Airline News

Kentucky man demonstrates customer service experience

I'm hesitant to add more words to the trillions that have been shared around the world after US airline United caused a passenger to be rendered insensible and dragged off a flight by three police officers. If you have by any chance been hiding in a nuclear bunker for the last 72 hours, 69 year old Dr David Dao was travelling home from Chicago to Kentucky on a United Airlines flight on Sunday and refused to give up his seat when instructed to do so by the crew. They called the police, who removed him forcibly.

United's blundering mismanagement of the entire incident reads like an text book on how to create a global PR fail of such magnificent proportions that it wipes $800 million off a company's stock price - which is precisely what it has achieved.

Although it would appear everyone was told the situation was due to 'overbooking', in fact United needed four seats to fly its own crew out to staff another flight. It had managed to screw up its own rostering to the point where it had to try and get people already boarded on a flight to agree to give up their seats. It offered $400 compensation, then $800 - which Dao agreed to and then rescinded his agreement when he found out the next available flight was 2.30pm the next day.

Of course, it's easier to say 'As the flight has been overbooked we are offering passengers...' in a tannoy than 'As we have goofed up our rostering and have four unexpected dead heads, we are offering passengers...'

United's consistent use of obfuscation and mendacity is only part of the whole glorious and potent mixture of incompetent communications that led them to become an object of global opprobrium. With a video of a bloody and unconscious man being dragged down the aisle of the plane being shared by millions, the company's CEO said this was 're-accommodating' passengers. The company also said that Dr Dao - a man torn from his seat on a plane - had been 'refused boarding'.

Dao is currently being smeared across mainstream media, a sad incident from his past being dragged up to show us that this seemingly innocent Doctor is actually a gay sex fiend who was struck off for ten years and earned a fortune playing poker instead of doctoring. We'll likely find out he was horrible to hamsters and kittens, too. United has finally, and this is Wednesday, made a full and proper apology - something it should have done at the latest by Monday but, in our Twitter-driven world, really Sunday was the time to react. It would seem United has either engaged an agency or started listening to its incumbent.

But the late reaction is too scripted, too late and follows an initial and very different reaction. Result? It lacks the one thing we know is the most important element of communications in today's environment: authenticity. They don't sound like they mean it and that's precisely because they don't mean it. United has consistently made it clear that Dao was an inconvenient trouble-maker because he didn't do what they told him to do and wanted him to do.

Is United responsible for smearing Dao? It's hard to tell, really, the smear has certainly made the 'innocent passenger' narrative more complex but it has also prolonged the coverage of the whole sorry incident. And with every new story, we have a chance to replay that video of a man being dragged from his seat - bought, paid for and occupied with every expectation of being able to fly home that night - and pulled off a plane like a sack of spuds.

For me, currently engaged in an arbitration case against British Airways, the story has particular resonance. Airlines are big businesses and the regulation of their behaviour would appear to be particularly lax. They are routinely lying about their flight times to avoid charges of delay (have you noticed how yesterday's 45 minute flight has become today's 90 minute flight?), using reasons of security to mask operational convenience and generally treating passengers pretty woefully. The first line of response is reasonably consistently to take refuge in obfuscation and filibustering, using a variety of means to disempower consumers. We are all sausages, lining up to be squeezed compliantly into the sausage machine.

It's remarkable how falling standards in aviation customer service and comportment have become the norm rather than the rule. BA's descent from the world's proudest national carrier to a sub-Ryan Air low cost carrier has been pretty meteoric. A sort of flying Nokia.

The exceptions to that rule are, of course, finding that being better than that pays off. That consumers will avoid (showing remarkable lethargy when it comes to making active choices to change) the bad airlines and gravitate to the good guys. It's where the Gulf 'feeder flight' carriers have made such inroads.

And it's going to be hard to see United waving the flag for 'good ole Amerikay first' when it comes to competing with the Gulf airlines, continuing that lobbying effort to have the Gulfies throttled to support American airlines. Their service standards being already notoriously low, beating up your customers really does set a new standard.

United will be reassuring itself that the news cycle will move on and this, like all things, will pass. they won't change, not one jot, despite their CEO's belated and PR-penned promises. It'll be interesting to see, when the online howls have died down, how many consumers vote with their feet in the weeks to come...

The Great Emirates Laptop Ban

Abu Nidal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Press Release: The Fear Returns

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The #UAEPR hashtag on Twitter was started by @theregos back in the days of yore, as he and I were swapping tales of woe from our experiences at the hands of the UAE's public relations practitioners. I had forgotten and thought it was me, @mrtompaye or @dxbmaven wot done the dirty deed first - but it would appear not.

#UAEPR is amusing; a sustained howl of pain from various media and bloggy types sharing the abuse we are all subjected to by the sort of drooling idiots who think sending breathless blipverts about car washing 'solutions' to people with absolutely no interest in car washing is a beezer scheme. That businesses are actually paying these clots to irritate an audience that buys its ink by the barrel is a source of never ending, childish wonderment to me.

