In a 拢14m push aimed at persuading consumers to demand the beer in their local, agencies have been hired and fired apace. Landor Associates has been drafted in for packaging design, Initials for direct marketing and Manning Gottlieb OMD for media, all in the space of a few short months. Just about the only agency that Ghali has stuck with is Joshua G2, which has developed an 拢8.4m ad campaign for the brand, spanning cinema, outdoor, press, digital and TV.
The campaign introduces three animated 'everyman' characters exchanging banter in a pub. Ghali says the strapline, 'Now you're talking', works both on an emotional and functional level; drinking beer in a pub is essentially a convivial activity, but Cobra is also 'less gassy than other beers, so doesn't bloat you or get in the way of conversation'.
For authenticity, the TV ads, which break in September, feature unscripted dialogue from a real-life 'blokish' threesome who were holed up together for three hours with a few suggested conversation topics and a supply of Cobra.
Ghali says he wants the activity to transform Cobra from 'ethnic, quirky and complicated' to a positioning that is 'modern, exotic and cosmopolitan'. However, he stresses that the marketing drive is not about abandoning the brand's heritage; the ethnic restaurant sector is still important, and will support its move into the mainstream.
Ghali, 38, was brought up in Egypt, but moved to England at the age of 15 when his Egyptian father died and his English mother decided to return home. He admits that swapping Cairo for the South Midlands town of Redditch in the early 80s came as something of a culture shock.
'The first couple of years were quite difficult in terms of adjusting,' he says. 'The way I coped with it was just to get my head down and work to get good grades and go to university.' He is still in contact with friends and family from Cairo, and was recently called upon to act as best man for one of them, which involved giving the traditional speech in Arabic. Despite being fluent in the language, he says he has forgotten some of the colloquialisms and found the prospect daunting, but hopes it was well-received. 'They were laughing. I just hope it was with me and not at me,' he says.
Ghali's CV reveals a career path that reads like a roll-call of international FMCG companies. After spells at Unilever, Reckitt Benckiser and Kraft, he joined PepsiCo, where he oversaw the integration of the Tropicana juice brand into the business, and was given the task of doubling the brand's sales in three years by Martin Glenn, the then PepsiCo president.
Looking back on their work together, Glenn, now chief executive of Birds Eye, reveals that Ghali's nickname was Sven - a moniker that came about because 'his face was inscrutable, and it went nicely with his surname, making him Svengali'.
Ghali, says Glenn, 'quietly got on and did things'. He adds: 'He wasn't to be messed with, as Coke found when they failed to relaunch Minute Maid for the third time. Will used to joke that the "minute" prefix was a good summation of the brand's potential'.
Ghali hit his Tropicana sales target ahead of time, so when he got a call from Cobra founder Karan Bilimoria, who was on the hunt for an FMCG marketer with a strong pedigree, he was already thinking about a fresh challenge, and jumped at the chance. He confesses that he has enjoyed 'getting away from the slowness of big corporations'.
Last week, Bilimoria revealed that he is prepared to consider selling the business to a bigger brewer. In the event of such a deal, Ghali's efforts to take Cobra to the masses will no doubt prove a critical factor in the company's fortunes.
CAREER HISTORY
1992-1996: Graduate trainee, rising to regional group brand manager, Unilever
1997-1998: Product manager, Kraft Jacobs Suchard
1998-1999: Marketing manager, Benckiser
2000-2001: Category marketing manager, rising to marketing director, Scandinavia, Copenhagen, Denmark, Reckitt Benckiser
2002-2004: Marketing director, Nutricia
2004-2007: Marketing director UK and Ireland (non-carbonated beverages), PepsiCo
2007-present: Marketing director, Cobra Beer.