Dear Blogger

A pebble.

I have increasingly become the target of press releases and media invitations, some sent using a system called Cision, which PR companies subscribe to, and some sent using proprietary lists. I don't mind getting them, to be honest. They are occasionally entertaining albeit rarely - if ever - relevant to me in any way.

Consequently, I'll get updates when the international governing body of aviation is announcing we're flying more now than ever or when a company is launching a new wireless networking adapter for small to medium enterprises and wants me to kindly 'cover' it. At one stage I was getting a lot of press releases about uninterruptible power supplies but these stopped abruptly. I suspect the client took a look at #UAEPR on Twitter, hauled his agency out back of the building and shot them like dogs in the street.

I can't remember if it was I started #UAEPR, @TomPaye or @TheRegos but the hashtag has collected some of the more entertaining examples of witlessness and the occasional sound of a screaming journalist pushed beyond reason. It's a little like having a drum kit in the office, it's therapeutic and cleansing and probably a lot more harmless than what some would call 'direct intervention'.

As well as the almost inevitably irrelevant nature of the announcements and media invites, one can't help to be charmed by their breathless tone. 'Hi. We've compiled an infographic of the density of chewing gum on London's streets and thought it might be interesting for readers of FAKE PLASTIC SOUKS, I've attached it but can send you a hi-res file if you like.' Occasionally the mail-merges go horribly wrong and you get addressed as 'Dear ,' or some such. One highlight was 'Dear , I hope you're having a great day!'

I was until now, yes thank you.

You might think I'm hardly in a position to throw bricks, given the day job. And you may well be right, but I'm not letting it stop me. When the agency I work for used to do a great deal more media relations work than it does now (we hardly do any and we almost never send out press releases. I think we've sent out one in the past year), I like to think we worked to a slightly higher standard, that it was about respecting the people you're dealing with and working to ensure that there was an exchange of value that made the interactions we had personal, pleasant and fruitful.

Of course, being targeted as 'a blogger' or a 'social media influencer' is slightly different. It's harder to do that exchange of value thing, because you're not really helping me to do my job by exhorting me to write about your innovation in right threaded sprockets. I don't run a right threaded sprocket magazine. And all too often you just come across as a user. You want me to write about your asparagus promotion so I can 'influence' the people who read my blog or Twitter feed. Then you can show your client you have been successful promoting their interest and they will give you money. Someone in this seeming trifecta is coming across as a donkey.

Do I like asparagus? You haven't bothered to find out, you've just sent me one of your 'Dear ,' emails. Do my readers like asparagus (do I even know who you guys are?)? Do I wish to serve my readers better by giving them more information about asparagus? Not really house style, is it? You might have a chance if you do a Dubai style three hour Bolly-laden brunch in which every dish is based on asparagus, including the desserts. That'd be worth a post, I'd reckon. And no, I don't actually want to come to your hotel and eat asparagus with you and the communications team pretending to like me.

I'll give Nokia credit, actually their agency, D'Abo, for managing a brilliant intervention when I hurled my Android mobile at a wall one night. Contextually appropriate, timely and sensitively managed, they had my much-beloved Lumia in my hands within the day and handled it so fluidly I barely saw them coming until it was too late. That was something of a rarity, I have to say.

What triggered this self-serving, snotty wee rant, you might ask? I was sent a media invitation to a mobile handset launch last night which commenced with the immortal words 'Dear Blogger'.

This.

Look, if you want access to my tiny and frequently mystified readership, that's no problem. I'll sell 'em for a pebble, honestly. Most of them are cut-purses and charlatans anyway. All you have to do is bother to read the blog. Find out if there's any commonality or relevance to what you're pitching. Work out how likely I am to bite you for calling me out of the blue and suggesting I might like to 'depute a journalist and photographer' to your office opening. Perhaps consider the fact I have a day job and a busy old time outside that because of the writing addiction and never, ever write about the thing you're selling. And then maybe, just maybe, you might decide to pass me by. And that's just fine by me, Dear PR.

I hope you're having a great day.

