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This is not a radio ad, but only marginally less annoying.

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Sorry. I forgot to turn the radio off after the news this morning and ran into the ad break. It was almost over before I realised and switched off.

The Passing of Paper

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I follow quite a few legacy publishers on Twitter and suffer from the not infrequent urge to block them as I stare, open-jawed, at their attempts at what they clearly think is 'marketing'. Where most self-published authors have worked out, often by trial and error, that 'buy my book' doesn't work, publishers are frequently to be found out there using Twitter as a broadcast medium.

My least favourite of an ugly bunch are the guys who have clearly logged into Twitter for their daily session ("Dave does Twitter from 4-5pm, then goes through the slush pile") who then retweet anything nice said about them or one of their authors. To the luckless recipient of this gold, a timeline suddenly packed with retweets of breathless praise for Dave's publishing house, event or client's book until Dave runs out of RT cruft. At this point, if you're really unlucky, you'll get Dave asking you what's your favourite colour or what book changed your life as he practices his 'engagement' skills.

The example that flashed across my disbelieving eyes last night, however, took the proverbial biscuit:

It ticks every 'shit use of Twitter by a publisher' box I can think of. What, you mean if I pre-order this book and send you proof that I have, indeed, placed a pre-order, you'll actually send ME a real whole honest-to-goodness PDF file containing chapter one of the book I can't read yet? I am SO grateful! I can't begin to thank you! Really! A whole chapter one of a book I just paid for but can't read as a crappy, bitty PDF (like the ones torrent sites serve) just for little me? Squee!

These are just a few examples of how legacy publishers are struggling to get their heads around marketing, promotion and distribution in a post-paper world. We're not quite there yet, of course - there's still a lot of papery stuff around. But anyone not habitually wedded to a paper-based business model can see that the consumption of ideas, information and narrative on mushed-up dead trees and bleached old knickers (paper) is moving to a diverse and often inter-connected ecosystem of devices with blinding speed. 

When we are using those devices, we are not pleased to be 'disrupted' and, in a device-centric world, the publishers' ability to use their market power - sales teams stocking retailers - is minimal. They're no better off than the rest of us. The Internet, as we have been seeing since 1995, is a great leveller.

The idea that there is value in selling information encoded in a 'book' or indeed any other conventionally printed product now belongs in a Cadbury's Smash advert. When was the last time you looked at a paper map? 

I fondly recall driving across Scotland in 1988, following a printout from Autoroute 1.0 and picking up some hitch hikers who, when they found out I was following a computer programme around Scotland, became very nervous indeed and wanted let out early. They clearly thought I was a madman. It's taken a while, sure enough, but the paper map today is (along with the dedicated GPS device, incidentally) a thing of the past. 

The ability to contextualise information based on a layer over the 'real' world is incredibly powerful. It's why Google has invested so much in building that layer with Earth, Streetview and the like. Apple is rumoured to be making a huge play in 'Augmented Reality'. 

Not only are we consuming information about where we're going totally differently, we can clearly see around the corner a world where we won't care where we're going. We'll just tell the car to go there and it'll tell us how long it intends to take and then provide us some entertainment of our choice as we travel. It'll probably be plotting to kill us, but that's another kettle of fish.

Newspapers are clearly in the throes of another aspect of the movement of information online. In their case they're having to struggle with the reduction of value in two ways - the loss of revenue from people buying papers and that of advertisers willing to pay to reach those readers. The problem becomes one of scale - the news gathering resource and reach of a quality newspaper is expensive - and when you devalue the good through information ubiquity, you lose the ability to pay for large teams of journalists. 

Who will custodiet custodes, then? Smaller teams working more efficiently - but also a slew of copycats, content farms and repurposers. Quality content has to fight harder to cut through the rubbish. It's messy out there, but there's one thing that's certain - nobody's interested in print anymore - and the revenue models for print don't translate online, the scale doesn't work at cents per click. Not only do you not have the resources for big newsrooms, presses and distribution networks, you arguably don't need them.

Print books are a good whose price is set entirely on its own inefficiency. The cover price of a book consists entirely of percentages based on the cost of print - including the author's royalty and distribution. A tiny proportion goes to editorial costs. Oh, and profit. Let's not forget profit. An author is remunerated on a percentage of the revenue generated by the book as, indeed, is a distributor - the latter gets a whopping 50% of cover price. 

You could perhaps see how publishers would be wedded to this model - it has been thus for the past century or so. That's the way we do it around here, see?

When you go online, you not only rip out the costs of print and distribution and sales returns/stock loss but you also tear down the sales network publishers have depended on for so long. Bookshops are dead, sales are taking place on platforms the publishers don't own, control or influence. And so that most passive of sales environments (the long shelves packed with attentive soldiers of stiff-spined papery joy, the tick of the clock, Mildred sitting behind the till, reading and leaving you to have a nice, long browse) has been transformed into an online nightmare of conflicting shrill demands for people's time and attention.

In this brave new world, publishers no longer offer the significant scale they used to. Even the media they retain privileged access to are less powerful. Physical book retail is on a massive decline, despite constant announcements by 'the industry' that ebook sales are under pressure. These are mendacious and statistically skewed to an amazing degree - and they're quite poignant, in their way. 'It's going to be okay, chaps, you'll see' - that brave last sentence nobody quite believes, but they're all grateful for as they all walk into the hail of enemy gunfire.

The one thing publishers had to offer authors was scale. Scale of marketing, distribution, recognition. That's a product of marketing. Rip out the sales channel and go online and you've got some serious problems on your hands unless you can get your head around building serious online scale. Legacy big-hitters like JK Rowling or Neil Gaiman have made the leap and brought their audiences online with them and have massive reach on platforms like Twitter.

Publishers haven't. And they really don't know how to do it. They can't believe they need to do it. And they won't resource to do it properly because they're still clinging on to that last log in the sea.

