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...