It is from this stable that this week's highly popular press release about Bapsy's Brilliant Books came, a communication that ticks every box in the multi-layered mixed metaphor that is the Mille-Feuille Of Wrong.

And it is from this - gloriously Augean - stable also we are gifted with the following, sent to me on Monday of last week.

Dear Alexander,

I hope you are having a lovely week.   

It is with great excitement that we share the news of Coca-Cola Egypt's  Ramadan Charity Campaign #ثانية_تفرق, set to dominate social media platforms in Egypt and beyond.

This festive season Coca Cola is giving back to the Egyptian community by replacing their always hotly-anticipated television ads with a unique campaign against prejudice rolling out exclusively on digital media. Their TV ad budget is instead being poured into their  project of developing 100 villages. In recent days they have also galvanised Egypt's digital population, pledging that for every post featuring a finger raised against prejudice (symbolising one extra second) they will donate one additional pound to their project.
Kindly find below the press release for your reference. Please do let me know if you need imagery or any additional information as it would be a pleasure to assist.   I look forward to hearing your thoughts!   

Warm regards,  

Kristina

Fascinating, indeed. A press release - naturally packed with highly assertive language - that begs more questions than it answers. The 'press release below' was just an Arabic version of the above text and some YouTube links to Arabic language videos about people with disabilities drinking brown stuff. I naturally shared my thoughts with Kristina in the form of some questions about Coca Cola Egypt which her email to me raised:

1) How will the campaign dominate social media platforms in Egypt and beyond? What sort of metrics are you using for this goal and what will success look like for you? 

2) How are Coca Cola's TV ads hotly anticipated? Do you have any statistics regarding consumer reaction to the ads and how anticipated they are? 

3) What is Coca Cola's Ramadan TV ad budget for 2015? Is this the same as 2014? Can you confirm this is all being spent on social good programmes this year? 

4) I'm not aware of Coca Cola's programme to develop 100 villages? When did it launch? With what goals? What form has it taken in the past? What has it achieved so far? What villages, in which regions of Egypt, are being assisted? 

5) What will Coca Cola be doing for these villages in 2015? 

6) How has Egypt's social media population been galvanised? Do you have figures of posts, engagement, reach to substantiate that? 

7) The raised finger in a selfie signifies one extra second of what? 

8) A finger raised against prejudice in Egypt is interesting. Which prejudice in particular, or all prejudice? Can you confirm that Coca Cola's definition of prejudice includes prejudice against gay and Lesbian people? 

9) What is Coca Cola's existing donation for Ramadan 2015? Is there a cap on how much it is willing to donate as part of this campaign? What is the maximum Coca Cola will donate? 

10) How does Coca Cola think this campaign will benefit its brand image as a purveyor of soft drinks?

It's nearly a week now and I haven't heard back from her. I'm sure the team has been beavering away gathering proof points that will back up the bold assertions in her email. Or perhaps I got caught in her spam filter, which will be doubtless more efficient than mine - which appears to have ceased to work for some reason.

Mind you, it's possible she wasn't being sincere when she said she was looking forward to hearing my thoughts. But I can't quite believe that.

It was clearly such a sincere email representing such a sincere campaign...

Web Strategies For Authors

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ugh. Even the title of this blog post makes me want to heave. But, like it or not, as a writer you're going to need to work out how you define yourself on The Tangled Web. Remember that one - when the marketing nongs who gave us 'the cloud' and 'the Internet of things' coin that as the next bigbig thing, you can all queue up to give me the credit for inventing it.

Suit: "We're defining the solutions that will make sense of TTW and simplify the muddle of the interconnectedness huddle."

Lesser mortal: "Sorry, TTW? What's that?"

Suit (smugly): "The Tangled Web. Duh."

Wow. I haven't said a thing yet and I've already managed to completely derail myself.

So. Authors. Websites. Basically, you're going to have to work out what you do about websites and the like. For myself, it was all nice and simple. When I published Olives - A Violent Romance, I started a blog of the book and a book website. At the time I worried a little about whether that was the right move, or whether I should have an Alexander McNabb site that had the books in it, but I was greedy for SEO, in part because Olives is such a pants title for a book (long story) and in part because it doesn't really matter what you do for a day job, you're too close to things when it's your own work.

The blog of the book was a clear content-led promotion play and launched in January 2012. I kept it going until around May 2013, by which time I was so exhausted by book promotion I could barely look at an Olive, let alone write about the blasted things. The blog was basically an ongoing discussion of the book's content, quoting bits of book and discussing the ideas, concepts and situations behind each quote. In total it's pulled about 24,000 page views and is still averaging a little under 400 views a month. That's not bad, really, but when you take McNabb's Law Of Clicks into account, it's not a very big hill of beans.

The book's website was nice and easy to do: I used Blogger as a CMS (Content Management System), because it's the Barney of CMSs (Wordpress is immeasurably more powerful, but complicated. Blogger is all primary colours and simple steps) and the introduction of multiple pages meant it was just fine for simple sites. I had a little help from +Derrick Pereira who knows more about the under the bonnet stuff than I do - other than that, it's simple enough for an averagely connected person. The website's pulled about 17,000 views since December 2011 when I launched it, which isn't actually much as it was the landing page for most of my Tweets and Facebook posts - but it's nice to have somewhere to send people to get more information on your book before you launch them at Amazon to close the deal.