Or, as an old pal once said to me (of literary agents, but never mind, it fits today's legacy publishers too), "They're like eunuchs in the Ottoman court. They see it happening all around them; they know what it is that's happening. But they're totally incapable of doing it for themselves!"

The Great Emirates Laptop Ban

Abu Nidal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It is notable that the UK, in slavishly following the 'security advice' of close ally the USA, has not included the UAE and Qatar in its version of the great laptop ban. It takes no great stretch of the imagination or cognitive leap to infer that this ban has a commercial implication, working as it does directly to the detriment of the three global airlines operating a 'feeder flight' model out of the UAE and Qatar.

The biggest threat to the three is a loss of business class travellers, probably the only people who will lose out significantly. While it's great for parents to provide kids with tablets to keep them entertained (those of us without children clearly think this is just bad parenting, but that's quite another kettle of marmosets), Emirates' much-lauded ICE entertainment system offers films, music, games across literally thousands of channels. The big hit comes when you lose that precious work time.

The solution appears to me to be blindingly simple - and if EK moves fast enough, they could get in a massive media hit out of this one. Buy in 100 Chromebooks, 600 Lenovo Ultrabooks and 300 Macbook Airs. Load them with MS Office. Provide them on loan to business class passengers (they could be booked at time of flight booking or even online check-in) who can bring a USB memory stick (or, if they forget, be offered a complimentary little red Emirates one) to bring/save their work on. To be honest, most these days work with online resources anyway, so could log in using any machine. The machines would be cleaned (both hygenically and data-wise) after each use. The IT stuff could be handled by EK subsidiary Mercator, already (quietly) one of the world's great software and services players.

Catch the current news cycle and you've got the solution in seconds. It might not fit everyone's needs, but it'll comfort many - and I think catch the public imagination, too. In the face of a mean-spirited and dubious use of security as protectionism, EK could show it's the customer who comes first and they're willing  - as always - to go the extra mile.

The ban is, of course, quite loopy. For a start, UAE security and civil defence is way better than US security. Dubai and Abu Dhabi are major international hubs and trusted by tens of millions of passengers each year. Their security procedures and capabilities are best practice. And there's nothing to stop a terrorist flying a bomb from Paris or St Petersburg - the idea that only Arab airports could be the source of a threat is as risible as Trump's Muslim ban. Which targets, it should be noted, different nations to the laptop ban.

Not that I, for one, am in any rush to go to the US. I have stamps in my passport showing a lifetime's travel around the Middle East and no desire whatsoever to stand there having some jerk in a uniform shouting at me and asking to look at the contents of my laptop.

This whole thing about making us dance around airports in our socks and ditching Masafi bottles because they could be bombs (presumably the water bomb is these days considered a credible threat) has long rendered me sore amazed. The IRA's last bomb on the UK mainland weighed a metric tonne, was packed in a lorry and blew out the heart of Manchester, doing £1 billion of damage. The concerted and sustained terrorist campaign waged by the IRA against the might and weight of the UK's civil defence and military over thirty years compares rather oddly to the threat posed by a bunch of bloodthirsty yahoos in Toyota pickups. It's what prompted me to write A Decent Bomber in the first place - that odd juxtaposition of the threat from today's water-bomb terrorism to the constant destruction wreaked in the skies by the IRA, PLO, Abu Nidal, the Red Brigade et al.

We have never been so constrained by, or constantly reminded of, the threat of 'terrorism' as we are today. And the credible threats have never been so slight - particularly when set against the efficiency of modern security apparatus. You might argue that we're safe precisely because that apparatus has stopped us bringing water bottles or unscanned heels onto flights, but in travelling outside the UK I have noticed nobody else out there is really bothering that much. And it'll be interesting to see if the rest of the world believes in the credible threat of a weaponised Kindle being stored in the hold rather than being used to read on a flight...

IzaKaya Dubai: Of Japanese Times Gone Bi

This delicious image was brought to my attention courtesy Mr +Gerald Donovan*, whose laconic 'Was she indeed?' on Twitter opened up the new worlds of alternative meaning caressing this otherwise unremarkable attempt to breathe life into a daft advertising-led 'social media' campaign for the Izakaya Japanese restaurant at the JW Marriott Marquis in Dubai.

Launched, in time-honoured ad-agency style, with a press handout highlighting that most tremulously newsworthy of events, the launch of a Dubai Taxi bumper sticker campaign, the campaign will now delight many people in ways its instigators had - we can only presume - never imagined.

And of course now we enter a whole new - and infinitely more entertaining - world of extrapolation and exploration. From being a side salad to a Dubai taxi, Iza Kaya is now elevated to the status of a little avocado mystery. She was, but is no longer. Its all rather fascinating - what happened to change her? Was it a slow jading of the palate or a bite of life's bitter lime that transformed her? And while she might not be of that shade any more, there's a certain colourful 'frisson' about her now. Would she go back? Or are her emerald charms now set firm only for the less gentle sex?

We are all schoolboys...

*(He's @gerald_d on Twitter, but Google+ likes to intersperse itself and suggest G+ links when you start throwing Twitter's trademark @ signs around.)

Kinder's 'Next Face' Gender Bender

That's not a girl - it's a boy with some badly Photoshopped hair extensions. What an odd thing to do to a chocolate packet! What an odd thing to do, indeed, to a child. If they're going to take those kinds of liberties, would you want your child to be the 'next face of Kinder chocolate'?

I'd never have noticed but for The Niece From Heaven and a visit to the Mirdif City Centre shopping mall, where we discovered a promo display in the central court being staged by Kinder. There were chocolate themed things to climb on and play with and TNFH was immediately drawn in, being something of a Kinder fangirl.

There was a photographer with a studio portrait flash setup - the promo was themed 'Do you want your kid to be the next face of Kinder chocolate?' - and he was listlessly snapping children, surrounded by screaming kids clambering on plastic chocolate shapes. We stood off, laughing cruelly at him and imagining the office all picking on Elie and volunteering him for the Kinder promo job.

