Run, run Rammal

Run, run Rammal

By Marylou Andrew

For the last 10 to 15 years, Karim Rammal has been a permanent fixture on the Pakistani advertising scene. His recent exit from JWT – formed by his family almost 45 years ago as Asiatic Advertising and which was to become Pakistan’s first multinational advertising agency – marks the end of an era.

Being the dynamo that he is, surely Rammal had a plan of action when he left JWT?

He says that he didn’t, but I don’t buy it for a second. He laughs genially – his geniality is a big part of his charm – and says that between running JWT Pakistan, keeping an eye on JWT Afghanistan (an agency in the establishment of which his role was instrumental) and commuting between Karachi and New York, he literally had no time to look for a new job.

Even as my scepticism continues to get the better of me, I reason with myself that when you are Karim Rammal, you probably don’t need to look for a job, the jobs come to you.

And that is more or less what happened – he was offered the chance to run the Russian outfit of a global ad agency, to go to India, and even an opportunity in Dubai’s marketing/communication space. But in typical Rammal fashion, he took the road less travelled and set up his own consultancy in the Big Apple.

“When I eventually started meeting head-hunters,” he says, “they looked at my experience and exposure and told me that as I had such a huge Rolodex, I should just monetise it!”

An interesting idea, and trust the enterprising Rammal to convert pages of names and numbers into boundless business opportunities. With absolutely no business plan (which is ironic considering he has pioneered many for other people’s companies), he hit the ground running and established Unicorn Consulting in June 2008.

Unicorn is close to his heart – for starters he loves horses:

“Ferrari stole my ideal horse,” he tells me, “so I decided to take a horse and stick a horn in it.”

The light-hearted banter and the lack of business plan are just a front; a front for a serious business which you could be forgiven for thinking is related to advertising.

In fact there are two different facets to Unicorn – it is a platform where people with domain expertise in areas as diverse as IT or communications can come up as consultants and transact; but it is also a network of deal partners situated in countries all the way from Europe to the Far East. Thus Rammal has effectively expanded the scope of his work even further across the world, if such a thing were possible.

While the business of consultancy is as different from advertising as chalk and cheese, Rammal seems to have taken to it with relative ease. His attitude holds no traces of regret about leaving a company and business that he was born into, and there is good reason for it.

He explains that when Asiatic Advertising was bought by JWT in 2000-01, he was on the verge of terminating his nine-year professional association with the agency until he was asked by JWT to run the Pakistan offices. And although he won’t admit it, Rammal obviously feels that being asked to head a multinational agency was recognition of the fact that he was an advertising professional in his own right, and not just a second or third generation agency owner.

Proud as he was of becoming a rather young CEO, he clearly never meant for it to be a lifelong commitment, nor was he interested in running a one-man show.

“In the last four years, I structured the company into teams so that the right people were running the show at the senior levels. In the process, I may have worked myself out of a job, but I’m very proud of it because the last thing I wanted to be was a control freak.”

Although he has been able to leave the ridiculously demanding (and arguably heady) business of advertising, his schedule is still as chock-a-block as ever. He has recently been to Dubai and China; has plans to go to Europe, has interests in the Far East, and the list goes on.

This may come as bad news to his wife. Although Marianne Rammal is no stranger to a busy schedule – her area of expertise is CSR and she has been involved with the Clinton Global Initiative, Roshan Telecom in Afghanistan and the Afghan orphans in Pakistan – she did expect a change of pace in her husband’s schedule as he settled into this own business.

“It’s been crazy,” says Rammal of his busy itinerary, looking every inch like a man who is thoroughly pleased with his life.

“However, since I started Unicorn, I have been able spend six whole weeks in one city (New York) for the first time in my life, and my wife is just loving it.”

Not that travelling has ever been a chore for Rammal, in fact outside work he is passionate about exploring new cities, especially if they happen to have beaches attached to them.

“I love the water; put me under a palm tree and I’m all set.”

But island travel is just one of many plans on the cards. Rammal confesses that for the last several years, he and Marianne made an active decision not to have children, but they now feel it is now time to settle down.

And will he miss advertising?

“Advertising is in my blood,” he replies. “I haven’t given it up, I just took up a new challenge, but I have kept the lines open with WPP/JWT.”

Rammal’s future seems to be full of opportunity, but also of uncertainty, and while some people might find this disconcerting, he thrives on it.

“I love it,” he smiles.

“I don’t know where the next project will take me but I know there will be a next project. All my life I’ve been making friends and building contacts, and this is a direct result of all that networking.”

First published in the September-October 2008 issue of Aurora.