Today's edition of The National carries the stunning headline, 'Property Adspend Plunges'.
WTF? OMG!
We all love a downturn story, right? But when you pass filler ads crying out for you to call the outdoor company as you drive down the Sheikh Zayed Road and spot gigantic billboards on the way up to Mirdif begging you to 'advertise here', you can maybe get the inkling that we may be onto a trend here.
Gulf News (700g) is down to almost half its 2008 pagination, while the (700g) refers to its weight today compared to the 1.3kg weight of GN and its regular advertising supplements in November last year. Al Nisr's 'Property Weekly' is down from a December 2008 156 pages and a 54% ad/ed ratio to 84 pages and a 41% ad/ed ratio. They're pulling in something like 49 pages less a week in advertising. And December was weak for the magazine, which was pushing higher paginations earlier in the year.
And you need a bloke from PARC to tell you that property advertising's on the way down? Do me a lemon, guv!
“Before, papers were more than 120 pages, with a lot of advertising, but now all of this is reduced,” PARC's Mr Jichi told The National's Keach Hagey, throwing caution to the winds and baring his soul in a mad, confessional moment.
Memories of 2008. The sound of air being sucked through teeth and quiet, confident laughter: "SZR circuit, mate? You alright to wait for six months? That's for the premium payers, like. If you want standard rate it could be a year or more. Of course, if you were feeling generous, if you know what I mean, we could maybe get it down to five months and a bit, you know?"
Today's Gulf News carries a supplement for the Abu Dhabi Real Estate and Investment Show, which will run from the 27-29 Jan at the Abu Dhabi NEC. It's all of 16 pages. Listening to real estate people talking up the market for the next three days is going to be interesting.
Showing posts with label advertising. Show all posts
Showing posts with label advertising. Show all posts
Tuesday 27 January 2009
Tuesday 6 January 2009
Kidding
Now, this is about as scientific a measure of the exodus as weighing Gulf News (640g) is a measure of real estate advertising revenue, but today was my first 'proper' day back at work this year and the drive to work was significantly eased by a marked decrease in the morning traffic queues. In fact, looking at the length of them, I'd say they were about 30% shorter than in December. And, unless I've missed something big, there's no particular reason why the roads should be light right now.
So we could speculate, perhaps, that the volume of people rushing off to school/work is around 30% down?
Which is partly what makes Damac Properties' ad in Gulf News today (about 2g in) so interesting. It's a desperate-sounding little thing, offering 2007 prices to the first 50 callers for some 'delivery in 2011' property, all headlined with the immortal words, "The property boom is back with a bang!"
They are, your humble correspondent submits, only kidding themselves...
So we could speculate, perhaps, that the volume of people rushing off to school/work is around 30% down?
Which is partly what makes Damac Properties' ad in Gulf News today (about 2g in) so interesting. It's a desperate-sounding little thing, offering 2007 prices to the first 50 callers for some 'delivery in 2011' property, all headlined with the immortal words, "The property boom is back with a bang!"
They are, your humble correspondent submits, only kidding themselves...
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Monday 6 October 2008
Real
Help! I'm drowning in iconic luxury living!
Dubai's CityScape exhibition starts today and the normal background levels of iconic luxury living that reflects who you truly wish to be are now escalating to a dangerous degree. Gulf News came with a foil bag that screamed REALITY INSIDE, containing a bunch of deeply surreal leaflets.
The mindless hyperbole is incredible. You want to stick your fingers in your ears and cry lalalala until it all goes away. The radio's stacked with end to end soapy voices (why do agencies think the sound of some sarf London bird sounding like she's just taken in two bottles of Moet and a hard hit of amyl will make people believe the dream) and the press is pumped to bursting with insane, blissed out exhortations to dare to dream, live the life, love your dream, dream your dare.
Some examples for those of you unlucky enough not to be assailed by the constant high volume feelgood psychobabble today:
Let the love affair begin. Enter a sumptuous garden paradise that will invigorate the heart and the soul, and recapture the ultimate passion for life.
Unique lines and curves, terracotta roofs, warm colours and cobbled driveways...a stunning architectural concept in a background of perennial blue skies.
For as long as you refuse to compromise on your dreams, we will see eye to eye.