Once your child has been snapped by Elie, you're sent to the collection point to pick up your very own Kinder chocolate box with your kid's face on it. A put-upon individual takes the snap from Elie and Photoshops it onto a packet background. He does this, incidentally, very badly. This is then printed out, guillotined, folded and glued to make a paper packet wrapper which is then handed to you. TNFH's face had been squished to fit - for some reason rather than scaled - so we eventually came away with a grainy, fat faced version of her on a light card wrapper. Her mum, who had braved the jostling queue of proud mums and dads and their little princes and princesses, looked like she had been hit by a hurricane. Apparently the enter your kid for the competition mechanism wasn't working, so the picture didn't matter anyway.

It was only the fact the display featured packets with a small boy in a blue shirt on it that made me pause when TNFH's chocolate stash was raided a couple of nights later. Lo and behold, on the packet was a small girl in a blue shirt.

The promo made much of Kinder's premise that more milk than chocolate is what made Kinder a good thing - "plus milk minus cocoa" is the line. My interest in Kinder much aroused by the photoshoppery, I took a look at the ingredients. Because plus milk means it's good for your child, right?

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dearie me.

Milk chocolate (40%) (Sugar, milk powder, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, emulsifiers: lecithin (soy), flavouring: vanillin), sugar, skimmed milk powder, vegetable fat (palm), anhydrous milkfat, emulsifiers: lecithin (soy), flavouring: vanillin, total milk constituents 33% total cocoa solids 13%, solids in milk chocolate: cocoa 32%, milk fat free 17%, milk fat 6%

Palm oil. Lovely. Plus milk minus cocoa plus cheap, egregious saturated fat...

Wakeboarding On Cranberries

Now here's a thing you don't often see me sharing on the blog - a piece of video. I happen to like this video very much for a number of reasons and consequently thought it was worth sharing.

Have a watch. It's a little over 8 minutes of HD fun. Come on back when you're done.

Wasn't that fun? I've long been a fan of Red Bull's communications: they must stand as one of the first brands - perhaps the first brand - to understand the world's changed and it's no longer all about them. Red Bull creates great events, great content, great stories about people and their achievements and takes a back seat as it does so.

Sure there's branding in there, but it's not about Red Bull helps wakeboarders perform better or indeed all about them at all, the branding's usually pretty subtle. From the now famous 'Flugtags' through music events like the Red Bull Music Academy (reported on here extensively by Hind Mezaina) taking place this week in Dubai to sponsoring extreme sports, Red Bull has worked to foster and build communities and take its place in those communities as a welcome participant - a respectful participant in the conversation.

That's an amazing thing to do. IBM did it by spending $10bn on supporting Linux, transforming itself from being the 'Blue Meanies' in developers' eyes to being a respected member of the Linux community. Red Bull has done it by working with communities, creating great events and building streams of cool content out of that work.

The video's voice over, you'll note, is the cranberry farmer explaining how cranberries are grown and talking about his business. We focus on a guy who makes boarding ramps. Nowhere in the video is a shot of Red Bull cans or cheesy shots of young people snarfing Red Bull and having a great time. A logo on the wakeboard, one on the ramp and the titles. That's it. Nobody says how much they love Red Bull, nobody points at or drinks from a can. They didn't even brand the damn cranberries.

And I love it...

Android and KitKat. Genius.

KitKat (Photo credit: Nestlé)

As eny fule no, Google is prone to various fits of whimsy and one of these is naming releases of its Android operating system after tasty treats. After Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean we were to have enjoyed Key Lime Pie, but the team of really cool and crazy guys at Google decided that few people would know what they were on about.

So they decided on KitKat as the name for Android 4.4. It was, Google's John Lagerling told the BBC, because they snacked on KitKats during late night coding sessions. The story's linked here and well worth reading - it tells of how Google put a cold call into Nestlé's London ad agency and how Nestlé 'got it' within 24 hours. The agreement to let this all go ahead was one which is, according to Lagerling, "not a money-changing-hands kind of deal."

Which is pretty stupendous. If you pop over to the KitKat website, you'll find they've made the most of the opportunity. It's all very well done and highly amusing, even to people who enjoy late night coding sessions, extolling the virtues of KitKat 4.4 with features such as portrait and landscape orientation, 'diamond sharp bevels' and unlimited standby time.

The Beeb and other news outlets have done a great job reaching out to 'brand consultancies' and 'marketing experts' to talk about the downside of the deal - how if KitKat has a huge product recall or Google's new Android is crap it'll affect the other brand. I think that's utter tosh - there are no downsides. Today's consumer is smart enough to know what's going on and I'm not about to uninstall my Nexus because a chocolate bar has gone wrong or, indeed, eschew KitKats because my latest install of Android sucks.

I'm afraid the naysayers are lone voices in the wilderness - this deal is brilliant at every level and Nestlé has to be applauded for not only seeing the potential with blinding speed, but getting the zeitgeist pretty much spot on. That's by no means a 'given' with marketing departments and agencies - anyone remember Vegemite's disastrous attempt to rename itself as "iSnack 2.0"?

And the fact that no cash has changed hands is very, well, Google, isn' t it?

ArabNet - The Dubai Digital Summit

It starts tomorrow - ArabNet's Dubai Digital Summit - three days of conference, workshop, developer competition, roundtable and other information sharing stuff. It's a pretty packed agenda - there are over 120 speakers (including li'l ole me) and there are expected to be upwards of 800 attendees gathering at the aesthetically interesting Atlantis Hotel on the Palm.

The three-day conference is at the core of a number of other activities, including ArabNet's 'Digital Showcase'. This excellent initiative gathers over thirty young digital companies from around the region and provides them with a platform to show their wares at ArabNet - and includes brokered meetings with media buyers, banks, telcos and other business enablers. There's also the final of ArabNet's developer competition which will bring together winners from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Jordan in a final face-off to crown the best developer in the Middle East. My money's on the Jordanians...