The Beirut - An Explosive Thriller website launched a year later and has pulled about 14,000 views, while Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy has a measly 4,000 - a reflection on how increasing weariness has negatively impacted the amount of book promotion I've been doing, really. Perhaps interestingly, particularly as a test of the previously mentioned Law Of Clicks, Olives has seen 2,000 clicks on the 'buy Olives' page, Beirut has pulled a tad more (but possibly that's Lebanese politicians who thought someone else might be selling the city cheaper than they are) and Shemlan 1,000 clicks. Those clicks on the 'buy the book' pages have not translated into an equivalent number of book sales, believe me.

I decided on a simple common naming convention, olivesthebook.com and so on. Clearly I wasn't getting Olives.com or Beirut.com. And, of course, I put the address of each website into the books themselves, alongside alexandermcnabb.com.

Alexandermcnabb.com was originally just a redirect. I snaffled the domain (from whois.com, where I do all my web stuff) but didn't really get around to doing anything with it except redirect the URL to this here blog. After a while I bit the bullet and put up a simple, five-page site using Whois' Sitebuilder, which is a very simple to use but really quite powerful website template manager and CMS.

That 'strategy' has now run its course. I can't go on launching a new website for each book, apart from anything else it's costing me $9.98 a year in domain registration fees for each site. So over the weekend I pulled the primary content from each book website and put it all under alexandermcnabb.com, giving myself a 'proper' author website by taking Whois' 20 page package, rolling up my sleeves and structuring the site to be very book-centric. There are now six books up there (including the appallingly neglected, some would say justifiably, Space) and there's room to add more without increasing cost. The content is just as searchable as it was in the book sites and I'm not losing millions of links into those sites with the move.

If I could do it all again knowing what I know now (bear in mind that back in 2011 I had no idea I was going to go on to write and publish more books), I'd have gone straight for an author site with the books under its aegis. It simply makes more sense, introducing readers to other books I've written and giving a core property to link to. The Whois Sitebuilder product is actually pretty powerful and includes multimedia, social links and even a shopping cart if you're minded to go down that road.

I wouldn't have bothered with the Olives blog, either. I'd have abused this blog more and built links from it to alexandermcnabb.com rather than the Olives website.

If discussing all this has helped you to think through your own web presence as an author, I am glad. If it has bored you senseless, sorry about that but remember no refunds. If you want to pop over to my shiny new website, it's linked here for your listening pleasure. Please do remember to wipe your feet before you go in.

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.

Wakeboarding On Cranberries

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I love it...

Salam, Bloggers! The Arabian Nights Village in Abu Dhabi wants you!

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's one of the most witless emails I've received in a long time, from a company calling itself 'Smart Comms' and a bloke who's given himself the job title 'Digital Scientist'. You can tell we're in trouble already, can't you?

David, the digital scientist, wants to offer all UAE bloggers the chance to qualify for a free-of-charge stay at the 'Arabian Nights Village', apparently a one of a kind cultural experience in Abu Dhabi. That's it, that's all the detail in the email. All bloggers have to do to 'qualify' is send David a list of their social media followers, specifically:

1) Unique Monthly Visitors to your Blog:
2) Twitter followers:
3) Instagram followers:
4) Facebook fans:
5) Other Social media footprint?

Based on these numbers, presumably - rather than any qualitative or content based analysis, David will work his 'digital science' and select bloggers to join in the 'exciting activities' at Arabian Nights Village.

Presumably David will find this post one day as he trawls the UAE's blogs to find new victims for his 'digital science'. So here's a message for him that is infinitely more satisfying than replying to his email.

Look, David. I don't want to go to 'Arabian Nights Village'. I don't know what it is, what it does, what it's like or even who's behind it. I'm not particularly interested, but you've hardly piqued any shred of residual interest I might have had. I certainly don't want to "take a first-class Desert Safari and stay in houses inspired by Emirati lifestyles from throughout the ages" - not that I'm uninterested in Emirati culture, far from it. But from the tone of your mail, I have the nasty feeling that whatever 'experience' you're offering consists of being hauled around with a ring through my nose and being forced to endure a number of humiliating encounters with something lacklustre before being beasted into posting about it in awed and gushing prose that you would, ideally, dictate. I could be wrong, but that's a chance I'm taking.

I have very little interest indeed in responding to your invitation to validate myself to you by proving I have sufficient followers, friends or other online contacts to jump over your arbitrary bar. Why on earth you thought spamming every blogger/social contact you could scrape from the web with a mail like this would get you any result other than opprobrium, I don't know. I mean, you didn't even take the trouble to address me by name or contact me in any way prior to this. What on earth did you think you were doing? What in the name of all that's chocolate flavoured did you think the 'social' is there in 'social media' for?