Sensual, expressive, opulent... all about living with a truly fashionable elegance.
Strategically cushioned on the iconic shoreline of Dubai...a home for the privileged few in refreshed luxury.
Prosper in life. Prosper in business. Prosper with one of the finest properties in Dubai. A place where prosperity beckons naturally.
the perfect destination where you can relax peacefully, bond with family, and enjoy life at its fullest.
Argh! Refreshed luxury? What the HELL is 'refreshed luxury'? Let alone a 'strategic cushion', an 'iconic shoreline' and we're not even going down the road of prosperity beckoning naturally!
Rather brilliantly, one developer is offering, in huge type across the page, "A lifestyle of excesses."
I quite like the sound of that one...
Dubai's CityScape exhibition starts today and the normal background levels of iconic luxury living that reflects who you truly wish to be are now escalating to a dangerous degree. Gulf News came with a foil bag that screamed REALITY INSIDE, containing a bunch of deeply surreal leaflets.
The mindless hyperbole is incredible. You want to stick your fingers in your ears and cry lalalala until it all goes away. The radio's stacked with end to end soapy voices (why do agencies think the sound of some sarf London bird sounding like she's just taken in two bottles of Moet and a hard hit of amyl will make people believe the dream) and the press is pumped to bursting with insane, blissed out exhortations to dare to dream, live the life, love your dream, dream your dare.
Some examples for those of you unlucky enough not to be assailed by the constant high volume feelgood psychobabble today:
Let the love affair begin. Enter a sumptuous garden paradise that will invigorate the heart and the soul, and recapture the ultimate passion for life.
Unique lines and curves, terracotta roofs, warm colours and cobbled driveways...a stunning architectural concept in a background of perennial blue skies.
For as long as you refuse to compromise on your dreams, we will see eye to eye.
Sensual, expressive, opulent... all about living with a truly fashionable elegance.
Strategically cushioned on the iconic shoreline of Dubai...a home for the privileged few in refreshed luxury.
Prosper in life. Prosper in business. Prosper with one of the finest properties in Dubai. A place where prosperity beckons naturally.
the perfect destination where you can relax peacefully, bond with family, and enjoy life at its fullest.
Argh! Refreshed luxury? What the HELL is 'refreshed luxury'? Let alone a 'strategic cushion', an 'iconic shoreline' and we're not even going down the road of prosperity beckoning naturally!
Rather brilliantly, one developer is offering, in huge type across the page, "A lifestyle of excesses."
I quite like the sound of that one...
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Thursday 21 August 2008
Spanked
Gulf News today carries, on page 41, a slightly strange advertisement for telco Du’s Unlimited Blackberry offer. The ad, which struck me as unusually weak in a market slopping over the brim with weak advertising, offers “unlimited wireless access to email, calendar, messaging and internet through seamless and secured office connectivity”. It features a sketch of two aliens looking amazed at a Blackberry, having discarded a number of other useless gadgets.
Unusually, Gulf News has also, on page 36, spanked the offer editorially. GN’s Nadia Saleem not unreasonably points out that the ‘unlimited’ Du offer is actually limited to 1 Gb of data transfer, after which usage is charged at Dhs 0.01 per kbyte (or, in other words, a cool Dhs 10 per Mbyte). When contacted about the fact that its ‘unlimited’ offer is actually limited (a slightly paradoxical thing, I’m sure most would agree), Du apparently told our Nadia, “someone might use the data access facility to download movies all day or use the mobile as a modem to transfer large amounts of data”.
Ooh! The rotters!
Firstly, the point is surely that in today's 'always on' world, the data volume is not the charged unit in the vast majority of internet transactions. Package prices are the way forward and the amount of data used in a given package is not germane. The internet is not circuit switched - you pays for the pipe - access not volume. Operators billing volumetrically for access are sort of cheating, really. Particularly when they have mobile IP infrastructures.
That apart, I personally received something like 250Mbytes of useful* email this month, despite being on leave for three weeks of it - and the month's not over yet. If I include the junk, we're looking at a mailbox of over 300 Mbytes and I haven't started allowing for internet access, streaming video or any other cool apps or toys. So it's actually conceivable that a heavy user would actually want 1Gb of access.
