It’s easy to become complacent and to resist change when you’re a civil service worker laboring deep within a government bureaucracy. Paychecks come regularly and on time, responsibility is diffuse, and it is often quite easy to coast along for years with little effort besides fighting rush hour traffic every morning and evening during the workweek. Taoufik Habaieb—a native of Tunisia, who worked in various senior positions as a spokesman and public relations specialist for Tunisian government ministries, and then at the Tunisian Embassy at Kuwait City—did not fit the common stereotype of the complacent government worker. True, he was comfortable in his position as a government employee, but his job required him to be very active in the media and among different interest groups—promoting Tunisian technical cooperation among the Gulf countries one day, and publicizing social welfare programs the next. That is, until the Iraqi military swept into Kuwait on August 2, 1990, and changed Taoufik’s life forever.

Although Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait didn’t last long—about six months—Taoufik was left with a potentially life-changing decision: go back to work for the Tunisian government in Tunisia, or consider other options. Says Taoufik, “You know, when you are coming back from a war like the Gulf War—when you see the country divided, when you see a whole state, a big state divided—you have to think about this and you want to do something. My choices were to go back to work with the civil service or to go abroad to join the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank, or a similar organization. I wanted to do something that I knew I could do very well, and I was thinking that maybe this is the last chance for me to do more with my life than just survive. It’s a very easy choice just to survive—the more difficult choice is to do more than just survive. The best solution for me was to try and to go on my own—to go back home to Tunisia and to start my own business.”

And that is exactly what Taoufik Habaieb did, founding his company—TH Com, a marketing and advertising agency—in Tunis, Tunisia in January 1991. From the beginning, Habaieb’s vision for the company was to introduce new marketing and advertising tools and techniques to an area of the world that was still wedded to the old tools and techniques. Says Taoufik, “After the war I came back to Tunis and chose to set up my own company here. I decided that my company would specialize in advertising and public relations activities because I’m a graduate of the Institut Francais de Presse—the French Press Institute—in Paris where I studied communication, advertising, and public relations. This is my skill, and the best solution I found coming back from Kuwait City in 1990 was to start my own company. At this time, television advertising was a very new concept, and the new marketing tools and techniques weren’t known in Tunisia. There were no international advertising networks, and we had to educate the media and our clients—to educate everybody—about how the new approaches to advertising and marketing worked worldwide would benefit them. It was a real challenge.”

While the work presented intellectual challenges for Taoufik, opening his own business offered its own unique challenges, starting with the fact that he no longer had the security of a cushy government job to rely on. Says Habaieb, “My first big step was to leave a long-term contract with the government—to leave this warranted monthly salary and the social welfare guarantee. This was quite a risk for me because at the end of the month, I wasn’t sure that I would get the money I needed to pay my house rent, fuel for my car, or anything. I had no security and, in addition, at this time my wife didn’t work. When I first started my company, I didn’t have any income whatsoever. I contacted a good friend of mine and asked if I could provide my services to his business. He told me that he could definitely use my services, but that they could not afford a lot of money—just a small amount. I accepted, and with the US$300 I received, I had to pay my telephone bill, fuel for my car, and all the spending for my house for my family. It was really the minimum to survive, just to eat with my family. But I accepted because I was sure I could get more.”

Taoufik started his business on a shoestring out of his house—no fancy high-rise offices, no marble-lined hallways, no receptionist or security guard. “I started TH Com in the kitchen of my house and, after three months, I moved into a room in a smaller part of the house. I didn’t have a computer, and I didn’t have a desk—just two chairs to start. I was doing everything by myself, working at minimum 14 or 15 hours every day. I even worked on weekends, moving, moving, moving—and relying on my capacities.”

Despite the fact that he had only one contract, and no guarantee of future work, Taoufik was confident that he would succeed. “Sure, there was no security, no guarantee that I would get more work. I had no long-term contracts—not even any medium-term contracts. But I was confident of the future because I was happy in my job, and I knew I would work hard to get new clients. And once they had an opportunity to work with me, they would try to get me more jobs.”
With a wife and two young children to care for, Taoufik couldn’t afford to wait for success to find him—he sought it out with every ounce of his being. According to Habaieb, “I pitched my ideas to the Chamber of Commerce to give me some exposure and visibility. I pitched to real estate companies. I pitched to insurance companies. I pitched to all kinds of companies. I didn’t have any other choice because I wanted to maximize my chances of getting a contract—any contract. I couldn’t target just small, medium, or large clients. As a hunter, I was hunting for any opportunity and saying that maybe it will work.”

In time, all of Taoufik’s hard work began to pay off. The clients came—at first local, Tunisian businesses—but soon large, multinationals that wanted to promote their products in Tunisia followed. Landing these sterling clients became an important milestone in the company’s history, and it built the foundation for its future growth. Today, TH Com employs 20 people (including his wife Leila, who joined the company as chief financial officer in 1996) and has annual revenues in excess of US$4 million a year. Says Habaieb, “When you push a client’s brand in a very high position, you begin to build their equity and they start to trust you. In my experience, this process takes a minimum of three or four years. One of the things that was very important to our company was that I obtained some high-visibility international clients such as Procter & Gamble (P&G) and Pepsi Cola. Prospective clients saw this and said to themselves, ‘If this guy is trusted by P&G or PepsiCo, it means that he is clever and he can be trusted.’ I think this international credibility was a very important part of our success. Even though I was a small business at the time, and relatively new, the people from P&G and PepsiCo chose me to handle their advertising accounts because they knew that I was professional and hard working.”