Maybe you'll get lucky - maybe there's some rube out there who'll trade his/her twenty followers for a night out with you and your village. But, for the record, David, it's a 'no thanks' from me. Best of luck with other 'bloggers'...

Hotel Chocolat And Brand Positioning Online

Hotel Chocolat, Kensington, W8 (Photo credit: Ewan-M)

We were talking positioning brands online the other day on the Business Breakfast – it's linked here if you fancy a listen in - about the changes in the rules that taking an ‘offline’ brand to the Web entail. As part of that chat, we looked at some brands that had moved the other way – digital brands that have made their way onto the high street. One of the more high profile successes at this has been Hotel Chocolat.

I am, and always have been, a huge fan of this company. Started by founder Angus Thirlwell and co-founder Peter Harris as a business selling mints in 1988, by 2003 the company had become known as ChocExpress, a catalogue-based mail order business (with a website) that included a chocolate tasting club – a concept that was to be core to Hotel Chocolat and a club that today has over 100,000 members.

The trouble was that ChocExpress didn’t reflect the luxurious image that Thirlwell was after for his premium chocolates. And it was that dissatisfaction that led to the product I first encountered in my mum’s living room many years back. It was a luxuriantly packed box of chocolates, more like a hat box than a chocolate box, with a ‘Hotel Chocolat’ room card-key and a ‘do no disturb’ sign to hang on the door while you had your one-one experience with that box of very fine chocolates indeed. The chocolates had individual recipes, lavish descriptions and a little card for you to take tasting notes and send them back to Hotel Chocolat.

Here was an online business with a two-way customer communication mechanism built into its very DNA long before everyone had started talking social media.

The brand, and its promise, was incredibly strong. It was unique, clearly differentiated and communicated throughout the product offering – and the website which took over from the catalogue as the premier conduit for reaching customers. Although Hotel Chocolat was quick to open high street stores, it has been the Internet business that has driven the incredible success of the company which now employs over 800 people and has a real Hotel Chocolat in the Caribbean and its own cocoa plantation to boot. The company has launched a range of sub-brands, including boutique cocoa outlet Roast+Conch and Cocoa Juvenate, a range of cocoa-themed beauty products. There are over 70 stores in the UK’s high streets, five in the US and three in the Middle East. You can nip down to Mall of the Emirates if you fancy a chocolate rush par excellence - the only shame is that Hotel Chocolat's boozy chocolates don't get a look in. Because they, my dears, are very good indeed.

And that website’s still there, reflecting that brand positioning as strongly today as it did almost ten years back when I opened a posh-looking box of chocolates in my mum’s living room and was transfixed by the painfully smart marketing that met my eyes just before I lifted the paper covering to reveal the rows of little shinies underneath.

You know, I might be lying about the positioning. It might just be all about the chocolate after all…

For Whom The Trolls Troll

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Australian marketing website Mumbrella has a habit of unmasking Twitter #fails and so its eagle eye was fixed on the hashtag #SocialCV after Melbourne based PR agency Porter Novelli announced it was going to canvass for account executives based on the top three tweets on that hashtag.

Mumbrella was right to keep an eye out – it wasn’t long before Twitter decided to have some fun with the hashtag and sure enough, little storm clouds formed over the teacup - if you can't be bothered to look for the hashtag, some choice examples are linked here.

There are those who think the stunt was ill-advised, that perhaps the search for talented communications consultants could perhaps be filtered in ways beyond 140 character statements. There are those who can’t see what all the fuss is about. But in between there have been a large number of very witty tweets indeed, the vast majority at the unfortunate agency's expense. The hashtag trended in Australia, natch.

Although Porter Novelli was initially slow to respond (in Twitter terms), the agency came out with a response on Twitter and also took to Mumbrella, claiming its ‘plan for the trolls has worked’. The response calls on brands to better understand social media, which doesn’t really help matters when you've just been roundly spanked by Twitter.

To sum up what happened, an agency made an ill-advised attempt to show it was ‘down with the kids’ by using a hashtag to recruit, was lampooned and then tried to justify the campaign with a ‘we meant to do that’ response. Significantly, its claim to have planned to manage the trolls showed just how out of its depth it was – there were no trolls, just people having a laugh at what they thought was a dumb idea.

Knowing the difference between those two is actually quite a critical skill – people who disagree with your point of view or actions aren’t trolls, they’re people who disagree with you. Trolls are people who are intent on harming you – and there’s a world of difference. You can reason with people who disagree with you – or you can see their point of view and ‘fess up for getting it wrong. But you can’t reason with people intent on harming you. You can only put your point of view for the benefit of any watching and move on.

Trolling is a recognised Internet based behaviour, although firmly founded in the school of offline human nature that ties cats to lamp posts and stones them. It’s vindictive and nasty and frequently hurtful in the extreme. It’s couched in the concept of anonymity and so trolls rarely carry much reputational weight. It's usually personal - highly so. It's sort of hard to troll a corporate...

Going back to good old fashioned communications planning, what Porter Novelli actually faced was a negatively elective audience, not trolling.

And it was, IMHO, a negatively elective audience entirely of their own making. So no, Tubbs, the plan didn't work...