The actual conference consists of three tracks - a Forum Track and a Workshop Track - then on day one a Startup Track and day two an Industry Track, which splits into verticals and is more 'solutions' oriented and day three a Roundtable Track. Someone with a highly advanced sense of humour has put me moderating the banking panel on the industry day, which should provide a few laughs if nothing else...

There are four industry round tables taking place in the Roundtable Track, which will tackle key issues in the development and expansion of the Middle East's digital industry. I'm chairing the one on advertising, "Growing digital adspend", which should be interesting as the invited attendees for what is intended to be a productive brainstorming session represent all sorts of interests - mainly vested! - in the way this important sector is developing in the region.

As anyone who's been to ArabNet in Beirut will attest, there's a 'vibe' to the event that is truly infectious, a coming together of smart people who share a passion for something that is at the heart of exhilarating and often breakneck change and transformation. There's a grin-inducing cocktail of dynamism and innovation in the air.

So all in all it promises to be a busy, intense and fascinating week - and if you are interested in mobile, online, digital, social or anything touching the online and digital industry in the Middle East, you would be mad not to be there*.

Oh, and you can catch my presentation on addressing the 'content crisis' at 5pm on Wednesday and see quite how neatly I manage to wave in the inevitable plug for Beirut - An Explosive Thriller.

* Disclosure - Spot On is the PR partner for ArabNet but as you'll all know by now, this blog has never represented my day job. I'm bigging up ArabNet because I'm a fan, not because I'm shilling for them.

Sold Out

Mars (chocolate bar) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What?

Have I sold out? What's going on? Adwords on Fake Plastic Souks? What kind of swine would keep his blog ad free for five years and then sell his soul to Goog?

Me, that's what kind of swine. I've been playing around with Google AdWords quite a bit lately and thought I'd do some experimenting with the other end of the horse.

There's very little money in AdWords for yer average blogger, so I'm not about to give in the day job (in fact, it's the day job that's driven much of this interest) - with my traffic, I might buy a Mars Bar every month out of it if I'm very lucky. But I'm interested in the dynamics of things. And sometimes the only thing to do is pull the tyrant's nose and see what happens.

If you really want to know when I've sold out, it'll be when there are Amazon affiliate links on here to buy my books...

Masafi 'Thank You' Campaign. What that?

If you're based in Dubai, you might have seen the billboards around town exclaiming 'Thank you!' on behalf of Masafi. In fact, Masafi is thanking us for all the children we're helping. The Dubai Cares logo is featured prominently in the company's promotional materials. Dubai Cares is a charity set up to help improve childrens' education in developing countries and is a good thing.

It's nice timing, as the price of Masafi has just risen. I can remember the days when a nice vinyl 1.5L bottle of Masafi would cost you Dhs1 - now the 500ml diddy ones cost Dhs 1.25, 1.5 or 2, depending on where you buy 'em (Lals, ADNOC and Emarat respectively). The company also had a relatively recent product recall, which it would quite like to forget all about. So a nice, high profile campaign is quite understandable.

You'd be forgiven for thinking this was smart marketing by Masafi - take a short term haircut and donate the price rise to charity for the first couple of months of the new price - for instance - and you might find consumer resistance to the increase is lessened. What's more, at the end of the drive you could present a nice, hefty cheque to Dubai Cares.

And that's pretty much what's happening, according to the press release. Each of the 'Thank you' branded bottles sold sees "proceeds" go to Dubai Cares. Quite what "proceeds" means (the total retail amount, profit, a percentage) we are not told.

Alongside this, a charity auction is taking place. For a bottle of Masafi.

To show that we're 'down with the kids', the auction is being held using a thing called an Internet. You can go online using this Internet and bid for a bottle of Masafi. Yes, that's right. All those tens of thousands of dollars of marketing spend on advertising and rebranding the company's packaging for the promotion are being poured into an online auction for a bottle of water.

At the end of the auction, the winner gets a bottle of Masafi and Dubai Cares gets what the winner has bid for the bottle.

So far sixteen people have registered to show their support for the campaign and thirteen have lodged bids. Twenty people have shared the promotion through Facebook. The top bid for the bottle currently stands at Dhs 1,700. No donations have been made.

I have nothing to add. If you do, by all means feel free to leave a comment.

How To Sell To UAE Bloggers

I'm doing quite a lot of 'how to'ing recently, am't I? Don't worry, this isn't a book post...

This advice doesn't come from someone that runs amazing professional 'blogger outreach' programs because I don't really do very much of that. It comes from the other end of the horse - the blogger at the receiving end end.

While it's lovely to find you have been added to the Cision media distribution list and positively feted by PR people, many of the approaches seem to miss some reasonably basic thinking when it comes to seeking the engagement of people with blogs, popular Twitter accounts or much-liked Facebook pages. So these pointers might be helpful for future approaches.

1) Bloggers are people too.
I almost fell into the trap of labelling this one 'bloggers are not journalists' but this misses the fact that journalists (no matter how it goes against the grain to admit this) are also people. Little I have to say about approaching bloggers doesn't also apply to approaching journalists.

So by saying we're people too, what do I mean? I mean, for instance, that it would be nice if the approach were individual to me rather than generic. Saying you enjoy my thought-provoking blog is all very nice, but that hardly tells me you actually give a hoot or have ever read anything I have written.

If you had, you'd be aware that I'm much more likely to bite you than let you pat me on the head.

I am naturally going to feel more interested in helping you out if you've been a regular reader/commenter on this blog. Even a few words referring to why you think this blog would be interested in your new perfume line for dogs - ideally linked to some content I have posted here - would let me know you've at least had a stab at mapping the relevance of what you do to what I do. Shared interest is good. Irrelevance is bad.

2) Bloggers aren't there to cover your products
I know, it's amazing isn't it? But the majority of what I write in this blog is peculiar to me and the world around me. Inviting me to the Armani hotel to attend the launch of a new range of bamboo shopping trolleys will not have me gushing and bright-eyed at the prospect of going to such a wonderful place. I have never written about bamboo shopping trolleys before and have exhibited no interest in these items in the past (although now I'm quite sure Klout will include it in my areas of expertise and I'll own the category in search).    I don't write about products or review products. Ten minutes spent browsing the blog would mark me as a non-target for shopping trolley launches.