Book Post - Promotion And All That

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I've just been working on slidesets for next week's series of workshops on how to write, edit and publish books. In the last of the three, I look at getting an agent and also self publishing. And that invariably leads to the knotty issue of book promotion.

It's something of a conundrum, this promotion thing. I threw myself into promoting Olives - A Violent Romance like a particularly relentless lunatic, taking every opportunity to make a fuss, create content, repurpose, share, link and generally hoon around. Given the day job, I had a relatively good go at using my platforms and reach to nag, annoy, bully and generally beseech anyone who had ever come within my relatively wide ambit.

I did interviews, LitFests and ran a very extensive online reviews and outreach campaign. I published the book in October and by the following June was so exhausted with the whole thing I never wanted to see another book blogger again. Ever. Even the words 'I love books' used to bring me out in a cold sweat.

Picking up the energy to promote Beirut - An Explosive Thriller was a big deal. I never really managed it that well, beyond a cool launch event and some interviews/workshops and other stuff. I simply didn't have the energy left. And one thing that was becoming clear was there was a law of diminishing returns at play here - social media wasn't having the same impact it used to.

Everyone talks about getting an 'author platform', but what happens when those outlets become jammed with authors abusing their platform to promote books? Or when that platform is no longer seen as crucial or important to the people using it? What if everyone's just, you know, moved on?

I really haven't promoted Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy that much. IMHO it is by far the best of the three books but hasn't even drawn ten Amazon reviews. Because I haven't printed an edition in the UAE as I did for the last two books, it's not being bought by its 'core audience' in the main because Amazon doesn't serve the UAE, the adoption of e-readers is generally miles behind in the Middle East and few people seem to be buying books online.

Book bloggers, who used to be relatively accessible, have TBR (to be read) lists stretching ahead months. A lot of book blogs have just ground to a halt, are no longer accepting self published books or simply aren't taking on more reviews. It's getting harder and harder to get your voice out there and have it heard.

And when you do, McNabb's law applies. You have to kiss an awful lot of frogs to get one buyer. And even then, they probably won't read the damn thing for months.

It's starting to get problematic. There HAS to be better way to get good books into people's hands (and no, it's not blasted GoodReads) than this trilling and primping on social media - because that's simply not working.

If you know the answer, clearly I am more than interested in your views. Because I, for one, don't...

DysonGate - Are PRs and Journalists Tom And Jerry?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The DysonGate scandal threatens to drive a massive wedge in our local media community. Heads will roll. Words will be written. You heard it here first.

There's nowt so close as love and hate. Public relations people and journalists have a constant, bickering Tom and Jerry relationship that often gives me much gentle amusement. PR people annoy journalists by being incompetent, lazy and slavish to their unreasonable clients. Journalists annoy PR people by being lazy, incompetent and slavish to their unreasonable masters.

Rarely do both sit down and commiserate, although you'd have thought the above was grounds for considerable empathy. Veteran journalist Frank Kane of The National took a pop at hapless PRs sending him awful stories in his column yesterday. It's not unamusing. You could argue he was shooting fish in a barrel - the volume of dire press releases that goes out in the UAE every day is remarkable not only for its volume but its persistence. When you consider the vast majority of these announcements have no hope of achieving any coverage whatsoever, you do wonder why the relentless tide of mindless mush continues.

Kane picks a couple of examples from the bin, the Dyson airblade release being surely the result of an almost manic optimism "No, really, it WILL get coverage. National newspapers LOVE to hear about hand dryer installations. TRUST me on this one, Phil!" He could have gone on at much greater length and easily been a great deal unkinder. I do wonder if Dyson's agency will claim credit for the clip with the client... Or, indeed, tell them a local blogger's nicknamed it DysonGate.

"See? Major media AND blogs! I TOLD you we'd get traction on this one, Phil!"

In a previous life I used to edit a magazine called BBC GulfWide - it was a sort of wrapper of local features around the BBC Middle East listings and I quite enjoyed producing it. Every month I dedicated a double page spread to lampooning the efforts of the local PRs. I was younger, then, and more unkind. Reading back over some of these spots now does make me laugh. But the same releases were going out then, the same idiotic appeals to 'depute a photographer' from my 'esteemed publication' (a phrase Kane picked up on). The same ridiculous releases about something nobody in their right minds other than the people working in that company would care about mixed in with inappropriately targeted product releases. Why did agencies think the BBC listings magazine, a features only title, would cover news releases? Or that we were interested in hair care products?

