Swine

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The UAE's advertising agencies have long been famous for their skill, creativity, taste and discernment, let alone managing to run their businesses on unbelievably tight margins (the latter, at least, an assertion made by advertising bigshot Joe Ghoussoub talking to Emirates Business 24x7 last week which did rather result in me having to clean half-chewed muesli from my keyboard).

So any hint of egregious opportunism in the advertising campaign for Dac, whose roadside promise to 'Eliminate flu viruses and doubts for 24 hours' in the face of rising public concern regarding the H1N1 'swine flu' virus is obviously in my imagination. It's nice to see big business taking a role in public education campaigns in the face of health scares rather than making unsustainable claims for products that target our fears.

The advertising campaign being mounted by Dettol (ten times more effective than soap, apparently) at least doesn't make a promise, directly or indirectly, to protect gullible consumers from swine flu or any other form of influenza, even if its timing does perhaps mean it sails a little close to profiteering from the pandemic.

The Dac advertisement did leave me wondering if global chemicals company Henkel, rightly proud of its track record in corporate governance and CSR, would truly associate itself with a campaign that makes the absolute promise that one of its domestic cleaning products will eliminate influenza viruses. And if it does, I'd love to see the peer-reviewed research that stands the claim up...

My City. My Metro. My !!!

Your humble correspondent was somewhat disconcerted yesterday to pass a number of advertisements along Dubai's Sheikh Zayed Road, multiply proclaiming 'My City. My Metro.'.

I can only assume this is 'awareness building'. In fact, according to the RTA's own press release, chucklesomely headlined 'RTA Embarks on Massive Metro Marketing Camapaign:

"This marketing campaign runs for one year and comprises three phases to cover the project comprehensively. Phase I focuses on the project introduction in terms of launch timing, shape design and message selection i.e. (My Metro). Phase II is the basic stage comprising all information related to the metro operation, fare, public services, station services, multi-modal integration, and security & safety means. Phase III is the preparatory phase that sets the stage for the launch day on 09/09/2009; also incorporating a supplement to Phase II."

Now don't for a second think that I'm being snarky about this, but the World's Largest Rollercoaster(TM) runs all the way along the Sheikh Zayed Road, occluding much of one's view to the left of said road when travelling in a Southerly direction and the view to the right when travelling in a Northerly direction. *

For well over a year now, we've been watching those pillars supporting massive yellow machines that have been slotting the whole massive Lego kit together, we've seen the armadillo stations take shape and exclaimed with childish delight and wonder when we've all seen our first train moving. We've been talking about it, we've been living with it - including the diversions and traffic jams that have inevitably accompanied a project of such scale.

WE KNOW THERE'S A BLOODY METRO THERE!

Now that we've established that, can we all please save some of the money that's being wasted and get down to the job of actually communicating information of value to people so that we can all start to make our minds up about the most crucial question that is begged by this stunning piece of engineering: will any of us actually want to use it?

*Forgive me, but I have been Irish since my health test.

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???

Advertising Agencies Tell The Truth

The excellent AdNation website carries the story, based in parts on quotes surfaced by Gulf News on Friday, that now another client is disowning the work submitted to the Dubai Lynx awards by large Middle East agency group Fortune Promoseven - in fact by the group's Qatari operation, FP7 Doha.

If you haven't been following the Lynx story, you can catch up with it on AdNation or Campaign Middle East's blog. Basically it turns out that agency FP7 Doha entered award-winning work that turns out not to have been commissioned by Samsung, which was embarrassed by the work (Depicting, amongst others, a scene of Jesus photographing nuns that resulted in a national outcry in election-tense Lebanon) - from an agency that wasn't even the company's agency!

The Lynx jury is now widening its investigation into the disastrous 2009 awards to look at other agencies' submitted work.

A massive embarrassment for the advertising industry as a whole, this year's awards have made the widespread practice of entering 'fake' work for awards excrutiatingly public. By 'fake' I mean entering advertising campaigns that have not been created for clients, approved by clients or even run in media that clients have paid for.