The ICDL Social Media Release

After much commentary online, particularly on Twitter, I offer you the unexpurgated text of the ICDL Social Media Release, as sent me, for your elucidation and enjoyment. There are many gems in there, from an inauspicious start with the assertion that social media has revolutionised the way we interact within two decades. In fact, two decades ago there was no Internet at all in the Gulf.

The 'money shot' for me personally is the assertion that 'the Internet is full of billions of people', which has a certain charm to it, I feel. You are, of course, free to select your own highlights...

ICDL urges social media caution for GCC youth

Facebook users in Emirates and the Arab world reached over 45 million as of end June 2012

Dubai, UAE (27 May 2013) – Within less than two decades, social media has revolutionised the way people interact with each other. ICDL GCC Foundation, an organisation that promotes digital skills and cyber safety across the Gulf region, believes that while the technology is here to stay, people must continue to exercise caution in sharing personal information online so as to avert cyber threats.

Jamil Ezzo, Director General of ICDL GCC, said the need to address online safety in using social networking is particularly significant in the Gulf where smartphone and Internet penetration rates are high, and children have access to mobile devices.

“Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn and Tumblr are social media tools that have now become household names and their influence as a communication channel continues to increase. In the Middle East and North Africa, we recently saw how social networking sites can bridge communication gap. However, we must remember that despite being effective vehicles of social interaction, social media can also be abused and exploited by people with malicious intent,” said Ezzo.

According to the Arab Social Media Report published by the Dubai School of Government, Facebook usage in the Arab world has almost tripled in the last two years to reach over 45 million as of end June 2012 – about 50 per cent higher than the 37.4 million recorded in January of the same year. Out of the countries surveyed across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), those in the GCC posted the highest Facebook population in the region.

The report also noted that youth (those between the ages of 15 and 29) represent the majority or 70 per cent of Facebook users in the region, a number that has been holding steady since April 2011.

Ezzo said the figures point to a widening adoption rate of social media technology among young people. Users, who are often not aware of the security or privacy setting of various social networking sites, are more prone to fall victim to cyber-attacks.

“Facebook has undoubtedly been a major game-changer in the social networking sphere. Globally it is reported to have over one billion users. According to an independent survey, if Facebook was a country, it would have the world’s third largest population, more than twice the size of the United States,” Ezzo explained.

“This gives us an idea of how vast the social media community is growing and how potentially dangerous it can be for young users. However, parents can help their children use social websites more safely by first talking to them about why they have to be cautious online, and how they can protect themselves from cyber predators.”

Oftentimes, according to Ezzo, many children find it difficult to distinguish between real life and virtual life. However they use social media – whether to play games, interact with friends and family or post videos and photos – they should understand that the Internet is full of billions of people who can access their personal and private information with just a click of a button.

In a bid to protect children from cyber threats such as addiction, bullying and exploitation, ICDL GCC Foundation has partnered with law enforcement agencies as well as educational and other concerned government organizations across the GCC countries, to visit schools as part of a campaign to raise awareness on the subject amongst teachers and parents.

“We encourage parents to talk to their children about social networking. They can even make this a family affair. By being their children’s ‘friends’ online, parents can monitor their activities and list of friends while networking,” he said.

Most importantly, however, children should be trained to be able to recognise potential threats or messages that make them uncomfortable and to step up and call their parents attention whenever this happens.

“Some of the information children post on their social network pages, such as age, can make them vulnerable to scams and cyber-attacks. Parents should also warn them against divulging personal information to strangers and setting house rules, such as the length of time one can use the Internet, can go a long way in securing your children from the possible dangers of social media,” he commented. Ezzo concluded “Internet and handheld devices have removed all geographic boundaries and conventional discipline. By giving our children unrestricted access to the world for good intention, we are also exposing them to the world’s lures and dangers. Hence, protecting them from being exploited is an individual and institutional responsibility by raising awareness among them on the responsible and safe use of technology.

-ends-

News Management At Twitterspeed

(Photo credit: mkhmarketing)

"Every minute that passes the poison is spreading into the system to all sorts of roots and you need to find a way to cauterize that very, very quickly."

That rather glorious quote comes from a chap at number 10 Downing Street, talking about news management and Twitter. It's carried in this piece in the Guardian. The piece looks at how the relationship between compliant journalists and dissembling politicians has moved to the Twitter age, in particular No. 10's intention to hand out 'Twitter exclusives' to journalists.

The quote is one of the scariest things I've seen in some time. While it recognises the viral nature of information movement in this connected age, it's the characterisation of information as 'poison' by political communications people I find unsettling. We're all enjoying new levels of transparency and demanding, in fact, better transparency from the people and organisations we support. Information as poison is counter-intuitive to that.

Of course the great challenge facing journalism is the direct nature of networked communications. I am in contact with my audience and don't need a journalist to filter or agree to carry what I have to say. Likewise, my audience has pretty much, by following me, decided it wants to hear what I have to say from the horse's mouth. This direct communication avoids the pitfalls of editorialism, whereby a third party decides whether what I have to say is important or relevant to the majority of an averaged audience. The development of that process to a high degree of refinement gives us mainstream banality such as CNN or Fox. But now people with special interests or a particularly strong interest in a given area or topic can go straight to the source, create their own feeds of information and even their own magazines.