And why, more to the point, do they still persist in sending out these awful releases today, almost two decades later. Have we really not moved on one iota?

That's a complicated question, actually. It's a mixture of agencies pandering to clients without giving them good advice, clients who believe agencies are there to do what they're told, not consult on the most effective course and media that actually will run this sort of tripe. Because if the standard of local PR can hit Dead Sea  level lows, the standard of journalism can match it metre for metre. I'd probably go for a dig in the ribs and bring the Mariana Trench into it.

I'm going to echo Kane's admirable example and not name names. But the newspaper - the national daily newspaper - that ran a story today about how traffic is slowing down around the new junction in Ajman is only one microscopic example from a rejoinder that could run for thousands of words. Kane, himself brought up in the days of pencil-licking notebook journalism, would recognise the classic 'six questions' structure in the first paragraph of the news piece:

Ajman: Cars approached the newly opened Al Hamidiya interchange with caution on Wednesday morning, slowing down to read the signboards, trying to figure out which way will take them to their desired destination, changing lanes carefully to get on their way.

Or perhaps not. That was the first para of a page lead story, by the way, not a News In Brief. When you add that to the copy/paste hacking, the plagiarism, the fawning to authority and toadying to influence and then throw in a good measure of lack of depth, research, investigative or searching journalism and sprinkle a masala of news wire copy, laziness and verbatim press release you start to comprehend the true worth of the media environment.

Am I tarring all journalists with that brush? Of course not, just as Kane is careful not to tar all PRs with his. But we both know that we're both right and there's too much of what we've both pointed out going on.

Sadly, the truth of the matter is journalists get the PRs they deserve. At least they've stopped complaining that PRs make them lazy, which used to be the case in days of yore...

Media Events

Image via WikipediaLook, 'doing' social media does not consist of sending invitations to bloggers to attend media events.  Many bloggers I know have day jobs and any with media experience would rather force a prickly pear up their right  nostril than go to a press event.

There's a department in hell that consists of press events. It's for really, really bad people for whom an eternity in blistering flames being tormented by devils is just too good.

In particular, if you send me invitations to attend media events, I will feel perfectly free in future to hold you up to public ridicule. I am not interested in your product launch. I am not interested in your initiative. I might give the coverage, however it is derived or appears, a passing glance if it engages me - but I am not about to invest a couple of hours in some drab hotel being fed tired food while suited executives cluster around and whisper, glancing at me before approaching me with wolfy smiles and 'So, you're a blogger!'

If this blog was that of a dedicated follower of fashion, I'd likely go to a preview or launch event if it was big. Likewise, if I had a geeky weather blog and the airport met office contacted me to arrange a tour of their facilities, I'd likely be interested.

But a deranged marmoset with a frontal lobotomy could surely work out that this blog is merely commentary, of personal experience, news and a few tatty half-thoughts. Which brings us back to the single greatest complaint that journalists have about PRs and in-house communicators that attempt to engage with them - that these people simply haven't taken the time out to understand their publication/medium and its target audience.

Anyone that wants me to go to a launch announcement 'as a blogger' has similarly not invested the time to work out that not only do I not care, I actively do not care. I vocally and negatively do not care. I will respond well (but negatively) to appropriate invitations from known social contacts. I really don't like getting press invitations. I'm not press and I won't act in lieu of a compliant media and slavishly convey your product information for you.

That my name is now presumably on someone's list of 'social media' contacts is a worry. This, then, is a cease and desist order. Next time, I'll take it public.

When Silence Ain't Golden

Image by keira-anne ♥ via Flickr

Well, I was having a nice quiet start to the day when I got a call from La Swann wanting to talk on air about the Burj Khalifa elevator incident and how the communications aspect had played out.