What’s missing here are a few words on their advertisement to explain that they don’t actually mean unlimited when they say unlimited. Perhaps interestingly, Etisalat, the big telco, doesn’t limit its unlimited offer.
I bet the GN advertising sales boys aren’t talking to our Nads today, though...
PS: I know I said I wasn't posting for a couple of days, but I couldn't resist it...
*Useful is a relative term.
Unusually, Gulf News has also, on page 36, spanked the offer editorially. GN’s Nadia Saleem not unreasonably points out that the ‘unlimited’ Du offer is actually limited to 1 Gb of data transfer, after which usage is charged at Dhs 0.01 per kbyte (or, in other words, a cool Dhs 10 per Mbyte). When contacted about the fact that its ‘unlimited’ offer is actually limited (a slightly paradoxical thing, I’m sure most would agree), Du apparently told our Nadia, “someone might use the data access facility to download movies all day or use the mobile as a modem to transfer large amounts of data”.
Ooh! The rotters!
Firstly, the point is surely that in today's 'always on' world, the data volume is not the charged unit in the vast majority of internet transactions. Package prices are the way forward and the amount of data used in a given package is not germane. The internet is not circuit switched - you pays for the pipe - access not volume. Operators billing volumetrically for access are sort of cheating, really. Particularly when they have mobile IP infrastructures.
That apart, I personally received something like 250Mbytes of useful* email this month, despite being on leave for three weeks of it - and the month's not over yet. If I include the junk, we're looking at a mailbox of over 300 Mbytes and I haven't started allowing for internet access, streaming video or any other cool apps or toys. So it's actually conceivable that a heavy user would actually want 1Gb of access.
What’s missing here are a few words on their advertisement to explain that they don’t actually mean unlimited when they say unlimited. Perhaps interestingly, Etisalat, the big telco, doesn’t limit its unlimited offer.
I bet the GN advertising sales boys aren’t talking to our Nads today, though...
PS: I know I said I wasn't posting for a couple of days, but I couldn't resist it...
*Useful is a relative term.
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Sunday 20 July 2008
Alas
Talking about new lows in advertising, as we were last week, today's soaraway, sizzling slab of superlatives, Gulf News, carries an advertisement for a rather unremarkable little development called, as far as I can see, 'Sundance'.
Buckingham Palace, Mysore Palace, Palace of Versailles...
Trumpets the ad, getting my attention for a start. What new Dubai Lalaland superlative awfulness are we in for next?
ALAS!
Screams the copy.
None are commercial towers!
Oh, alas indeed! I'm sure Liz is bemoaning that very fact as she gets tucked into her tupperware full of Frosties this morning! The copy goes on to warble about how this humdrum little building is to be 'a business space fit for the emperors of the business world' and how 'if you ever feel the need for a space befitting your empire' you need search no more.
It's not often that something cuts through the constant background buzz of Dubai's prozac laced, hyperbolic real-estate promotion and actively manages to provoke irritation. The idiotic comparison between this drab little square of low-rent office space and great works of architecture shouldn't really get my goat. There's even some merit to the scheme. The idea that Buck Palace would be better utilised as commercial tower space would, I know, dovetail very neatly with my Irish and staunchly Republican wife's view that the British Royal family should be fed to the nearest available carnivore.
It must be me. I must be due leave...
Buckingham Palace, Mysore Palace, Palace of Versailles...
Trumpets the ad, getting my attention for a start. What new Dubai Lalaland superlative awfulness are we in for next?
ALAS!
Screams the copy.
None are commercial towers!
Oh, alas indeed! I'm sure Liz is bemoaning that very fact as she gets tucked into her tupperware full of Frosties this morning! The copy goes on to warble about how this humdrum little building is to be 'a business space fit for the emperors of the business world' and how 'if you ever feel the need for a space befitting your empire' you need search no more.
It's not often that something cuts through the constant background buzz of Dubai's prozac laced, hyperbolic real-estate promotion and actively manages to provoke irritation. The idiotic comparison between this drab little square of low-rent office space and great works of architecture shouldn't really get my goat. There's even some merit to the scheme. The idea that Buck Palace would be better utilised as commercial tower space would, I know, dovetail very neatly with my Irish and staunchly Republican wife's view that the British Royal family should be fed to the nearest available carnivore.
It must be me. I must be due leave...