We have many ways of presenting and consuming news - one of which is journalists who are now fighting to match information that's flowing at breakneck speeds. Along with that comes a loss in quality of information, with mainstream media dropping their standards to meet the exigencies of time and therefore adding immeasurably to the spread of that terrible poison.

Easy, then - give journalists you can trust to toe the line privileged access to information that allows them to do a better job of analysing and presenting it. That way, you get your side of the story out to some important multipliers and the journalist gets the head start they need to compete with Twitter-speed. You also have a neat control mechanism, because the second a journalist gets into that sort of cosy relationship, they've signed a Faustian pact. Go off message and you're out in the cold.

David Cameron was once negative about Twitter, but his new media strategies have been evolving since 2011 and now conservative MPs are encouraged to "tweet as a muscular force". That's another interesting set of multipliers, because No. 10 can depend on several hundred loyal MPs to RT what the PM had for breakfast. As long as that breakfast is 'on message'.

So what's changed? A compliant Westminster press carrying the government's message, the government media machine leveraging the voices of hundreds of MPs to get a critical mass of 'on message' communications out there at a local level and planned bursts of communication that pre-brief media under embargo to ensure that the 'right message' gets out there.

It's the poison. Like the magic in Terry Pratchett's books, the problem with that poison is it has a nasty habit of escaping. A wonderful example cited in the Guardian piece is chancellor George Osborne's 'Great Train Snobbery', the recent incident where an accompanying journalist live tweeted the chancellor's crass attempt to travel first class on an economy ticket because of who he was. The whole row blew up with blinding force and speed - such speed that there was a press pack awaiting the unprepared and clearly embarrassed chancellor as the train pulled up in London.

The poison had clearly spread...

The Emirates ID Card Confusion Continues

clarity matters"" (Photo credit: atinirdosh)

EIDA, the Emirates ID Authority, has established a remarkable track record of communication since its very inception. Many's the time I have posted about this deadline and that requirement being countered by that requirement and this deadline. Nothing has ever been terribly clear since the get go, if you don't mind me saying so.

And it remains oblique, opaque, obtuse and generally obfuscated. Today we have two reports in our newspapers. Well, news media - as one, Emirates 24x7, is not technically a paper anymore, having sublimed and become a being of pure energy.

Gulf News, then, is first to punch its grateful subscribers' eyeballs with a typically hard-hitting headline:

Millions of expat employees in UAE to save ID card costs biennially

The story, linked here for your viewing pleasure, is quite unequivocal:

"Millions of expatriate employees in the country can save the cost of over Dh200 for ID card renewal every two years, thanks to a new move by the Emirates Identity Authority (Emirates ID). Sponsors have to bear the costs of national ID cards of their expatriate employees, according to a top official."

And so on. It's quite clear, no beating around the bush. Our sponsors have to pay for our ID cards and take responsibility for the same - presumably extending to late renewal penalties (not cleared up in the story, but we can wait for clarity. God knows, we've waited since 2008.)

But what's this, in Emirates 24x7?

Rule to let sponsors bear expats' ID card cost under study: Eida

Hang on a cotton-pickin' moment there. 'Under study' doesn't mean 'new move', now does it? Emirates 24x7 goes on to add awful clarity to the assertion that this is no done deal but a 'move under the anvil' as Gulf News would have itself put it.

“We are considering the proposal to make it mandatory for sponsors to pay for the ID cards of their employee, but it has not been finalised. It is currently left for the companies to decide whether they want to pay the cost,” an Eida spokesperson told Emirates 24/7. No timeframe was, however, given on when the directive would be issued.

So has Gulf News jumped the gun, or Emirates 24x7 simply got it wrong? Or has EIDA told two different reporters two different things? Or perhaps told them both the same thing in terms so confusing they've come away with two different stories entirely?

We await, with a feeling of remorseless, crushing deja vu, clarification.

The Emirates A380 Door Problem - A Communications Lesson?

 (Photo credit: engineroomblog)

The Daily Mail is a massively popular newspaper in the UK and also boasts the world's top online news site, with over 100 million visits. It does what it does remarkably well, catchy attention-getting headlines combine with a tone of moral outrage that nicely captures the sentiments of the British 'man in the street'.

So 'terror at 27,000 feet' is a very Mail story - and that's precisely what it served up on February 15th with a story that a door 'blew open' on an Emirates A380. As the headline tells us: "Terror at 27,000ft: Crew plug gap in super jumbo jet door with blankets and pillows stuck together with gaffer tape after it 'blows open' during the flight."

The whole story's stood up on the testimony of British tourist David Reid and taken at face value, it's awful. Terrified crew hiding under their chairs, the atmosphere visible through the gap in the door, cabin pressure drop, freezing conditions and yet despite all this the pilot decided to carry on flying. Horrendous.