Fashion and food bloggers are more susceptible to these types of invitation if they relate to fashion or food and if they are somehow interesting and/or innovative. Food product launches are not likely to cut it. Fashion bloggers are (sorry guys, but you are) incredibly spoiled and will need something out of the ordinary or a great relationship having been established.

3) Bloggers have day jobs
There are few people in the Middle East making money out of blogging to the extent they don't have to earn money by doing something conventional like, say, working. So a Tuesday afternoon event is likely to be out of the question - an all-day gig mid-week, even if it's exciting and deeply tempting, will likely not cut ze mustard. We have jobs to go to. That means if you want to organise an amazing all-day event targeting bloggers, you'll probably have to work on a Friday. Altogether now? Aaaahhh.

4) Slowly slowly catchee monkey
An individual approach that is contextual will be much more likely to reap rewards than scatter-gun event invites. A great example here is how Nokia's PR agency, d'Abo & Co, used my recent highly public Twitter meltdown with my HTC Android mobile (there's nothing like a mobile perma-crashing and telling you it's 'quietly brilliant' every time it staggers back to its feet to get a chap's goat) to slip a Nokia Lumia into my life. It was a risky strategy, they had to have had real confidence in that product - but, having the expectation I'd hate the Lumia I actually loved it and didn't mind saying so. I don't feel beholden to them for lending me a mobile, but I did think their timing and smart approach was very well managed. I don't mean to be difficult, but I am generally brand antithetic. Some bloggers I am sure will love brands. Love 'em to death. Positively fawn over  'em. Let me know when you find one, eh?

So it's a matter of monitoring conversations (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, whatever) and mapping out your influencers (who IS an influencer?) before making an approach that is generally, as with any conversation, led by a contribution of some sort. Give forward to earn a place at the table.

By the way, most UAE blogs have relatively small readerships.

5) Build a community by being a member of the community
What is an influencer? A Klout score? Number of followers? Number of comments? You need to establish some metrics to decide at what level of influence it's worthwhile bringing someone onside - because you'll need to invest in the relationship. It's not a one-hit thing, the key word is the R one - relationship. Approaching a person, inviting their involvement and engagement with you, facilitating that engagement and maintaining a respectful (ie not 'we're targeting product messages at you because we think people listen to you') dialogue. That way you can bring influencers on board, typically one by one, and maintain that conversation to the point where you actually could organise a tweetup or other event and people would be happy to come. That'll take time and investment, but it's so much more effective than pumping out generic materials in the hope that bloggers will slavishly act as botnets for your product messages.

That's my 2p worth. I genuinely hope marketers out there find it useful.

Viral and Virality

virus (Photo credit: twenty_questions)

It has been quite a week for things viral around here - I posted the other day about Gerald Donovan's amazing interactive 360 degree Burj Khalifa panorama of Dubai and my professional involvement with the campaign to get it 'out there'.

Like many of my colleagues, I have always had contempt for ad agency people who announce they are setting out to create 'viral content' because they are almost certainly doomed to failure. The harder you try to create something with that quality, the more likely you are to find yourself naked in a crowded square holding something dead in your hand with small children jeering at you. In a cold wind.

There are also some burning questions inherent in the use of the term. How many/how fast is 'viral'? What makes viral things viral? What is the 'quality' of viral? The answer to the latter is 'Nobody knows' - a cat falling off a desk, Justin Beiber, Gerald's pano - these are all different types of viral. You can set out to create a piece of content that people will really, really want to share and watch it die the death of the neglected, while at the same time a puppy being scared by a hoover being switched on spreads across the Internet like nightshade falling across the earth in a one minute motion-capture. It's almost unguessable.

One man who knows more than most about how to create great, engaging content is Matthew Inman. He's the chap behind that most humorous of websites, The Oatmeal. His presentation on going viral, given at South by Southwest two years ago makes impressive watching. It contains learnings and is very, very funny. Which is as good as you can get, really. The whole thing's an hour, but you can drop the Q&A and not miss much, to be honest. It's linked here for your viewing pleasure.

You'll perhaps note that The Oatmeal doesn't really set out to be 'viral' as such, but Inman does create a constant flow of solid, amusing and shareable content. He has a wide (millions) viewership and enormous followings on Twitter and Facebook, both platforms he uses to extend the reach of The Oatmeal and draw readers to the content he's posting on The Oatmeal itself. Although he doesn't use, or need, the likes of Reddit anymore, he used them heavily to establish the site, participating in those communities to seed content among aggressive sharers by being one of them.

But his stuff wouldn't have got anywhere if it hadn't been distinctive, unusual and highly entertaining - shareable and willingly adopted (at least initially) by those communities of sharers.

If you have amazing content and a strong, well-implemented strategy you can improve your chances, but it's still pretty hit and miss. Even I, as stunning as I find Mr. D's work (and I have watched his images 'go viral' in the past - he does seem to have a 'nose' for it), had a wobble or two early this week.

If you're building a property online (A website, a campaign or a brand), there's no substitute for building audiences and communities organically. And that means not one flash in the pan event, but a constant flow of high quality, relevant, engaging content. It's a long road - but there's no panacea. Whatever the guy with the ponytail from the agency claims he can do with 'a viral'...

Worth Its Weight In Gold?

English: A 1st generation Apple iPad. This is the 32GB WiFi model and shows the home screen. Please check my Wikimedia User Gallery for all of my public domain works. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Back in the distant past, when Dubai was all sand and mobile phones a novelty (and dinosaurs ruled the earth), we were regularly beaten down with offers to win a bar of gold. It was all Dubai's ad agencies could seem to think of, win gold was a sort of promotional catechism and nothing else seemed to matter.

'We want an ad campaign.'
'Sure. How much gold can people win?'
'We were thinking of five ten tola bars for runners up and a kilo as the first prize?'
'That should do it. We'll get cracking on the creative.'