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Wednesday 16 July 2008
Dummy
It stands out among the many fine examples of the Worst Advertising In The World to be enjoyed on Dubai’s radio stations, in particular Dubai ‘News Talk Sport’ Eye, where I am occasionally forced to turn off the radio to avoid it. It certainly takes my personal nomination for the Year’s Worst Radio Ad. It’s the RTA ‘dummy’ ad. Remember? It’s the dialogue in a car between AUB American accent and the robotic voice supposed to sound like a crash test dummy... it goes something like this:
“Hey dummy, watch out for that reticulated marmoset!”
“It’s fine.”
“Hey dummy, watch out for the syllogistical conclusion!”
“It’s fine.”
“Hey dummy, watch out for the red light!”
CRASH
“Oh no! Its fine, it's fine, it's fine! Now that’s a whole lot of fines!”
VO: “He’s a dummy but you’re not....”
Who wrote that? What type of dim-witted, addle-pated, misbegotten son of a retarded jack-ass actually wrote that as a creative execution designed to communicate a message? And what message was it supposed to get across in the first place? Worse, what idiot of an account director didn’t strangle the creative at birth? And what kind of client would actually approve that as an awareness campaign ad?
Oh. The RTA. I understand everything now.
Look, the whole point of communication in the modern world is that consumers are less and less likely to buy this kind of advertising. We’re in the Internet age – as consumers, we’re in the driving seat. We know what we want and when we want it. Like now. People are more cynical than ever before: we know that eating your product or drinking your drink won’t make us sexually attractive to hordes of lascivious Lolitas. We’re more likely to know about the calorific content of it and the child labour being used to produce it than any other generation before us. We’re not, in short, idiots.
Similarly, I think we can all take it for granted that we know that driving dangerously is a bad thing. We, residents, probably all know that a new points system has been introduced to punish bad driving. I think the vast majority of us think that, fairly and evenly implemented, that this is a very good idea indeed. But I would suspect that few of us know much more than that – how many points before you lose your license, how points are accumulated, how long they remain on your license. I, for one, am unclear on the actual rules. And this stupid advertisement does nothing to make it any clearer for me. It just annoys me.
I don’t want the creative execution – particularly not when it’s so awfully, irredeemably piss poor, but in any case not when it’s taking the place of clear, straightforward communication of the facts that consumers actually do want.
This is the age of the communicator – an age when it has never been more important to say what you want clearly, succinctly and in a timely fashion. There are powerful tools that let you do that, not least of which are the Internet and the ‘social media’ that are driving such a rapid pace of change in human behaviour right now.
All I want from that 30 seconds of airtime is to know what’s going to affect me and how – and ideally a link to a website where I can find out more information if I want to. That's what an awareness campaign IS in today's world.
By the way, do have a look at the RTA website and see if you can find any information about the blasted points system that they're spending good money 'building awareness' of, but which they can't be bothered to highlight on their website.
And just in case the clots behind the Dubai Water and Electricity advertisement are laughing at the RTA, you lot are even worse. I really don’t need some soapy-voiced nerd talking over a background of whiny, soppy faux-pastoral muzak telling me that there’s a team of people working to bring me ‘enabling’ power. I think I can work that out for myself, you dimwits.
There. That’s much better, thank you!
“Hey dummy, watch out for that reticulated marmoset!”
“It’s fine.”
“Hey dummy, watch out for the syllogistical conclusion!”
“It’s fine.”
“Hey dummy, watch out for the red light!”
CRASH
“Oh no! Its fine, it's fine, it's fine! Now that’s a whole lot of fines!”
VO: “He’s a dummy but you’re not....”
Who wrote that? What type of dim-witted, addle-pated, misbegotten son of a retarded jack-ass actually wrote that as a creative execution designed to communicate a message? And what message was it supposed to get across in the first place? Worse, what idiot of an account director didn’t strangle the creative at birth? And what kind of client would actually approve that as an awareness campaign ad?
Oh. The RTA. I understand everything now.
Look, the whole point of communication in the modern world is that consumers are less and less likely to buy this kind of advertising. We’re in the Internet age – as consumers, we’re in the driving seat. We know what we want and when we want it. Like now. People are more cynical than ever before: we know that eating your product or drinking your drink won’t make us sexually attractive to hordes of lascivious Lolitas. We’re more likely to know about the calorific content of it and the child labour being used to produce it than any other generation before us. We’re not, in short, idiots.
