domestic opposition groups alike that have detracted from the overwhelmingly positive story of the economic reforms Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif has implemented since taking office just over a year ago.
In the July 2005 edition of Rumor Has It, we quoted sources in the know as claiming that five companies had been short-listed to pitch for the Ministry of Tourism’s account, while the "unified" Brand Egypt campaign linking tourism, investment and politics was said to be on hold. The same sources suggested GAFI still planned to move forward with its own investment promotion campaign.
In mid-August, Bahaa El-Din informed Fleishman-Hillard, a subsidiary of global communications giant Omnicom Group, that it had won the campaign. Formed in 1946, the St. Louis-based company now has 75 offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia and South Africa.
The GAFI campaign will be run by high-powered executives from Fleishman-Hillard’s Dublin office, founded in 1990 by John Saunders, who is now the group’s regional director for Continental Europe and Ireland. Saunders oversees FH’s operations in Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Dublin, Frankfurt, Milan, Munich, Paris, Prague and Warsaw. Later this month, Saunders will become president of ICCO, the global representative body for the PR industry.
Reached by telephone at his office in Ireland late last month, Saunders said, "I would like to think that we were selected because we demonstrated a real commitment to assisting Egypt in this area. Moreover, Fleishman-Hillard has strong international ties and relationships in the countries GAFI is targeting with the campaign."
Rada Research boss Loula Zaklama served as a consultant to GAFI in a selection process that Saunders underscored was "a competitive pitch -they invited the world’s best-known firms to present, and we were selected after a lengthy competition."
Among the countries whose investors can expect to be courted in phase one of the yearlong campaign are Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy, as well as Arab nations.
Saunders credited his team’s experience working on the so-called ‘Irish economic miracle’ with helping to tip the scales in favor of FH, explaining, "A number of us who were part of the pitch team are Irish nationals and had the experience of being part of what has happened in Ireland. Keep in mind that it was only 20 years ago that Ireland was attracting marginally less than $100 million per annum in FDI. By the turn of this millennium, that figure had grown to $20 billion a year. This was done against a background of terrorism and political unrest, so while there are significant differences between the Egyptian and Irish cases, there are also a number of important parallels."
Heading Saunders’ team is Mark Mortell, a former chairman of the Irish Tourist Board and ex-commercial director of Aer Lingus, the Irish national carrier, who has a long track record at leading Irish agencies and also worked with the Bank of Ireland Group, Mars and Guinness Ireland.
"We also have on our team David Lovegrove, a former senior executive of the Irish Industrial Development Authority who is now a well-known FDI consultant in the Middle East and Egypt, where he has done extensive work," Saunders’ continues.
The GAFI campaign will be run on the ground in Cairo by Philip Diehl, a senior consultant from FH’s Washington, DC office. The presence of Diehl, a heavy hitter and former director of the US Mint under the Clinton administration, is proof that "we’re bringing added value to Egypt in this area," Saunders underscores.
Although Saunders declined to comment, industry sources expect FH and sister company DDB will be working with Tarek Nour Communications on Egypt’s international tourism promotion campaign. It is an open secret in the nation’s capital that TNC, the local affiliate of DDB, has won the MofT’s external account.
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