When Silence Ain't Golden

Image by keira-anne ♥ via Flickr

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

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

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

So what do you do?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ve Middul Eeste Pee Aar Awordes

Beavis and Butt-Head via last.fm

There's something slightly worrying about a room filled with over 500 PRs. It's a happy zone, tides of positivity washing against the walls.

The 'practitioners' are all chatting away happily, a tumultuous babble, but I'm sitting at a table of journalists, the usual criminals of the Middle East's marketing media waiting for someone to fall so they can eviscerate them, their jaws slavering at the very thought and evil grins stretched across their drink-sodden faces.

The MC is shouty, trying to get people to stop talking. You'd have thought that 500 people talking together and sharing experience, best practice and all that was what MEPRA was all about, but apparently not. She's screaming STOP TALKING YA YA YA at us and slowly people get the message.

We're good at crafting and communicating messages, but getting them is not quite our forté, apparently. Ya ya ya.

American people shouting at me reminded me, for some reason, of watching the news on CNN...

The MC and various types gathered on the stage to pass over awards to a bunch of PRs. Some bloke from HSBC made some lacklustre (well, he'd hardly sparkle, would he?) jokes about the collective noun for PR people - a flock of flaks, apparently.

Any contributions in the comments about the collective noun for HSBC employees would be appreciated. I though perhaps a dribble of d... well, never mind. Yayaya.

By now, the press are restive. The jerks of drumroll tape that occasionally peppered events was starting to get its reward, bursts of malign laughter from the hock of hacks around me. I've heard that type of laughter before, at a performance of Othello at The National - Felicity ("Felicity, Felicity, you fill me with electricity", according to Ade Edmonson at his loquacious finest) Kendal as Desdemona bursting satisfactorily out of a Nell Gwynne dress while Paul Scofield hammed it up so badly that Othello's soliloqy to his dead lover drew gales of the stuff from the audience.

This was nasty laughter, the laughter of the cut-purse about to make his move as he stalks the dark, wet streets of Elizabethan London.

The worst of them is Allison, his faux-genteel Edinburgh accent masking his guttersnipe urges, egged on by AdNation's vile Elliot ('the Bear') Beer, the two of them cackling like Beavis and Butthead as they scan the audience of hapless wannabe winners for victims. And then Allison's off, leaving his voice recorder on the table behind him so that it can pick up any snippets of gossip about him while he's absent. He's ducking and diving in the crowd, picking up quotes and snippets of snark, digging for dirt like a pig rooting out Perigord truffles, while the MC says 'ya ya ya' for the umpteenth time. I think she believes it makes her sound Arab, but it comes across as somehow more Maureen Lipman.

It's all too much. I clap maniacally for Peyman Parham as he picks up the final gong, 'Communicator of the Year', with a genuine feeling of enormous relief - Sarah would have spent the next 365 days referring to me as 'Gob of the Year' and thanks to Peyman I have bilked that dire fate. Now we could go drinking, but instead we spend hours wandering around the labrynthine Habtoor Grand Hotel in search of a bar that would accept men dressed in kandouras. What a joke - teetotal hosts that aren't allowed to join their friends in a bar. Eventually, exhausted by wandering aimlessley down the charmless marble corridors, we find a smoky joint that's a ten second walk from the place we were thrown out of. It turns out that the toilets are actually over in the forbidden bar.

Which is, I'm sure a metaphor for something.

As we celebrate Peyman's win, I'm filled with a strange sense of unease. And then I realise it's because the press aren't with us. That's a bad thing - it means they're holed up in some dark, foreboding garret 'writing up' the evening.

I fear the worst...

The Inevitable Metro Post

Image copyright Hit Entertainment

The Metro has so far eluded me. I don’t mean that I haven’t managed to get a ride yet - I have been staying away precisely because I don’t want to get stranded in a crowd of 2,000 shoving, jostling punters while all the inevitable teething problems are ironed out. (Isn’t it funny that teething problems are always declared ‘inevitable’ only after they have occurred?)

Mind you, I would love to know quite who was so utterly asinine as to put a big red DO NOT TOUCH THIS button within reach of any Dubai audience.

I have pointed out before, on blog and radio alike, that I am amazed that anyone could think we needed an ‘awareness raising’ advertising campaign that poured millions down the plughole in telling us that there’s a metro there. We can see the blasted thing – we’ve spent two years queuing up to drive around the holes and pilings, watching the roller-coaster swoops and loops of track being slotted together and admiring the (beautiful, incidentally) ‘armadillo’ stations.