The 'creative' usually included The Dubai Radio Ad, where Bob would meet Jim at the lights and wonder where Jim was in such a hurry to get to. Jim would reply that the Khara Centre is giving away a bar of gold. It is mandatory at this stage to have Bob and Jim repeat the phrases 'A bar of gold?' and 'Yes, a bar of gold!'. Preferably breathlessly and in the excited tones of someone who has just discovered that snorting cocaine and breathing helium are quite fun when done in unison. Bob would then speed off, with Jim wondering where he is in such a rush to get to. The Khara Centre, of course.

I once knew a successful ad executive who come here from Hong Kong. Over the months I watched his slow decline into chronic alcoholism as every idea, scheme and stunt he came up with was met with, 'Yes, that's all very nice. And the bar of gold?'. I had to stop meeting him in the end, my liver couldn't take the lunches. I lost track of him, but believe he eventually left. It's the only time in my life I've sympathised with someone in advertising.

Now there's a worrying trend emerging. I'm starting to hear those self same radio ads again, but this time there's no bar of gold. It's iPads. Yes, win an iPad! An iPad? Yes! An iPad! What do I have to do?

It's confirmation that the iPad is now widely seen as a Most Desirable Thing, as desirable in fact as a bar of gold. You'd have thought that was all a bit behind the curve, but then look at the increasing number of stupid ways people are finding to try and have some of that Apple 'halo brand' spangle dust stick to their sloppy brands.

I posted a short while ago about the pointless restaurant that doled out iPads instead of menus. Colleague Carriington reports of a restaurant in the Ramada that goes one step further than using an iPad as a like for like dumb replacement for paper - this restaurant lets you select what you want using the iPad and the application has an 'order' button so your order can be placed with the kitchen. Guests are asked not to press this button but hand the tablet back to staff so they can place the order. Brilliant.

Dehumanising or Brilliant Advertising?

Image via WikipediaThere's an interesting image in today's soaraway Gulf News that isn't posted up on its website (well, I couldn't find it anyway). It's on page 36 at the bottom and it's captioned 'Moving Boards'. Under the headline is a night-time picture of four unhappy-looking people walking past a busy street café with big, flat digital advertising boards strapped to their backs. The first in line certainly looks as if the thing is weighing him down - his half-lidded eyes and listless demeanour don't speak of a man having fun. But then how many of us think our idea of fun is being made to parade around the streets with large digital advertising screens strapped to our backs?

I first saw this idea applied in Jordan a couple of years back and was appalled by it then. I though the sandwich board man was an image of recession, or a nutter proclaiming the end of the world is nigh. But to find people being used like this to tout advertising messages simply strikes me as abusive.

According to Gulf News' well thought-out caption, "The moving boards with its (sic) mobility, visibility  and human interaction has big potential to increase public awareness." What? Human interaction? Where's the interaction between the disinterested diners and the four shambling men being made to parade Etisalat's advertising messages around on their backs all night? They're not interacting, they're merely beasts of digital burden.

Or am I being a silly, mealy-mouthed, do-gooding, pinko commie liberal?

Mad Panda Ads. Why I Love The Client Most.

Image by The Searcher via Flickr

The region's advertising industy has been oft-heard to complain that it's down to the clients, that the agencies' cool creative teams come up with edgy, smart and clever executions but that clients don't run with them.

I've always thought that was balderdash. I can't understand why clients put up with much of the advertising we see around us, particularly the strange and breathless 30 second outbursts of parping that pass for radio advertisements. And I find it hard to believe that a client wouldn't go with something creative and smart that worked and actually communicated a proposition effectively. I suspect much of the disconnect lies here - that the 'really smart ideas' are great for awards but would fail to do the humdrum job that the client has in mind - actually selling stuff.

I frequently look at the bad ads and wonder how on earth they got made, put myself in the meeting. You know the sort of thing - we're in a boardroom full of pony-tailed goatee beards in open neck shirts and Massimo Dutti jackets and hapless client...

"This is gonna be huge, George. We got a guy in his car, see? And he stops at the traffic light and asks his friend where he's going in such a hurry, isn't that right, Elli?"

"Yes, that's right. See, George, Raymond hit the nail on the head. Guy in car, friend. You can see it there, no? The smell of hot tarmac and exhaust fumes, then the guy revs up and says he's going to the Chicago Beach Hotel brunch and he describes it like it's a really hot woman, kapisch? All signature cuisine this and tantalise your tastebuds that. And at that very moment, the lights change and they both start racing. Over the sound of screaming engines we hear the guy shouting, 'why are you racing me?' and..."

"The other guy shouts, 'to get there first' at him!"

Whole team looks eagerly at client, who grins with relief and says: "Sounds great guys! I'm sure glad you got my account!"

Yes, thank you, I do feel much better now. Anyway, lovely colleague Maha found these ads. They are a wonder indeed. They were created by four-man Cairo boutique agency Elephant for client Arab Dairy and its Panda brand cheese - it was actually the dairy's agency of record, Advantage Marketing & Advertising, that brought Elephant into the room.

Crying with laughter, I have to admit to being blown away that ads this good are coming out of the region. And while I'm admiring of Elephant's creative and execution, I think the award should go to Arab Dairy for going with the whole idea. Why not, ad guys? If you're going to blame the bad clients, celebrate the great ones, no?



There are more of them - see here, here, here and here. (Oddly enough they haven't created a YouTube Channel or  done anything particularly 'social' around this other than put it up.) Alternatively, if you want to catch a glimpse of traditional over-produced, drab and lifeless ads more typical of the region's output, here's an ad from last year's campaign.


(BTW, you don't really need to speak Arabic: the Panda ads all follow the same basic idea, person is offered Panda cheese, says no and then the Panda appears, stares at them for a time carefully calculated to induce a strong sense of awkwardness then gets violent.)