Similarly, I think we can all take it for granted that we know that driving dangerously is a bad thing. We, residents, probably all know that a new points system has been introduced to punish bad driving. I think the vast majority of us think that, fairly and evenly implemented, that this is a very good idea indeed. But I would suspect that few of us know much more than that – how many points before you lose your license, how points are accumulated, how long they remain on your license. I, for one, am unclear on the actual rules. And this stupid advertisement does nothing to make it any clearer for me. It just annoys me.
I don’t want the creative execution – particularly not when it’s so awfully, irredeemably piss poor, but in any case not when it’s taking the place of clear, straightforward communication of the facts that consumers actually do want.
This is the age of the communicator – an age when it has never been more important to say what you want clearly, succinctly and in a timely fashion. There are powerful tools that let you do that, not least of which are the Internet and the ‘social media’ that are driving such a rapid pace of change in human behaviour right now.
All I want from that 30 seconds of airtime is to know what’s going to affect me and how – and ideally a link to a website where I can find out more information if I want to. That's what an awareness campaign IS in today's world.
By the way, do have a look at the RTA website and see if you can find any information about the blasted points system that they're spending good money 'building awareness' of, but which they can't be bothered to highlight on their website.
And just in case the clots behind the Dubai Water and Electricity advertisement are laughing at the RTA, you lot are even worse. I really don’t need some soapy-voiced nerd talking over a background of whiny, soppy faux-pastoral muzak telling me that there’s a team of people working to bring me ‘enabling’ power. I think I can work that out for myself, you dimwits.
There. That’s much better, thank you!
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Sunday 9 December 2007
Du du du Dah dah dah
I'm a little hesitant to post about Dubai's most splendid and admirable new telecom operator Du again, because last time I took a pop at them the blog was flooded by readers from Du network addresses and picked up some really daft comments from people using Du's corporate network. You can tell they worked for Du because they had Du IPs and they also referred to Du as du which is something only a du employee would Du.
So they care too much, in short.
But I can't resist. We have a new special offer from the telecom operator that likes to say 'Whaaaaaaat?' in the form of a mobile package that offers you a new Du line for a mere 1 Dirham. Yes! Pay only Dhs 55 and get 54 Dhs back in airtime! That means just Dhs 1 for your super Du line!
Except that Dubai's new mobile operator's previous promotion offered subscribers a line for just 1 Dirham! All they had to do was buy a line for Dhs 155 and they got Dhs 154 back in airtime! That meant just Dhs 1 for your line!
The difference, smarter readers will note, is that they've dropped the package price by Dhs 100 ($27 or so, depending on whether we keep the peg of Dhs 3.657 to the Yankee Dollar, which seems likely).
I'm not sure I get it. They're trumpeting a million happy users, but they're dropping their pants on price and the barrier to adoption alike with a promotion that is pricing a new Du line at $15 and presenting it as a 98% cashback deal. Next it'll be a line for Dhs 2 - with Dhs 1 in airtime...
And I still have not had ONE person who has failed the 'Du Test'. So I'm still a little cynical about those million users, too.
If you can't sell a mobile line for Dhs 1 (30-odd cents), what CAN you sell it at? If the barrier to entry, at Dhs 155, is too high in a country with one of the world's highest GDPs per capita, what ARE they getting wrong?
Is dropping price the answer, then, for Du? Or is it time for the company to perhaps consider some smart, differentiated marketing together with a range of targeted service propositions that intelligently segmented audiences in the UAE will buy?
No, I thought not. It's back to mindless jingles and pointless promos then. Watch out for the 'Win a Bar of Gold With Du' promotion. It's only a matter of time...
So they care too much, in short.
But I can't resist. We have a new special offer from the telecom operator that likes to say 'Whaaaaaaat?' in the form of a mobile package that offers you a new Du line for a mere 1 Dirham. Yes! Pay only Dhs 55 and get 54 Dhs back in airtime! That means just Dhs 1 for your super Du line!
Except that Dubai's new mobile operator's previous promotion offered subscribers a line for just 1 Dirham! All they had to do was buy a line for Dhs 155 and they got Dhs 154 back in airtime! That meant just Dhs 1 for your line!