Crisis management takes many shapes and forms, but generally is called for when something happens that is deeply regrettable in some way. Managing a crisis these days is about getting as much dependable information out as you can - fast. By being communicative, you earn the right to get your story out in full - to mitigate the hard facts with some explanations.

I've seen my fair share of these, from explosions and deaths through to recalled products and political screw-ups. Everyone's first reaction is to stick their fingers in their ears and shout lalala until all the nasty people go away. When you've endangered lives, when you've attracted the attention of the world's media, sadly, that's simply not an option - and no professional PR practitioner would consider it as an option for one picosecond.

So what do you do?

In minor and/or simple issues, you'd tend to be 'reactive' - you'd answer questions when they're asked, typically with a prepared statement. Where you've got a major problem on your hands (any issue involving danger to human life being a Great Big Red Flag), you get out there and communicate.

Typically, you'd want to say what happened, how and why it happened, what you've done to ameliorate the effects and how you're working to ensure it won't happen again. Critically, if there has been danger to the public, you have the opportunity to express regret and concern for those affected - and what you're doing to help them deal with the consequences.

Trying to get by with issuing a statement that does not recognise the facts is a short term fix that will rarely, if ever, work - particularly these days when everyone with a mobile is a TV crew. Rather than getting one hard hit with your side of the story told alongside the unpleasant facts, you're begging for a drip feed of stories that are wholly negative.

If you preserve your silence while that negative coverage is breaking, you are effectively positioned as arrogant and uncaring. News expands to fill a vacuum, so your silence encourages investigative reporting which will tend to be negatively skewed precisely because your silence ensures that your side of the story is not being told.

Because today's world is a fast-moving little place, news can globalise in minutes flat. That means having a sound crisis communications plan in place. This starts with imagining the unimaginable, planning for the very worst (including the unthinkable. It's funny how often the unthinkable happens) and then answering the million dollar question - how would we react if this happened?

There are a lot more questions to answer, too. Questions like who do we care about? What are our policies and procedures? Who owns this problem?

You actually need to put procedures in place, define reporting and escalation paths and have a team assigned for the unthinkable. You need to have 'dark sites' in place - websites that can be cut in to replace your standard home page so that relatives, friends and other concerned people can get access to information. You need to be able to scale quickly to respond to requests from media - local at first, but very quickly global. You need to have statements in place, at least in draft, so that you can minimise the time you spend wondering what on earth to say. Where appropriate, you need to have advice lines up fast and other facilities to help people deal with the incident and the concerns it raises with them.

For me, the most valuable part of this whole extensive (and, yes, expensive) exercise is forcing organisations to actually think about the unthinkable - and how it could be avoidable. If more organisations went through this structured process, I believe that more of the unthinkable could be avoided. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to get people to take this whole process seriously, by the way. Until, of course, they get that phone call...

Social Media and Libel

Image by Felipe Bachomo via Flickr

I’ve talked quite a bit on the radio over the past few weeks about Internet libel. It’s an interesting area and one where I think we all are guilty of being perhaps not quite as careful as we should be - particularly on Twitter!

With the ruling by a UK high court judge that blogging is essentially ‘an act carried out in public’, we not only lose the right to anonymity (not that I’ve ever done any of this stuff anonymously), but also have a precedent that social media interactions are ‘acts carried out in public’. That means we are open to charges of libel and defamation where we make assertions regarding people and also companies over social media platforms. There are already cases lodged as a result of material posted on MySpace, FaceBook and Twitter in both the US and UK. Having said that, the world's legal systems are still struggling with the whole issue - so nothing is clear.

Which means that, fine, today’s consumer has a megaphone – but today’s consumer has also to be aware that they may be held answerable for their use of a medium that has the reach (and, let’s face it, potentially way beyond the reach) of a national daily newspaper.

Similarly, any company threatening suit against people for something they have said online has to think long and hard about the consequences to the company’s reputation in the long run. While we are now seeing an increasing number of precedents being established by litigation, they are by no means concrete and supported by a body of established law – certainly not in the US and UK, let alone somewhere like here in the UAE. And companies 'picking' on bloggers, FaceBook users and other social media users are risking disastrous loss of credibility and respect from consumers - who are enjoying the new found freedoms, increased information flow and empowerment that using the Internet is bringing them.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that the removal or alteration of offensive material is often all that is required to mitigate any serious threat of legal action. So online commentary is particularly hard to legislate for in laws that depend on the presence of immutable, physical, media.