"...the door in business class came an inch and a half ajar, leaving a gaping hole, said Mr Reid"

It's only when you start to read the comments left by readers you might have a different perspective on the story that rings rather more factually than the story itself. They point out that the A380's doors can't actually open in-flight as they open inwards and are fixed by their shape 'like a plug' and that any pressure drop at this altitude would have caused the oxygen masks to automatically deploy which the images in the story clearly show has not been the case. They, reasonably, point out that a door open by a fraction at 27,000 feet would suck out any blankets being used to plug the gap and they also make the point that crew can't actually hide under their chairs - one of the more colourful lines in a pleasantly lurid story. Oh - and cold air wouldn't come into the cabin, air would escape. And so on.

As Crikey's Ben Sandilands points out, the "Emirates A380 door explosion story is rubbish." Notably, two Australian websites that gaily parroted the story have since taken it down.

The Mail's reader comments are remarkable for the fact they have been 'rated' by other readers using the Mail's comment rating system - the more sensible ones have been promoted by over two thousand people. And while thousands more have rated other comments criticising the story to the top of the comments pile, over five thousand 'liked' the story - and over ten thousand tweeted it.

Well, it's too good not to share, really, isn't it? Even if it is clearly bunkum.

In all, over 770 people commented on the story, of whom the majority (and the majority of 'upwards' rated comments) are negative about the story being told, correct its factual basis and criticise the Mail for the 'standard of journalism' it represents. The Mail has closed comments now.

The Mail's pieceis an excellent example of not letting the truth get in the way of a good story - Emirates' statement is pretty clear, although perhaps a little disjointed.

The Mail quotes Emirates as saying ‘We can confirm there was a whistling noise emanating from one of the doors on the A380 upper deck on flight EK384 between Bangkok and Hong Kong on Monday, February 11. At no point was the safety of the flight in jeopardy.’ 

That statement was later updated (and the Mail is at pains to make the fact it was later updated) to include, "At no time during the flight did one of the upper deck doors open. There was also no loss in cabin pressurisation at any time during the flight. The noise from the door was caused by a small dimensional difference between the inflated door seal and the door lower frame striker plate, when the door is in the closed position. This is currently under investigation in conjunction with Airbus. Emirates have now fixed the problem. The blankets were placed around the door to abate the whistling sound emanating from the door, not to prevent the door from opening. There was no point during the incident where the safety of the flight was in jeopardy. In addition, the green light next to the door does not represent that the door is open. It is an Attendant Indication Panel and is used for communication information for the Cabin Crew."

This statement is given right at the end of the story, after all the damage has been done. No matter how ringing the denial, the Mail's piece is structured to deliver its 'terrifying ordeal' sucker punch before any factual statement from Emirates is made.

It's not a nice situation to be in - and it is one I have been in more times than I care to recall - when you get those incoming calls from newspapers - particularly the UK press. You've got to get onto the story fast, finding out whatever facts you can internally before deciding quite what to do externally. You have to check your facts scrupulously - a burden the journalist (as you can see from the above) doesn't necessarily have to bear. And then you have to decide quite what you're going to say in response to the story. When you've got a newspaper that reaches 100 million people, 'no comment' is rarely going to be the solution. But then getting into a point by point argument isn't smart, either - you're never going to get your point by point rebuttal in the front of the story and you're not going to stop the story running, either. Even if it's clearly rubbish.

One of the interesting aspects of communications in the online age is the role of communities - the reader comments provide plenty of rebuttal of the factual basis for the story - the Internet is famously self-correcting. The other one is speed - you don't even have the luxury of a few hours and the burden on the communicator is consequently multiplied, get to the facts, check them, consult, decide on a response, craft that response and have a follow-up plan in place. As you're doing this, the journalist will be pressuring you as much as possible - not only do they want to break their story first, but a harried and panicking comms guy can often be a journalist's best friend.

The key is to try and make one definitive statement that is as crisp and monolithic as possible. This is always easier when the picture is clear and straightforward (and when your flow of information internally is fast and totally reliable) and when you are quite sure you have absolutely all of the facts.

And pick your fights - deal with the umbrella charge, don't get led into trying to nitpick your way through a story so full of holes your statement loses its authority in a tide of 'he said, she said' rebuttal.

How To Sell To UAE Bloggers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UAE BlackBerry 10s Need A Data Plan

BlackBerry Employees Count Down to BlackBerry 10 (Photo credit: Official BlackBerry Images)

There has been quite a lot of confusion globally about the new BlackBerry 10 smartphone and how you access BlackBerry services. In the good old days, your BB worked seamlessly and gave you access to roaming data and messaging - a key reason for its wild popularity in the Gulf. The new BB Z10 will NOT do that. You're going to need to join the riff-raff and subscribe to a data plan. If you try and use that puppy when you're roaming, heaven alone knows what the consequences will be, but standard roaming data rates with both Etisalat and Du are a whopping Dhs 1 per 30 kilobytes of data.