Why Online Companies May Need To Think Analogue

Image via Wikipedia

I was drafted in to run the panel session on the effectiveness of online advertising at the excellent Digimedia conference wot took place in Dubai last week (lots of speaker videos here if you want to catch up on some of the excellent and thought provoking types that were there). Moderating panel sessions on topics about which I know very little indeed always brings joy to my heart, but as it turns out I had a question I wanted to ask in order to satisfy my own curiosity. And that question kicked things off very nicely indeed, thank you.

I'd sat through a presentation by Yahoo! complaining that only 1% of Middle East ad revenue was going to online sites, while print and TV still comprise the lion's share of advertising revenues. This despite the tens of millions of people in the region who are actively online, the 10 million-odd people on Facebook, the thousands of blogs and the popularity of online forums and social sites (portal Jeeran, for instance, pulls some 12 million unique visits per day - that's over ten times the circulation of the region's biggest selling paper, Egypt's Al Ahram).


The online industry complained that they are infinitely measurable, they can show click-through rates, measurable routes through content, response rates and activation rates - they can tell you who's where, how long for, where they came from and where they went to, what they watched, liked, responded to. And yet they're only 1% of the overall.

Which brings me to the question. If the publishing industry can go to an advertiser with nothing more than a basic audit (ABC or BPA) or even no audit at all and still sell them advertising in, say, 'Motorsport Today', what's the problem selling audiences of millions with virtually infinite measureability?

The answer, according to members of the audience, is that online companies in the Middle East aren't selling. They're behaving like online companies - 'the content's here, so come and get it'. But the advertiser base thinks like offline companies do - 'I'm here, come sell to me'.

And I can see how that disconnect could have crept in - I remember travelling to the Gulf as part of a sales team in the late 1980s to find that we had 16 people in Saudi Arabia at that time - all having flown out on 3-4 week advertising sales trips. A huge sales force, but one that was pulling in huge revenues. At the time we were just at the end of the era when the GM would pull out the company stamp and stamp the order there and then (legendarily, some would even open desk drawers and give you the cash!). It was good, old-fashioned sales - AIDA, DIPADA and all that. And it worked.


Advertisers in the Middle East have always bought a product that they can pick up and understand. They have bought a product intended for a target market they have in mind and want to reach. Car companies like car magazines and supplements, technology companies like technology publications. The online companies aren't selling the emotional appeal of specialised or relevant content plus reach - they're just selling data. They're investing in analysis rather than in teams of hungry young suits facing clients with compelling sales propositions that show how the market can effectively reach a given target audience for less than print or TV with content that makes contextual sense to the advertiser.

It is, of course, highly likely that I'm talking complete crap. But it didn't half get the panel session going!

Tantalise Your Tastebuds!

Image via Wikipedia

Yet another mindless radio ad has joined the throng of blithering blipverts, this time from the Meydan Hotel. We’re told their brunch consists of a range of ‘signature cuisines’. I would love someone from the agency to explain what a signature cuisine is because, of course, there is no such thing as a signature cuisine. It’s just something they made up to try and make yet another brunch sound different.

This idea of ‘yet another brunch’ is actually quite important. Resorting to empty, mindless phrases such as ‘signature cuisine’ and ‘tantalise your tastebuds’ (Let alone the awful and much-used ‘satisfy your senses’) tells us that we have here a product with absolutely no differentiation whatsoever. Differentiation is a key competitive concept. At the very definition of a given product, let us say a brunch, the first question to ask is ‘how is this different? How does this give us a competitive edge?’. If the answer is ‘it isn’t’, then we obviously have a problem, Houston. No?

Let us imagine the conversation.

“Boss! I’ve got a great idea! We’re going to do a brunch!”

“Good idea, Carruthers. That’ll use up the Thursday leftovers. How are you going to make it different to the other 250 brunches in Dubai Brunch City?”

“It’s going to be an international buffet, boss.”

“So are all the others.”

“With beverages.”

“All the others do ‘beverages’, Carruthers. That’s why the city fills up with over-dressed, pissed goons in flowery shirts and under-dressed pissed chicks in Coast frocks every Friday afternoon.”

“It’s going to have dishes from all around the world!”

“Yes, but how’s it different, Carruthers. Why should I come to this brunch rather than all the others?”

“It’s going to tantalise your tastebuds, boss! Satisfy your senses! It’s a whole world of cuisines on your doorstep including beverages to delight the whole family! And there’ll be face painting and loads of fun for the kids including a cleaner who’s been forced to dress up as a clown on his day off!”

“Oh, why didn’t you say that in the first place? Brilliant scheme! Approved!”

The problem here is that Carruthers’ whole product is boring, yet another brunch at yet another hotel. If the brunch is unusually good value and offers unusually good food, word of mouth (perhaps supported by some smart PR) will ensure that the brunch becomes popular. But declaiming its merits by squawking the same tired epithets in a fake-excited voice on the radio will not guarantee popularity, let alone raise any level of interest. Much as I’d like to blame the agency, I can’t. It’s the product that’s at fault – unless their brunch is truly, brilliantly differentiated and well positioned within its target market, in which case the agency needs to be shot because its work has failed to communicate one iota of that potential.

A good example of a differentiated product in this sector is the Westin Hotel’s ‘Bubbleicious Brunch’, which offers a package of all you can eat plus Laurent Perrier champagne at Dhs495 a head. I happen to dislike the Westin in a mildly cordial sort of way (I find it hard to get past the architecture, to be honest) and I don’t ‘do’  brunches as a rule, but even I’ve got the message on that one.


By the way, I do happen to believe quite strongly that any copywriter that even considers using the phrase 'tantalise your tastebuds' should be pilloried, flogged and then (but only then) sacked and deported. As should any client weak-minded enough to let them get away with it.

When Stickers Turn Evil

Image via Wikipedia

Gulf News has fallen into the very annoying habit indeed of selling advertisers the right to post a removable sticker on the front page. It’s come a cropper with this in the past, one sticker which wasn’t very removable damaged the paper when readers attempted to see the news they are paying for, while another was a ‘feel good’ message splatted on news of a devastating human tragedy.