In other words, we need to perhaps take a little more care, but companies with brands to protect need to cut consumers a hell of a lot of slack and, by the way, the answer for companies feeling wronged by consumers is dialogue, not 'cease and desist'.

The Last Minute Dick

Image by

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...

Siam

There was a wonderful little moment during my stint with Brandy Scott on the Business Breakfast last Thursday: we were talking about the US presidential candidates and their public relations and communications strategies, particularly in the light of the excruciating McCain/Letterman affair. John McCain blew Letterman out claiming that he had to fly to Washington to focus on the financial crisis and then Letterman cut live, during the McCain-less show, to the same McCain being made up for an interview he’d granted to CBS’ Katie Couric. An infuriated Letterman let rip throughout the show and, in fact, has been doing so since.

So we talked about this, about interview management and planning communications strategies on the theme of what we can learn from the US presidential candidates’ management of their communications.

At one point, the delectable Brandy asked me what I thought about Sarah Palin and my response was something along the lines of “I know! I mean, here you’ve got this mooseburger eating, hunting shooting fishing NRA-head who believes that polar bears aren’t under threat and that global warming isn’t a product of human activity and she’s come from being the mayor of some village and suddenly she’s potentially the most important person in America!”

And then Brandy, who is (unlike your correspondent) really rather good at her job, looks across the mikes at me and deadpans, “I meant her PR.”

My father once taught me the Siamese national anthem. You sing “O” then “my watan” and then “a’s Siam”. Put them together in one fluid chant and repeat. It’s the kind of thing that my father used to do to me, a traumatic childhood.

Nowadays I occasionally have cause to remember it and chant it to myself...

Warned

Aren't blogs funny? It never rains but it pours. Some days you've got nothing at all to add to the world, some days things you want to get out of your system just come tumbling out.

Some people read this post. I'm sure quite a few more read it when it ran on Arabian Business. Some even heard me blithering about it on the radio (and were kind enough not to complain).

But, surely, this poor berk wasn't among 'em - otherwise he'd have thought twice about the way he tried to handle disappointed consumer Moryarti when he posted his 5th September grumpy blogpost about a hotel Ramadan tent that failed to live up to expectations. Yes! Cue relentlessly positive comments from someone quite obviously working for the hotel in question. And then some rather... acid responses from the Moryarti himself... a fun read!!!

They can't say I didn't try to tell 'em, can they? >;0)

Wheeee!

I'm sorry, three posts in a day (even if two ARE very silly) is too much, but I just HAD to share this deliciously silly PR shot from the Emirates Airbus A380 launch in Hamburg. You can, of course, click on it to make it bigger. BTW - they're wearing the new uniform...

I wasn't going to say anything about it, honestly. What with some 200 journalists attending the launch, including ace broadcaster Malcolm Taylor, and the papers all going mad about it, I already thought it had overkill scrawled across it - although (and I would like to be clear about this) I'm very happy for Emirates, which I admire.

However, asking the crew to run along the tarmac making big propeller arms has resulted in my favourite photo of the month, without a doubt!

Machtnicht

Being in Berlin and finding myself in the Reichstag (as one does), I took the opportunity to chat to my old friend Matthias Machnig, German state secretary for the Federal Ministry of the environment, nature conservation and nuclear safety.

Matthias spent some time kindly talking to our little group, outlining his views of the world of communications. His stance was broadly that only people who belong in, and therefore understand, the corridors of power should have the right to access those corridors and the grandees contained therein. The egalitarianism of the Internet and the wacky world of Web 2.0 was certainly something that Herr Machtnicht wasn't going to take seriously.

Challenged on this view, he became somewhat defensive and arrogant, instantly losing the sympathy of 180 communications professionals from around Europe. Having been charged with a certain degree of arrogance, his response was "If I was arrogant, I wouldn't have given up my valuable time today to talk to you!"

