“I am not a private man. Everybody in the industry knows what Raja Trad stands for.”
Maybe, but the CEO of the Leo Burnett Group of Companies in the Mediterranean is ever so slightly more guarded when the red light of Communicate’s voice recorder goes on. His tone and attitude change faintly, signaling our transition from polite small talk to on-the-record professional discussion. “My personal life is not the property of the public,” says Trad. “But I am a passionate man and I always believe that without passion you will not be able to achieve a lot in life. I strongly believe in my people and that my success comes from their success.”
When it comes to talking about his long career at Leo Burnett and the energy invested in his people, Trad is anything but private. He credits the Leo Burnett ethos as his biggest motivator and the reason he has stuck with the agency since 1981, when he joined as a regional account director on Philip Morris.
“Since I first joined this agency, I realized that there is a culture that would suit my principles and my beliefs,” says Trad. “At the time I joined, Charles Homsy was the CEO and he was my mentor, and together we started the long journey of building a company that really has a culture and principles. It’s not just a commercial, hit and run venture; we were very serious to build a place where people can belong, build their careers, and stick to Leo Burnett.”
Trad certainly stuck to Leo Burnett. After graduating from the American University of Beirut with a degree in Public Administration & Political Science, Trad joined Young & Rubicam in 1978 as an account executive on Procter & Gamble, but left for Athens after the war in Lebanon escalated. When Young & Rubicam Middle East was closed down in 1980, Trad moved back to Lebanon and briefly worked on the media side with Annahar and Reader’s Digest. “It was clear to me when I joined the media side that I was made for the advertising side,” says Trad. “Mainly because the media was more of sales and marketing, and I prefer to be in a place where creativity and strategic planning plays a bigger role.”

ALL CHANGE. The advertising industry has changed dramatically since Trad first entered it. “When I first joined, everything was with one agency: media, planning and buying, creativity, strategic planning, and so on,” he says. “So when we first started, it was about writing a press ad, a television commercial, and a radio commercial, and placing some outdoor signs. Today this isn’t the case; today it’s what I call a surround sound system. Clients are expecting us to give them a total communications solution.”
Trad says that advertising agencies now act as consultants to clients, and that their job is to partner with clients in order to add value. “It’s about connecting with people, it’s about creativity transforming human behavior, and that takes a set of skills; some of those can be built, some can be refined, and some people can be trained, but from the start, you have to have this curiosity and this passion, otherwise you cannot succeed,” he says.
And if there’s one thing Trad says he’d change within the advertising industry, it’s how much is invested in training the people who are now acting as consultants to clients. “The biggest asset for anyone of us is our people, and we need to invest in our people in terms of training,” he explains. “Agencies also need to be aware of the changes and move immediately with the transformations that are taking place. Because if they do not transform to become the agencies of today – I do not call it the future anymore because it’s happening today – and if we do not have people that are able to think traditional, offline and online, new media and old media, I think a lot of people will be left behind. So I call on everybody for a transformation.”
With the recession facing the advertising industry, and the issue of unpaid receivables plaguing it, Trad says that, while some clients may be justified in cutting back on advertising, others are only hiding behind the recession, and still consider advertising as a cost and not an investment. But he says the biggest, and most continuous, challenge facing the industry is finding talent.
“We need talented people, not only in traditional media, but in today’s media, and they’re not available all the time because it’s still all coming up,” Trad says.
The Leo Burnett network seemingly doesn’t lack talent. Despite the recession and the myriad of problems facing the industry, 2009 shaped up to be the network’s “strongest” year according to Trad, even if the start of 2010 hasn’t been as good to it. “In 2009, we were named network of the year at the MENA Cristals, we gathered three Grands Prix at the Lynx, we got a Golden Drum, and a Gold Lion in Cannes, and our Khede Kasra campaign was named the most awarded media campaign globally,” he says. “But when you go for competitions, you’re not going to score at the same level every time. I had higher expectations from the 2010 Dubai Lynx, but at the end of the day we accept it. I don’t think the performance was bad, as we won two Grands Prix, but I wanted more, and I want more. This is not the end, it’s the beginning of the challenge, and we are not sore losers. Next year, I know that we will do better.”

VICTORY SPEECH. Trad says that winning awards is not the be-all and end-all of Leo Burnett’s strategy, but that the network strives to make award-winning work that is relevant to its clients. “When you come back from any battle in life, you have to re-strategize, but we will not do it just for the sake of winning awards,” he says. “We will do it in order to win in the marketplace with our clients.”
Clearly not a sore loser, and very obviously a man with a plan, Trad is also the worrying-type, apparently. It’s an outlook that has helped ensure he has no regrets. “I always say that in this business, the minute you stop worrying is the minute when the problems will start,” he says. “I always believe that the devil is in the details, and I want things to be delivered up to the expectations of clients, so I involve myself in details. But I know if I tell you this, you will not believe me: I do not have regrets.”
And the only thing he demands of the industry is to “judge Raja Trad through results.”
“I don’t like to talk about myself; let the industry talk about who is who. The most important reference for me is my people first, then my clients, then the industry at large.”
And his family, of course. “My wife is a business woman, so she’s very understanding when it comes to the demanding job that I’m in, as we both travel a lot. We’ve been happily married for 31 years, so there’s an understanding, and I always believe in a balance between personal life and work.”
And that is about as personal as Trad gets with Communicate, give or take a few things, such as his passion for travel and his regular gym habit. And the fact that, if he weren’t CEO of Leo Burnett in the Mediterranean, he would have been an interior designer. We bet the industry didn’t know that.