It’s interesting to see how much a brand will damage itself for short term gain. Readers, who let us not forget actually pay for Gulf News and so have some expectation of getting access to news, are forced to remove the sticker before they can read the front page of the newspaper – the most important page of news that GN has to offer.

It is arguably no great deal, this process of getting your fingernail under the corner of a little advert and removing it before you can read the story under the front page headline. But it’s actually just as annoying as Etisalat’s habit of selling its customers to SMS spammers – I don’t want it, I didn’t ask for it, it forces me to act to remove it before I can access a product/service I have paid to receive. This means that the sticker connotes the brand it is promoting with irritation as well as devaluing the brand of the product used to carry the message.

It does seem odd to me that advertising agencies still fail to understand that consumers don’t actually want invasive advertising in their lives. Agencies slap themselves on the back about how their campaign was ‘edgy’ and ‘disruptive’ and appear to completely miss the point that I, and many others like me, do not want my life disrupted by a brand screaming slogans in my face. I don't want to have to remove stickers or open spammy text messages from companies. I am increasingly sensitive to it, increasingly irritated by it and increasingly likely to act against it by sharing my irritation with an increasingly large audience of people who are voting with their feet and sharing their feelings about brands and media that act in this way.

While I’m being bad tempered about this stupid idea, a message for Carrefour’s advertising agency regarding the sticker I had to unpeel from today's GN: the washing liquid brand Pril is spelled with one ‘l’ as shown clearly in the image of the product on the sticker. You dolts have spelled it with two ‘l’s in the text outlining the marvellous special offer I can ‘avail’ with your ‘voucher’.

Windows 7 Barf

Image by Esparta via Flickr

I almost managed a week without posting, thanks to Phillipa, but now I'm blowing it.

Twitter has been a-tweet with disgusted tweets linking to a very odd thing on YouTube - Microsoft's 'Host a Windows 7 Party' video.

It's linked here. Watch it before you read on, I would. Get it over with. Content warning - it's very, very, very crap - so don't say I Rickrolled you or anything.

Done? Fine, get your breath back, there's no rush.

Now it might just be that this is a really smart, post-ironic teaser that's going to lead to a really hip Madison Avenue type 'We woz just leading you on' follow-up. If it does that, Microsoft has lost my custom, because I'm really not in the mood to be messed around with by smartarses using social media to prove they're cleverer than I am. Right now, I want brands to start behaving better because I've had enough of being fed bullshit by corporations and just want honesty, integrity and straightforward communication. You jerk me around, I'll invest time punishing you. That's the new deal, guys.

Alternatively, this could just be an unbelievably turgid dollop of woeful, mind-numbingly asinine and utterly inane idiocy of appalling proportions. It could be the most ill-conceived, zeitgeist-missing 'campaign' of all time. Comments have been disabled on YouTube, which is not a good thing as Microsoft would quickly have seen that this was the daftest idea since someone decided to design a car called 'Edsel' - whether it's a 'smart' teaser or a genuine, epically misguided, attempt to get Middle America to hold spontaneous 'fun' Tupperware party style events across the nation.

Hey! Coool! Softerware! Like Tupperware! Why didn't we think of that before? Awesome! Good jooob!

End result? I truly think Microsoft has lost the plot. Marketing was the only thing it did superlatively well.

Where do you want to go today, Google? It's your world, now...

PS: I hated Vista. I wanted to believe in Win7.0...

RIM Enables Etisalat Update Removal

Image via CrunchBase

"Recently an update may have been provided to you by Etisalat for your BlackBerry Handheld via a WAP push. The Etisalat update is not a RIM-authorized update and was not developed by RIM. Independent sources have concluded that the Etisalat update is not designed to improve performance of your BlackBerry Handheld, but rather to send received messages back to a central server. RIM has developed this software (“Software”) that will enable you to remove the Etisalat update."

Not my words, but the official words of the company that makes and enables BlackBerry handheld devices , RIM, on its own forum.

Particularly chilling are these words: "Independent sources have concluded that the Etisalat update is not designed to improve performance of your BlackBerry Handheld, but rather to send received messages back to a central server."

This directly contradicts the words of telco Etisalat, which made a formal statement to media last week, "These upgrades were required for service enhancements particularly for issues identified related to the handover between 2G to 3G network coverage areas."

But RIM goes a lot, lot further in its formal statement on the whole affair. In fact, the company says:

"RIM confirms that this software is not a patch and it is not a RIM authorized upgrade. RIM did not develop this software application and RIM was not involved in any way in the testing, promotion or distribution of this software application.

RIM further confirms, in general terms, that a third party patch cannot provide any enhancements to network services as there is no capability for third parties to develop or modify the low level radio communications protocols that would be involved in making such improvements to the communications between a BlackBerry smartphone and a carrier’s network.

In addition, RIM is not aware of any technical network concerns with the performance of BlackBerry smartphones on Etisalat’s network in the UAE."

So someone's been telling porkie pies, haven't they?

The link to BlackBerry's site is HERE and if you have a BlackBerry and implemented the update, you'll be relieved to know it contains a removal tool provided by RIM for its customers to use in getting rid of the performance-sapping software.

RIM has done the right thing - in contrast to security company SS8, the organisation presumed to have actually coded the software behind this awful little mess and which has maintained a total silence in the face of media requests. Similarly, etisalat's reaction (ignore it all and hope it goes away) has hardly been customer focused - people are still helping each other with 'broken' BlackBerries and Twitter is still ringing with plaintive Tweets for help from grounded BB users.

Do get the word out to friends and family that an 'official' fix is now available to roll back the update and, belatedly, ameliorate the impact on users of this muckle-headed catastrophe.

Etisalat still has 145,000 people to answer to, BTW... And, one rather suspects, a media that will be baying for its blood...

Link to the RIM statement, hosted on the Chirashi Security blog, HERE. Enjoy!