If you’re wondering why Hezbollah’s “Divine Victory” billboards sprouting across Beirut are in English, it’s because the organization’s P.R. blitz is targeting Western journalists. Newsweek talked to Mohammad Kawtharani, who works at the Beirut firm handling Hezbollah’s ad campaign:
Part of the Islamists’ new strategy: a $100,000 advertising blitz called “Divine Victory,” featuring more than 600 billboards around Beirut and southern Lebanon touting Hizbullah’s exploits during the 34-day war. (Cleverly, the slogan is almost a literal translation of Nasrallah’s last name.) The panels line the road to Beirut from the city’s international airport, and the new buy includes slogans like “America and its tools have been defeated”—in English. Last week the group expanded the campaign, adding dozens more billboards, and Nasrallah himself made an appearance at a massive rally in Beirut, standing in front of one (pictured)….
One of the striking things about Hizbullah’s campaign is that many of the billboards around Lebanon are in English, crafted explicitly for foreign TV cameras. Some of Hizbullah’s six-man creative team, like Kawtharani himself, studied at the American University of Beirut and are fluent enough to employ a more subtly effective English idiom—the MADE IN THE U.S.A. banners, for example.