In the extremely competitive advertising industry, last year’s great idea is this year’s old news. Change is extremely rapid in the industry, and companies have to work hard to stay ahead of this ongoing change—or even just to keep up. According to Taoufik, the secret is keeping a very close eye on the latest trends in qualitative and quantitative research and technology, along with no small amount of good old-fashioned customer service. Says Habaieb, “We are using Web advertisements, we are using new marketing strategies, and we promote our clients through music events and shows. One thing on the horizon is electronic public relations. It’s very new, and we are doing that. We are now developing a great campaign for banks about the advantages of online checking and online banking, using television and print ads that are having a lot of impact on consumers. Our job is to deliver great marketing pieces—great campaigns—to reduce costs, and to focus on our client’s perfection. By doing this, we make the client really happy and gain their loyalty.”

Habaieb continues, “For example, two years ago we were handling LG Electronics, a very large home appliance company from Korea that is now very fashionable in Europe. We had handled the company’s advertising budget for 10 years, but two years ago we had to close it, meaning that we were no longer the agency in charge of the PR activities for this client. This outcome came about because of a mistake that one my staff members made. I tried very hard to win back the client—to rebuild their confidence and to get a second chance to handle the LG account. As it turned out, LG had moved to another agency after us, and had a very bad experience. They gave us another chance and now we are working very hard for LG. This is the only way to keep the long-term loyalty of a client.”

The advertising industry is a dog-eat-dog world, and because your work is very public—your ads run on the television and in magazines and newspapers for everyone to see—if you fail, you also fail very publicly. You might not even be formally told by your client that they have switched to another agency. It’s not uncommon to be working on a client’s account one day, then open up the newspaper the next day and see advertising for your client done by another agency. When this happens, you know you’ve got a problem. Throughout it all, Taoufik knows that there’s one guarantee in the advertising industry: things will always change.

When TH Com loses an account, Taoufik and his team do everything in their power to recapture it. The competition within the industry is simply too great to take any client for granted, and Taoufik knows that clients change their minds all the time. “The first thing we do is to try to understand why it happened—where is the mistake and, if it was our mistake, then how can we go back and rebuild the confidence of the client at every level. Not just top-level management, but how can you get the loyalty of everyone in the client’s organization? You do that with better ideas, better proposals, and by working hard, hard, hard. Within a month, I tell their CEO, ‘I want to schedule a meeting with you and with your staff. I am coming with very strong research, and with new ideas, new concepts, and new solutions. You have a right to break our contract, and maybe we made some mistakes. That’s fine. But now I am coming back with a new proposal.’ When your clients see that you are working very hard and that you are investing your own money in research and coming back with strong concepts, they will many times give you another chance. When that happens, you have to catch the opportunity.”

Taoufik knows that he can’t run this business all by himself. He has therefore worked very hard to make his agency a model employer—one with a very progressive leadership style and the kind of place that attracts the most talented and creative employees. According to Taoufik, “You first have to keep your current staff members by training them and helping them to learn new skills and become more professional. You next have to catch and recruit new talent. You need them—you need to recruit passionate and creative new talent to regenerate your staff and to keep up with new trends within society. New employees can also bring with them the best tools and practices of marketing worldwide. You’re always benchmarking yourself against other firms worldwide. You’re developing relationships with worldwide advertising networks, and actively participating in international advertising seminars, congresses, and events. You are trying to get the best new practices. You are constantly training and improving the skills of your people—bringing in top trainers from around the world, with knowledge of the latest techniques, tools, and trends—to be able to offer new, targeted and customized solutions to your clients, and to establish a partnership with them. You are spending their money and they have to get the best return.”

Taoufik continues, “We offer our employees a great opportunity because they are working first of all in excellent working conditions. We are in a new, high-tech building, we offer flexible work hours, IT tools, and the best clients—very famous brand-name companies. Our employees are very well respected by our clients, and within the community. When they say they are working for TH Com, people know our employees are working for a great company. The second thing is that our employees are working with the top decision makers in the country—government officials or top executives in private companies—and they are very proud to work with them and for them. When they go to make a presentation to a client, chances are that it will be to a very high-level decision-maker, such as the client’s CEO.”

But, ultimately, it all comes down to providing clients with the very best products and services—quickly, consistently, and for a fair price. Says Taoufik, “I think the key is that you make them feel that we are giving them the best advice—they can trust you and rely on you anytime, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. For example, yesterday and the day before were holidays in Tunisia. Regardless, I was completely available to my clients during the holiday, and I am always reachable, 24 hours a day. When the client knows that they can reach you, that they can rely on you—even if they need you to come to their offices at 9 or 10 o’clock in evening, or to manage a crisis or to do something—and you are always there for them, and you do that very properly and very professionally, this builds immense customer loyalty. It is the added value that they are paying for.”

“And if you are also completely ethical, and you can show him what are your costs and how your fees are structured—very properly and you never, never ask for something else—then you will have a client for life. For example, although I could ask one of my clients to give me one of their appliances for free, or at a great discount, when I recently bought a room air conditioner, I bought it from a store and I paid cash. I never asked my client for anything. When I go on a business trip abroad with a client, I pay my own airfare, my hotel, and my meals, and then bill the expenses to my account after I return to the office. I never share social activities with them—we go to meetings and that’s it, very professional. This is transparency and it is the kind of ethical approach that builds client loyalty that will last for many years.”