Voice of Dubai: Meet the composer heard by millions but known by few

When Ahmad Haffar is not asking people to mind their baggage at the airport or turn their phones off at the opera, he's recording advertising earworms for Insurance Market and Service My Car

Lebanese composer Ahmad Haffar is hard work at Mindloop Studios in Dubai Media City. Creating a new jingle, it begins with surging drums before segueing into a euphoric Middle Eastern string section and ending with a rapid vocal catch-cry of a large international hospitality brand.

It is seven seconds long and Haffar, 29, says there is still some editing to do. “It needs to encapsulate the intended message, energy and aspirations of the brand or it just becomes a piece of aural wallpaper, which is the worst thing that you can do," he adds.

The business of jingles

Welcome to the world of sonic branding, where art and commerce co-exist and miniature melodies are a big business. Dating back to the early 1920s, the concept began in the US with the popular emergence of the radio and the use of advertising jingles. It also partly marked the golden age of Hollywood where large film studios used sound signatures, such as MGM's famous lion roar and Warner Bros' triumphant fanfare, as powerful marketing tools.

The digital revolution at the turn of the century brought audio markers to personal computers and the internet, resulting in what is now considered the holy grail of sonic branding: the Windows 95 start-up jingle with its six-second keyboard flourish by British composer Brian Eno. The fact it remains memorable decades after the programme became obsolete shows the power of a craft blending market research with an almost counter-intuitive approach to composition.

Social media and communication technology advancements have resulted in the creation of more audio platforms where brands can make a presence, meaning Haffar’s latest mini-piece is part of a wider puzzle.

“There will be different versions of this theme,” he explains. “There is the main piece which could be 10 minutes or longer and used for events and presentations, then there are smaller pieces, like the one you heard, for radio or social media. Then there is the one for the phone, which people hear when they are put on hold. They are all variations of the main theme which all send the same message of what the brand is about.”

Haffar’s biggest hits

As one of the region’s leading sonic brand strategists, Haffar’s near decade-long portfolio is full of the quirks and, even beauty, of the trade. Current and former clients include Etisalat, Dubai Police, Saudi German Hospital and the Dubai Festival City district. He claims his “biggest hits” are the jingles for Dubai companies Insurance Market and Service My Car, both renowned for their flamboyant operatic male vocals.

This is not an exaggeration, as these jingles are recognisable even to those without a car or a clear memory of where they were heard. Haffar nods in satisfaction and affirms another tip of the trade. “Sometimes I just want to annoy you,” he says. “I designed them to physically annoy people and that’s just one way to create the memory recall I am looking for.”

Meanwhile, he also created the theme for the UAE's vaccination trial programme, dubbed 4 Humanity, that features ambient, soothing synths.

"That is one of the most rewarding projects because it was released during the early stages of Covid in 2020," he recalls. "There was a lot of anxiety at the time and this theme is what people heard when they are on the phone enquiring about Covid information. I knew that some people were scared and I am so happy to be able to create something that can help them calm down and know that they are being taken care of.”

That emotional high point can sometimes be the result of painstaking research that takes up to six months, according to Haffar. He often works on up to eight different campaigns simultaneously in his studio. "What you are talking about at the end of the day are emotions," he says. "So it's about asking questions to the brand about what kind of emotions they want the sonics to convey.

"Being memorable is not enough. More helpful answers, for example, would be that they want to be fresh, risk-takers, energetic or luxurious. These are things that give me some kind of reference and the work really begins from there."

The voice of Dubai

If it’s not the music then it's Haffar's impressive voice-over range. He can go from a dulcet baritone to an almost helium-fuelled peppiness. His wide range of credits has made him a soundtrack to the daily lives of people in Dubai. He is the widely reported Arabic voice of the Dubai Metro and can also be heard at Dubai Airports and Dubai Opera. Haffar’s voice was also a constant presence during Expo Dubai 2020 inviting people to the sprawling site.

He recalls landing his first voice-over gig for Dubai Airport in 2019 as a way to merely boost his fledgling studio. "The business wasn't doing that well financially then and I wanted to find a way to keep the money within the company,” he says. “So instead of hiring outside voices, I would do it and wouldn't pay myself. That money would go straight into developing the studio.”

Haffar, who offers intensive 18-week voice-over lessons at his On The Field Academy in Dubai's Al Quoz, says the process of developing his repertoire was more a psychological than a physical process. It required him to dig into his emotions and find the most honest vocal representation for each brand, before finessing it over and over again in the studio.

That sense of confidence and congeniality heard when he asks guests to put their phones away at Dubai Opera or mind their luggage at Dubai airports stems from being a natural collaborator. Born in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, Haffar is a high-school dropout who found his sense of self by being a prodigious musician adept at the piano, guitar and drums in his early teens.

When he was 18, he already had stints in the backing bands of Lebanese folk singer Melhem Zain and popstar Nancy Ajram. In between gigs, he recalled taking part in backstage jam sessions that laid the seeds for future success. "Normally they needed someone to start off these sessions. Now maybe because I was on the keyboards or I was the youngest, they would look at me to provide some kind of melody that they can work with,” he says. “So these melodies would often be simple and direct – kind of what I am doing now but on an infinitely bigger scale.”

Now that he's spent almost 10 years in the industry, Haffar says he has learnt that cracking musicianship has its limits when penning a killer jingle. "It feels weird to say this but many campaigns actually don't work because they hire musicians to compose them," he says. "Sonic branding doesn't require musicians, it needs branding experts with musicality and raw talent. It’s not anti-music at all, it's just its own art form deserving its own form of respect.”