Tuesday 21 April 2009

One For The Ladies


Of the many wonderful things to be found in the diverse and rich playground that is the Internet, this is one of my favourite things today. It was advertised on my phone bill and piqued my curiosity because of the whiff of egregious sexism it carried with it.

It's Etisalat's 'My Bouquet' service, a special range of offers for the little lady.

The advert on my phone bill offers the chance to win a pink Blackberry Pearl - because girls only like pink, don't they? Of course they do, lads.


But then we have the actual My Bouquet section of Etisalat's website (Interestingly, if you search eim.ae for "My Bouquet" it doesn't return the service as a result. Nice.), a true phenomenon of targeted marketing. For a start, it's got flowers on it - and everyone knows the girls love a flower every now and then! Especially those ones from Emarat, eh chaps?

"My bouquet is carefully designed to best serve the need of the women" Etisalat declaims on the site, which is illustrated with a (licensed, I hope!) picture of a sappy-looking Nancy Ajram. And how right they are! There are three bouquets, Lilac, Tulip and Orchid, which are perfect for the need of the women.

Lilac lets the women talk internationally for 1.6 hours. Tulip lets the women talk internationally for 5 hours and Orchid lets the women talk internationally for 8.3 hours. There are some reward point thingies and the chance to win that lovely, desirable and oh! So female! Pink Blackberry.

So there you go ladies! Now you can win a pink Blackberry and talk for a long time on the 'phone!

PS: I coloured this post pink especially for the ladies! This segmented marketing lark is a DODDLE once you understand your target audience, isn't it???


6 comments:

Em said...

i for one, am not fond of pink, especially when it is assumed that i should like pink. urgh.

if i have a girl, i'm going to dress her in red and black. no pinks for her until she's old enough to decide for herself.

Rana Malek said...

well, pink is never meant to be my favorite color:p

i'll go with purple ;)

Sara said...

barf...

Dubai Jazz said...

Just to add more sexism to the story:

Like seriously, do women really need more incentives to talk on the phone?

She said...

How clever of you! Both you and etisalat have a keen understanding of what it means to pique a girls interest! I immediately was drawn to the pink font in your post, and upon reading it , I finally worked out how to click on the link, and discovered pretty flowers!
Actually... I might do this deal , etisalat and SHE thank you muchly! ;)

Bloke said...

It would be great if this proved inadvertently popular with gay men who like to chat to their mothers back home.

Oh how I long to see the headline "Etisalat connects with the gay community".

But seriously, although it's generalisation, can you think of a colour scheme, decoration, naming theme, prize and product features that would sell better?

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