To put that in perspective - a Gigabyte is a thousand Megabytes and a Megabyte is a thousand Kilobytes. So 1 Gig of data at that rate would be around Dhs 33,000. Bargain, huh?

A smartphone will happily gorge its way through thirty kilobytes of data in about the time it takes a fly to hit a windscreen (What's the last thing to go through a fly's mind when it hits the windscreen? Its bum). I've got a 1 GB data plan and manage to keep a lid on it, but I'm by no means a heavy user. And I frequently find myself bobbing up towards the limit by the end of the month. Smartphones are constantly online, downloading this, checking that, updating the other. When you hit YouTube with a vengeance or start using them as a tethered wireless hotspot, the old byteometer starts whizzing around. It's why having a mobile that defaults automatically to WiFi is a godsend - particularly when all your apps decide they need to be updated at once, which happens every other day as far as I can see.

So to be clear, if you've bought the BB10, you're not covered by BIS any more - you need to get a data plan.

Luckily, both of the UAE's operators have BB10 ready plans, although Etisalat seems more ready than its rival - it offers four BB packages ranging from Dhs 49 to Dhs 299. The Dhs 49 package doesn't work with the Z10, so you'll need to start with the 'BlackBerry Complete' plan at Dhs 79. If you want roaming, the most expensive plan, the Dhs 299 'BlackBerry global' will give you 20 MB of roaming data. With roaming data speeds on offer of 2 Mbps, you're looking at using that abundant allowance of data in a little over a minute's access.

Du's plans seem a great deal more sketchy - at least the way they're presented online makes it look that way. And Du's roaming data is via its roaming data daily bundle - a one-time charge of Dhs50 which is valid for 24 hours and buys between 3 and 8 MB of data, depending where you are. Which is even less than Etisalat and a pretty useless amount of data.

At least Etisalat has started sending warning messages out when you hit your data plan limit, but the chances are we can look forward to puzzled UAE BlackBerry users wondering why their lovely new BB Z10 smartphone is suddenly gobbling credits like a PacMan on crack. There's an argument the operators should be louder and clearer on the new arrangement, communicating it effectively to consumers before they make the decision to buy the new handset.

But that would be far too sensible, wouldn't it?

(This post is thanks to Gerald Donovan, who originally brought this issue to light)

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...

Sharjah Water Disruption - A Lesson In Communication?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Many, many years ago I was on a business trip to Austria when some loon or another decided to dump a dhow-load of dead cows into the Gulf off Sharjah. The resulting flotsam got caught up in the intake of Sharjah's main desalination plant, causing a shutdown and an Emirate-wide water shortage.

I arrived back clutching a couple of bottles of nice German sekt to find our water tanks draining fast. Soon enough, we'd run dry. Three increasingly dirty days later I decided enough was enough and popped to our local 'cold store' where I bought several cases of Masafi. These filled the bath quite nicely, thank you, and we popped a bottle of cold sekt and enjoyed a little taste of the life everyone at home believes for some reason we live every day - we bathed in spring water and drank champagne.

I'd better get the bubbly in, because it's all apparently set to happen again. Khaleej Times broke the story three days ago (Gulf News ran it as a NIB today) - from next week (November 28th to be precise), Sharjah's main desalination plant at Al Layyah will undergo maintenance with six days of 'disruption' to the water supply. Interestingly, the GN story refers to a message  circulated to residents by SEWA (The Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority), which is news to me. It also refers to the 'Al Liya desalination plant', which is one of those problems we face with place names here - the Al Layyah plant, Sharjah's central power station and desalination plant, is located in the Al Layyah area, near Sharjah port. It's also the main centre for bottling Sharjah's Zulal branded water (although there's a new plant in Dhaid which bottles groundwater, thereby confusing anyone who wonders if Zulal is desalinated water or spring water. It's actually both, it would seem!).

Al Layyah is one of (as far as I can find out) four desalination plants in Sharjah - there are also plants in Khor Fakkan, Kalba and Hamriya. The GN piece refers to disruption in "Al Khan, Al Majaz, the Corniche, Khalid Lagoon and other areas", which is typically - and infuriatingly, obtuse. What are those 'other areas'? If last time is anything to go by, pretty much all of Sharjah. Why didn't the papers think to question the announcement and get better quality information into our hands? This type of question is the route to madness, of course. The answer is 'because'.

Of course, the best thing to do is go to SEWA's website which will have all the information concerned consumers will need, won't it? No, of course it won't. It'll have a piece on how SEWA has, apparently, briefed Credit Suisse on its future expansion plans. While I am pleased for both Credit Suisse and SEWA, it's not the information I'm after. The delightfully 1990s retro feel website contains absolutely no reference to the 'planned disruption' at all, in fact.

So all we know is there is to be  'planned disruption', that supply will not be cut off but that we are being urged to stockpile water while we can. Oh, and that "after the completion of the work, water supply would be better than before."

We are all mushrooms.

Update - I didn't think of this at the time of this post, but Sarah did. Of all the times in the year to pick for this 'scheduled disruption', they've picked National Day weekend, a holiday weekend when load on the system is going to go through the roof. Nice...