The lack of informational campaigns on the other hand, the absence of any concerted attempt to build awareness and understanding, has arguably contributed to the many problems experienced over the first few days of operations. Quite apart from the lack of 'traditional' media such as leaflets, Z-cards and the like, there's no dedicated website and the FAQs and so on available on the 'Rail Agency' section of the RTA website site are useless - and it doesn't look as if the rail site has been updated since early August!

Perhaps explaining the seeming lack of useful information, Gulf News today (not, for instance, six months ago) tells us the RTA is to 'launch a campaign to educate the public on how to use the Metro and the culture of train travel'. Duh.

But no, the reason it's eluded me is none of the above. It's that it doesn’t appear to start from anywhere near me or end up anywhere I’d want to go. For instance, I could see myself parking up at Deira City Centre, doing a wander around the shops and then taking the Metro up to, say, Mall of the Emirates. But then I’d likely fall foul of the time-limited parking.

My office is in Satwa, a significant distance from the nearest Metro Station – as is pretty much anyone on the coastal side of Sheikh Zayed Road. I can’t realistically get a taxi to the station as Dubai has a minimum fare of Dhs10 for a cab. So If I want to go to Dubai Internet City for a meeting, I’m taking a cab to the station, taking the train and then taking a cab to my meeting. That’s Dhs24 for the one-way journey. If I want to play feeder buses, I can. But I don't know where they operate from and to. And I'm not really into waiting around for buses when I work for a business that bills my time by the hour. Even if I can get the bus in a timely fashion and connect to a waiting train, ("Hold the train for Mr McNabb"), I'm in for at least a 40 minute journey - one that otherwise would take me 20 minutes by car.

So far I’m struggling to see quite why, ahem, it’s ‘my metro’. I’m sure with time I’ll find out a way to use it. But for now it remains a complete irrelevance to me. Except for the amusing anecdotes being shared by intrepid friends who have chosen to ride early - from two-hour waits on static trains to British security guards who've never lived here before treating locals like you'd treat a queue-jumper back in Blighty (the results were apparently quite comic), through to delayed trains, massive queues and general cluelessness.

Nobody has so far used the word debacle, incidentally. I claim the first.

PS: This week's got a sort of transport theme. Unintentional, I can assure you!

PPS: If you're interested in some good consumer feedback from the horse's mouth, take a look here on the UAE Community Blog! Fascinating stuff!

Shortest

This might be my shortest blog post ever.

Here. Read this. It's Etisalat giving its side of the BlackBerry story.

See if it makes you angry...

RIM Enables Etisalat Update Removal

Image via CrunchBase

"Recently an update may have been provided to you by Etisalat for your BlackBerry Handheld via a WAP push. The Etisalat update is not a RIM-authorized update and was not developed by RIM. Independent sources have concluded that the Etisalat update is not designed to improve performance of your BlackBerry Handheld, but rather to send received messages back to a central server. RIM has developed this software (“Software”) that will enable you to remove the Etisalat update."

Not my words, but the official words of the company that makes and enables BlackBerry handheld devices , RIM, on its own forum.

Particularly chilling are these words: "Independent sources have concluded that the Etisalat update is not designed to improve performance of your BlackBerry Handheld, but rather to send received messages back to a central server."

This directly contradicts the words of telco Etisalat, which made a formal statement to media last week, "These upgrades were required for service enhancements particularly for issues identified related to the handover between 2G to 3G network coverage areas."

But RIM goes a lot, lot further in its formal statement on the whole affair. In fact, the company says:

"RIM confirms that this software is not a patch and it is not a RIM authorized upgrade. RIM did not develop this software application and RIM was not involved in any way in the testing, promotion or distribution of this software application.

RIM further confirms, in general terms, that a third party patch cannot provide any enhancements to network services as there is no capability for third parties to develop or modify the low level radio communications protocols that would be involved in making such improvements to the communications between a BlackBerry smartphone and a carrier’s network.

In addition, RIM is not aware of any technical network concerns with the performance of BlackBerry smartphones on Etisalat’s network in the UAE."

So someone's been telling porkie pies, haven't they?

The link to BlackBerry's site is HERE and if you have a BlackBerry and implemented the update, you'll be relieved to know it contains a removal tool provided by RIM for its customers to use in getting rid of the performance-sapping software.

RIM has done the right thing - in contrast to security company SS8, the organisation presumed to have actually coded the software behind this awful little mess and which has maintained a total silence in the face of media requests. Similarly, etisalat's reaction (ignore it all and hope it goes away) has hardly been customer focused - people are still helping each other with 'broken' BlackBerries and Twitter is still ringing with plaintive Tweets for help from grounded BB users.