It all boils down to the advertising industry's unhealthy obsession with awarding 'creativity' rather than real-world campaigns that achieve results for clients. I don't know whether that is a Middle East phenomenon or a global thing, but I can tell you that watching UK advertising over the past couple of days has hit home to me just how 'creativity' is totally lacking in the Middle East's advertising. I'm looking at truly creative, clever advertising that connects with people and is entertaining, challenging and clever - and it's made me appreciate how bad the advertising I see back in the UAE every day truly is. (This point was actually made by a high profile Dubai Lynx judge on his blog - and subsequently sadly retracted).

Of course, it's only FP7 Doha to blame. The rest of the Lynx awards entries will be cleared by the investigating judges because no other agency would have entered work that hasn't run, hasn't been comissioned by clients, approved by clients or even produced for clients that are clients.

Carry on working as usual. There's nothing to be concerned about. As long as agencies have been honest about their entries and put forward 'real' - valid - work.

You have all been honest now haven't you, chaps?

The Last Minute Dick

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http://www.prestonlee.com/archives/67

via CrunchBase

Pal Carrington shared this post from Seth Godin's blog. Just in case you don't know him (cue screams of 'don't know him? Don't know him?' from the neologists and social media gurus out there), Seth Godin is a frequent, respected and much followed commentator on social media, marketing and suchlike. He's a big, major league US business guru.

In fact, there's something of a Seth Godin cargo cult going on out there. If Seth says 'Hey! Stick pins in your eyes to enjoy success on the Social Web', you'll hear the sounds of screaming from all over Silicon Valley.

But I do have to take issue with the Sethmeister over this one. He says:

I hate going to the post office in the town next to mine. Every time I go, they look for a reason not to ship my package. "Too much tape!" "Not enough tape!" "There's a logo!"

The same thing happens with the tech crew before I give a speech. About 75% of the time, the lead tech guy (it always seems to be a guy) explains why it's impossible. Impossible to use a Mac, impossible to use the kind of microphone I like, impossible to use my own clicker, etc. And then, the rest of the time, using the same technology, the producer asks, "how can I help make this work for us?" and everything is about yes, not no.

To get the full effect, you'll have to go to his post - I shortened it.

Now here's where I got the issue. While I agree with the general (and, I thought, rather obvious) point that people who say 'yes' are nicer to deal with, and more successful, than people who say 'no' by default there is, as Berthold Brecht tells us, an exception and a rule.

Nearly every major conference event I have organised, moderated or otherwise been involved with has resulted in the appearance of the Last Minute Dick, or LMD.

The Last Minute Dick ignores all calls for papers, all emails asking speakers to please note down any special requirements and all requests for their PPTs and other materials before the event. The LMD will miss the speakers' briefing the day before because he's way too busy for that kind of thing.

And then he'll turn up on stage with less than an hour to go before the start of the event (always less than an hour, from 55 minutes to 15 minutes) holding his memory key with a 90 page PPT on it that integrates to five embedded videos, requires a simultaneous sound track to trigger using SMTP time coding and absolutely needs us to download and install SWIFF player from the Internet on the stage laptop. His videos will need the newest Vidalia Codec to be installed and support for Flash Version X, where X is the version above the one you actually have installed on the stage system.

He'll also need an intro video to be played from another file that will invariably crash the carefully pieced together sound/light integration that the team has been working all night on to ensure it's stable. It's on a Blu-Ray disk.

He'll pull a full John McEnroe on you when you tell him that you don't actually have Flash Version X.

"Whaat? What kind of two-bit penny-anny dump is this? Call yourself conference organisers? Jeez! Everyone got Flash X! And Blu-Ray? What do you MEAN you don't have a Blu-Ray player set up? I don't need to tell you to get a Blu-Ray player, surely? I mean, every organiser in the world has a spare Blu-Ray player! Do you know how often I speak at these things? Proper ones? In big cities? Do you? Do you? I mean, do you know who I am?'

Yes, I do. And you're a dick.

You can guarantee, by the way, that his requirements will ensure that something goes horribly wrong for the next speaker. And that you'll be around to hear him telling everyone who'll listen what complete gherkins you and your crummy company are for messing up the stage settings like that.

I'm with the guy on the stage, Seth. If you didn't tell 'em you want your own Mac, clicker or wombat on heat up there on stage, he's totally right to tell you 'no' when you pop up demanding it as the gig's about to start. And I'd back him for telling you to get off his stage, too. Because the event's always bigger than the one, lone and invariable LMD...