The difference, smarter readers will note, is that they've dropped the package price by Dhs 100 ($27 or so, depending on whether we keep the peg of Dhs 3.657 to the Yankee Dollar, which seems likely).
I'm not sure I get it. They're trumpeting a million happy users, but they're dropping their pants on price and the barrier to adoption alike with a promotion that is pricing a new Du line at $15 and presenting it as a 98% cashback deal. Next it'll be a line for Dhs 2 - with Dhs 1 in airtime...
And I still have not had ONE person who has failed the 'Du Test'. So I'm still a little cynical about those million users, too.
If you can't sell a mobile line for Dhs 1 (30-odd cents), what CAN you sell it at? If the barrier to entry, at Dhs 155, is too high in a country with one of the world's highest GDPs per capita, what ARE they getting wrong?
Is dropping price the answer, then, for Du? Or is it time for the company to perhaps consider some smart, differentiated marketing together with a range of targeted service propositions that intelligently segmented audiences in the UAE will buy?
No, I thought not. It's back to mindless jingles and pointless promos then. Watch out for the 'Win a Bar of Gold With Du' promotion. It's only a matter of time...
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Monday 3 December 2007
Infinite Patience
Today's newstabulous Gulf News came shrouded in a four-page wraparound for new company Dubai Infinity Holdings. As, in fact, did a number of today's papers. With little information beyond the usual breathless focus-group mumbo-jumbo that is becoming so popular these days ("an innovative investments enterprise that empowers partners and communities to excel", for instance. Or how about "Our value add is anchored in sharing innovative insights, knowledge, creativity, human capital and strategic direction."), including a tagline of 'Empowering you to excel'.
The company, according to the ad, was 'Born on the 2nd December 2007', but there's nothing I can find in the papers to reflect a launch announcement yesterday.
Curious to learn more, I went to the website given in the ad - given that there's little more information given in the four page advertisement than that I have quoted above, one would be forgiven for perhaps wanting to find out more about quite who it is making all this noise.
The website, brilliantly, consists of a flash animation of the company's logo and the message 'Coming soon'.
The only call to action possible from the advertisement was the move to the website to find out more. By not having more on the website the morning the ad broke the company, whoever it is, has effectively wasted that money by ensuring that those answering its call to action were disappointed.
This, I humbly submit, is not terribly clever marketing. Particularly when even the most stubbornly Luddite marketers are having to recognise the absolute criticality of the Internet.
The company, according to the ad, was 'Born on the 2nd December 2007', but there's nothing I can find in the papers to reflect a launch announcement yesterday.
Curious to learn more, I went to the website given in the ad - given that there's little more information given in the four page advertisement than that I have quoted above, one would be forgiven for perhaps wanting to find out more about quite who it is making all this noise.
The website, brilliantly, consists of a flash animation of the company's logo and the message 'Coming soon'.
The only call to action possible from the advertisement was the move to the website to find out more. By not having more on the website the morning the ad broke the company, whoever it is, has effectively wasted that money by ensuring that those answering its call to action were disappointed.
This, I humbly submit, is not terribly clever marketing. Particularly when even the most stubbornly Luddite marketers are having to recognise the absolute criticality of the Internet.
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Wednesday 13 June 2007
Acer in Pointless Promo Shock Horror
I was mildly amused at the kind gift of a small, flat stone from Acer Computer attached to my Gulf News this morning. I was mildly irritated that the package was glued to the front page headline and tore the page when I tried to remove it as carefully as I could, but we'll put that down to early morning biorhythms.
But it was Acer's stone that stayed with me. Disregarding the sage advice of French poet Alain Bosquet, I did not regard my stone so long, so long that it accepted to speak in my place. No, I looked for the invariable ad that explained the invitation attached to the stone: "Nature Shapes, Technology Creates. Individuality is yours alone to enjoy... find out more inside."
Any ad that accompanies such a slice of unremittingly daft and pointless pseudo-empowerment blather is, I thought, going to provide some mild entertainment value at least.