His valuable time, as a consequence, was invested in creating a most definite feeling of irritation and even alienation amongst his audience.

A lesson in communications, indeed...

Journalist

I first came across John Mason when we were organising a big event for Jordan Telecom a few years ago: a big conference with 1,000 guests, regional, local and international media and all that good stuff. He was freelancing for the IEEE journal and covered the event from Spain, where he lived. He was always on the hunt for new stories from the region as he attempted to convince various telecom and electronic magazines in Europe to run his stuff and it slowly became obvious that John was not really like other journalists: I came to the growing realisation that our correspondence and his constant crusade to get freelance work were more about an old man keeping going and having something to do than they were about journalism and hungry freelancers. John had retired and, in fact, was in his eighties.

I always made sure he was on the press release list, although the feelance work never really came through for him and I was always very careful to reply to John’s requests, including asking a number of colleagues, on one occasion, if they’d collude with me in responding to questions about attitudes and outlooks of modern Arab women for a piece he was working on. One of my many blessings is that I work with a team of very modern, very Arab women...

Bit by bit, as we corresponded, I built a picture of John Mason. An American, John was passionately opposed to the Bush administration. I thought this was funny, given that he had worked for the American military and government as a young man. In fact, he’d flown over 30 tours on B17s in WWII, making him something of a war hero. He had travelled widely in the Middle East and was fond of the region and its people. He was horrified by events in Iraq and Lebanon.

Every now and then he’d email about some hope for a new piece or an editor who’d been open to an approach. This type of news gave him a great high. I’m not sure any of the pieces he worked on actually ran, but I do know that the whole process gave him enormous satisfaction.

I lost touch with him for a while last year and sent a quick ‘how are you’ email through to him in September. I’d helped him do some research on a story about Dubai Silicon Oasis and he was trying, unsuccessfully, to sell it to some European website or another. His summary of the DSO proposition and its likely success was wry, succinct and typical John: “I have a feeling that DSO is never going to amount to shit. I am sorry I invested my million dollars in it. Fortunately, I can spare it. I imagine you invested even more.”

I didn’t hear from him for ages after that.

You’ve probably guessed where I’m going with this already. This morning I received an email from John’s niece. He had given her a list of people to tell when and if he died.

She was at great pains to point out that John had died peacefully of plain old wear and tear: no dramatic illness, no scans and poker-faced doctors and no pain or lingering wasting. He simply died in his sleep, at peace.

John and I had never met. We had, in fact, only once spoken and that very briefly. But I am terribly, bitterly saddened by today’s news. The fact that he had such a rich life just makes it more poignant that it’s over.

Would You Like Fries With That, Sir?

This has been a funny week. One of my most enjoyable jobs this week was going shopping for a private jet. It's not often (I know you'll be amazed, but it's true) that I get to do that. Not any old
private jet, either. A 37-seat private jet with cargo hold space for 150 bags is what was called for. Which was more complicated than you'd at first think...

I was truly delighted at the way people reacted to my calls. "Hi. I'm calling from Dubai and I want a sizeable private jet to pull two long-haul flights at less than a week's notice during high season."

Now you'd be forgiven for thinking that a reasonable reaction to that lot would be "Are you kidding me, mate?" but the reality was more like "Certainly Sir. We'll get onto it right away."

Most executive jets come in at under the 15 seat mark. There's actually a sizeable industry built around the sale, leasing, hiring and operations and maintenance of these little high-flying business essentials. However, the requirement for 37 pax meant an altogether larger 'plane. Most of the sub-100 seat 'planes are regional jets which can't do the long haul flight, so you're looking at something like a Boeing 737 or 757 - particularly because we also wanted cargo room for 150 bags.

For much of the week brokers were scouring the market for us while the client's team was also working on the problem (it was the client's team, grrr, that found the best solution in the end!).

The solution turned out to be an Embraer 135 LR, a long range version of the popular Brazilian regional jet that drops 13 seats to give a 37-seat (37 seats! How 'just right' could you get?) 'plane that's still got enough cargo space for the bags.