I finally found the ad, buried deeply in swathes of four-page spreads from real estate companies. If you take a minute to go through GN reading the headlines of the ads, you start to understand what Ken Kesey meant by recreating the acid experience without taking the drug:
Experience fine living...because attention to detail is not just a commitment, it's a way of life...; Once a year, the Cereus blooms in darkness; tycoon by day, connoisseur by night; Sea Side Living Starts Today; Your gateway to island living; Live and work in absolute grandeur; Your aspiration for a better tomorrow; Homes created around your lifestyle; Earth, sun, wind and water - the constituents of life, and the quintessence of being; not just another address in the making but a marvel with features extraordinaire...
It's a bewildering array of jumbled up words, sloganeering with no applied intelligence: declamatory, mindless blipverts of aspirational words slung at your psyche in a barrage of positivity and over-promising.
How, you may be starting to think, are our stone-wielding friends ever going to cut through? Answer: they're not. It took me three runs through the paper to find it. And I was looking for the daft thing. The ad was buried on the left hand page 20 and was made of the same old language as all the rest of it. 'Emotion, individuality and temptation at a glance' it starts. Hang on, this is a PC, isn't it? Just checking, thought it might be an apartment in Full Moon Bay. And then, for some strange reason, the next headline is 'Dolby surround sound speakers'! It's like being jerked from a page of Paulo Coelho to a supermarket flyer.
The other words in the ad are irrelevant, you can put them together in any order you like and they'll mean just as much. Print them, cut them out and try it.
Unrivalled | Empowered | Wonder | Style | Concept | Technological | Natural | Performance | Prestige
However, I now have a stone that I didn't have before and for this, like so many other small mercies, I am truly grateful.
There were many newsworthy things in today's papers, including the fantastic and most welcome news that Wadi Warraya (or Wurraya or Waraya or any other way you want to spell it) is to be, belatedly, declared a protected zone. This great news was not in Emirates Today which, you may remember, did launch a concerted one day campaign 'Save the Wadi Fish' that was based around an interview with a conservationist working in Waraya. A big bag of bite size Snickers Crunchers says that ET does a piece taking the credit tomorrow. For now, GN can sit back and enjoy that warm, fuzzy feeling that rewards those who get a decent scoop.
But it was Acer's stone that stayed with me. Disregarding the sage advice of French poet Alain Bosquet, I did not regard my stone so long, so long that it accepted to speak in my place. No, I looked for the invariable ad that explained the invitation attached to the stone: "Nature Shapes, Technology Creates. Individuality is yours alone to enjoy... find out more inside."
Any ad that accompanies such a slice of unremittingly daft and pointless pseudo-empowerment blather is, I thought, going to provide some mild entertainment value at least.
I finally found the ad, buried deeply in swathes of four-page spreads from real estate companies. If you take a minute to go through GN reading the headlines of the ads, you start to understand what Ken Kesey meant by recreating the acid experience without taking the drug:
Experience fine living...because attention to detail is not just a commitment, it's a way of life...; Once a year, the Cereus blooms in darkness; tycoon by day, connoisseur by night; Sea Side Living Starts Today; Your gateway to island living; Live and work in absolute grandeur; Your aspiration for a better tomorrow; Homes created around your lifestyle; Earth, sun, wind and water - the constituents of life, and the quintessence of being; not just another address in the making but a marvel with features extraordinaire...
It's a bewildering array of jumbled up words, sloganeering with no applied intelligence: declamatory, mindless blipverts of aspirational words slung at your psyche in a barrage of positivity and over-promising.
How, you may be starting to think, are our stone-wielding friends ever going to cut through? Answer: they're not. It took me three runs through the paper to find it. And I was looking for the daft thing. The ad was buried on the left hand page 20 and was made of the same old language as all the rest of it. 'Emotion, individuality and temptation at a glance' it starts. Hang on, this is a PC, isn't it? Just checking, thought it might be an apartment in Full Moon Bay. And then, for some strange reason, the next headline is 'Dolby surround sound speakers'! It's like being jerked from a page of Paulo Coelho to a supermarket flyer.
The other words in the ad are irrelevant, you can put them together in any order you like and they'll mean just as much. Print them, cut them out and try it.
Unrivalled | Empowered | Wonder | Style | Concept | Technological | Natural | Performance | Prestige
However, I now have a stone that I didn't have before and for this, like so many other small mercies, I am truly grateful.
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