Alongside that, another client is doing a number of 'classy' events that necessitated investigating the cream of the city's private dining rooms and exclusive venues to find the very best of the lot. In a city packed to the gunwales with five star hotels, that was quite a lavish brief.

A real lalaPR week...

BTW: Shifting pop bands around the world is a pain in the arse, in case you are ever interested in going into the shifting pop bands around the world game...

Etisalat Customers Happy. Du Faces Task. Maktoob Effs Up.

Maktoob Research, the research arm of Arabic portal Maktoob.com, has published a report citing that 74% of Etisalat customers are happy campers.

They didn’t use the phrase ‘happy campers’, obviously!

The 74%, drawn from a sample of 360 customers (A nice round number! Arf! Arf!), are either ‘satisfied’ or ‘very satisfied’ with the mobile operator’s services. Gulf News took the opportunity in its story earlier today to point out that Du faces an ‘uphill task’ in converting these happy souls to its cause.

Uphill task. Right.

It's a great story. Media in the Middle East loves research: figures go down really well. But what amazes me is that Maktoob itself didn't make any reference to the story on its homepage on the day its release was due to get coverage - today. So any curious souls (like me) that went there to find out more didn't have a reference point to the story. Worse, when you finally find the Maktoob Research section of the site (still no reference to the cellular report) and look up its press section, the release isn't posted there!

In all fairness, I saved the original post this morning and gave 'em all day to catch up. It's 9pm DXB time and nothing's changed. The media's talking about Maktoob's cellular research, but Maktoob's not. Own goal.

Integrated campaign. So easy to say, so hard to do...

Salik: Wading Through a Mountain of Forms

I was thinking about refusing to babble on about Salik, the Dubai congestion charge, any more simply because everyone's talking about it so much it's in danger of getting boring.

But then I have been giggling quietly to myself so much this morning, I had to share. As predicted in posts passim, Salik is turning out to be far too much fun to ignore.

When you apply for your tag (as I did on Sunday), you fill out a form with your name, address, mobile number and car registration. If the databases were smart, you'd be able simply to give your vehicle registration number and everything else would be pulled from the database. Which rather points to the fact that the registration database isn't linked to Salik. Which rather points to manual data entry of those forms. Which rather points to delays in getting accounts activated.

So I called the nice Salik people on 800 SALIK (800 72545) and asked why I hadn't yet received my SMS advising me that my account was activated, as advertised. And they said there was a data entry backlog and I should kick my heels for a further 2-3 days.

Today's Gulf News (Emirates Today, for some reason is suddenly silent about Salik) reports a four day delay from readers, with one unhappy chappie saying he applied over a week ago and still hasn't got his SMS.

Oh dear, oh dear. There are only three more shopping days to Salik day and I have only yet seen two cars on the roads wearing their Salik tags. Media reports are a little confusing, but it would appear that 200,000 tags have been distributed in total, with reports of sales of 80,000.

Now. Let us assume that each form can be data entered in an average of two minutes (including downtime, error checking & toilet breaks, I think that's more than reasonable). That would mean 333 forms could be processed by one operator in a working day. So 80,000 forms would entail 240 man-days of data entry. If you had a massive data entry operation with 50 people working on entry, you're looking at 6.6 days' work.

However, we've got 200,000 tags out there and, this being Dubai, most people haven't bought their tags yet. Let us assume, then, that the 80,000 already sold have been data entered (although mine hasn't!). From today, we have another 120,000 tag applications to enter. That's going to take our 50 data entry operators ten days. So they'll be entered around about the 12th July given that no more applications are received.

I am, of course, more than happy to be told my calculations are incorrect and do point out that this is all speculation, guess-work and conjecture. But that's what people do when they're not being told what's happening...

So someone, somewhere is likely sitting underneath a huge and growing pile of forms while retailers will be facing the prospect of a weekend of increasingly angry customers demanding their tags and the call centre's in danger of getting flooded and people whose accounts aren't activated are probably going to start triggering fines or just be too scared to go through the gates...

It's all kicking off rather nicely, isn't it? What larks, Pip!

Cross Cultural Exchange She Too Much For Good

Having just spent a most pleasant and productive three days with our European colleagues at the annual uber-klatch, this year's was in Vienna, I can now say that I have propelled a pedalo across the Danube, which wasn’t honestly in my list of 100 Things to Do Before I Die.

The frank, friendly-natured chat and goodwill of something like 150 smart people is a wonderful thing, although the rapid expansion of the companies in the network has meant many new faces and the necessity of going through the same explanations and conversations time and again: no, I’m not a ‘Dubaian’ (What is a Dubaian? As I explained once in the long-missed Campaign Middle East, it’s an alien from the planet Dubya), I’ve lived there for 15 years and I’m white because the sun’s too intense to go out burning yourself every week unless you want early ‘rhino skin’. No, it's not all Palm Islands and ski slopes; well, OK, it's mostly Palm Islands and ski slopes. And so on. So many similar questions and answers! Two of the home team were with me and they, at times, had it harder. No, they’re not forced to wear a chador or ‘full hejab’ at home was one response, politely enough delivered but through gritted teeth.

The curiosity and desire to hear more about the region, us and our lives is genuine. They’re smart people, our European colleagues, and the chance to get together, to clear things like that up and high-spot our market is always one that’s gleefully taken on my part. The fact that so many misconceptions still exist is an opportunity to put things right rather than an annoyance to rail at. New friends and contacts made, many things cleared up and new opportunities to explore. Truly a good investment and much fun.

But I was truly delighted and touched when one Bright Young Thing, hearing I was there from the Dubai office and representing the Middle East, congratulated me on the standard of my English.

Chador indeed…

Proof of Concept Silliness

So this is a horrible picture of 'Geek in chief' Gianni Catalfamo (of course only horrible pictures can be taken of Gianni) from the Pleon klatch in rainy Vienna just to show you can post piccies to your blog using the superior and sleek Nokia N93 Music Edition.

Ha, Catalfamo!

One Black Acer Promotional Stone

Remember One Red Paperclip? The kid (Kyle MacDonald) that bartered a paperclip in a series of increasingly unlikely and jaw-dropping swaps that saw him eventually get a house in Kipling, Saskatchewan out of it all? Put aside, for a second, the question of whether you'd want to live in Kipling Sakatchewan. Because I’ve had an idea.

It started with the Acer Pointless Promotional Stone, pictured above in loving TechniColour. You see, it was sitting there on my desk after I wrote the grumpy post about the (s) ad campaign that was supposed to promote the Acer Gemstone laptop. I tried giving it away, but colleagues wouldn’t take it – they kept giving it back. One pointed out, quite correctly, that the stone in question had a flaw in it (true) and that it wasn’t a gemstone anyway so what on earth did it have to do with a computer called Gemstone?

Which, I have say, I could only agree with.

So the thing remains sat there on my desk, an object so utterly useless that I can’t even give it away. Which spawned the idea of going one step further than ‘one red paperclip’. I am going to set out to swap my totally useless and fundamentally undesirable stone (an object even less valuable, anyone reasonable would agree, than a paperclip), with the ultimate objective of owning the moon.

I know it might seem like a big leap, but if you think of it more as just a giant step it doesn’t look so daunting. Just to make it more attractive, I am prepared to offer the stone along with the promotional text that accompanied it at no extra charge.

Anyone want to make the first offer?

Public Relations Quote of the Year

My personal favourite public relations quote of the year so far comes from Andrew Lee Butters, posting a story on the Kurdish PKK on the most excellent Time Middle East blog:

"If radical guerillas stuck in the mountains had good media advisors, perhaps they wouldn't be be radical guerillas stuck in the mountains."

It's so good that I'm going to have it made into a T-shirt.

The Web 2.0 Interview

Being a shy, retiring sort of chap I wasn't going to mention it, but Zeid and the chaps at MediaME threatened to burn down my house if I didn't link to this interview with yours truly on the spiffly MediaME website.

So, to avoid the flames and fire engines, here is the link. They used the photo from my Facebook profile, which is all very Web 2.0 of them but it's not quite the suit that serious clients want to see, is it?

Which, of course, I quite like... :)