Do get the word out to friends and family that an 'official' fix is now available to roll back the update and, belatedly, ameliorate the impact on users of this muckle-headed catastrophe.

Etisalat still has 145,000 people to answer to, BTW... And, one rather suspects, a media that will be baying for its blood...

Link to the RIM statement, hosted on the Chirashi Security blog, HERE. Enjoy!

Giving a Hoot

Image via Wikipedia

So what are your brand values, then?
Loyalty, Quality, Customer Service, Care, Innovation

Did you ever stop to think that everyone picks those?
Well, no, not really. We did a flip chart thing in a hotel with our ad agency. They said we were a dominating tiger but that we really cared about our customers and that’s why customers admire us more than our competitor. We agreed with that. It was a pretty insightful analysis, actually.

Do you really live those values?
Of course! We put them on posters and everything! We even made a T-shirt after the workshop!

What, with Loyalty, Quality, Customer Service, Care, Innovation on it?
Yes! We took our hand paintings from that day out and used them along with our logos and our values. It's cool.

Do you wear that T-shirt?
Are you quite mad? I’d look like a delivery guy or something!

Do you see the problem here? This is not realistic. You don’t really live these values, they’re just lip-service. You’re not loyal, you just let staff go. You don’t really care about quality, you shaved product specs to save cashflow. You don’t care about your customers, your call centre sucks royally, has an average 25 minute wait time and is staffed by minimum wage students that hate you as much as your customers hate them. You only care about your shareholders and investors. And you don’t innovate at all, your whole structure is about a strategy of safety and sucking up to management.
Sorry, are you the PR guy or McKinsey? Because if you’re McKinsey, I don’t recall paying you $100k for this. And if you’re my PR guy, I’m not about to pay you to tell me something obvious, right?

Look, I’m the PR guy alright and I’m just about to tell you that you are in no way ready to take on social media.
Oh, what crap! We’re going to do some really cool social media campaigns. We’re going to show people just how damn cool we are and let them win some great prizes for jumping around and pulling faces every time we Tweet BIGCORP! You’ll see!

But we, as consumers, don’t want to do that. We don't want to jump around for you. We want to understand more about how you operate, engage with your people - even help to shape the products and services you offer us.
What? Stuff that! Mind your own business! How we operate is our affair, not yours!

Well, if you want me to engage with your brand, how you operate is important.
What the hell is wrong with you? What kind of pinko sicko ARE you? Buy the product because we care about you, right? Don’t worry about the stuff under the bonnet. You’re not qualified to look under the bonnet. We love you. Now shut the heck up, guy. Really. Before you really piss us off. You don’t want to piss us off.

But I am qualified. I’m a customer!
Shut up, right? Shut up. If you don’t shut up, I’ll shut you up. You understand me, you jumped up little punk?

Okay, it’s okay. I’ve calmed down just fine. Right. Why don’t you just go see Lisa who’s got some press releases about our staff development programme we want featured in the New York Times, the British press and all the Middle East papers. And PETRA. My kid says PETRA is important.

Umm, PETRA is the Jordanian national news agency. Maybe your kid meant PETA?
What, you can’t deliver or something? You don’t get what the kids get? If you don't have strong relationships withe media and make them run our releases, you can't be doing the job right.

But that's just pushing out one way messages! What about dialogue? Whatever happened to “Loyalty, Quality, Customer Service, Care, Innovation”?
You’re way off track here, pal. You’re a trouble maker. I’ve got nothing more to say to you. Lalalalala. Speak to my PR agency.

I am your PR agency.
Right. We’re pitching the account. We need an agency that understands us; believes in us. We need that empathy before we can move forwards...

Incompetence or arrogance?

Image by Loutron Glouton via Flickr

Respected security analysts and consultancies have now confirmed what many industry watchers, pundits and commentators suspected last week - that the 'upgrade' pushed to tens of thousands of BlackBerry mobile devices in the UAE by telco Etisalat was, in fact, not what it seemed to be, an 'upgrade for Blackberry service. Please download to ensure continous service quality.'

Interestingly, this rather flies in the face of the somewhat belated statement made by the telco itself, which I reproduced in full here at the end of last week. That statement rather annoyed a number of BlackBerry users who found it facile and lacking the one element that tens of thousands of frustrated customers whose mobile devices were affected wanted to see - an apology. Many of those users say their BlackBerrys were rendered inoperable or suffered significantly downgraded performance. A number reportedly bought new batteries for their BlackBerrys, believing the battery was at fault when, in fact, it was the software update they had accepted from the operator.

A press release was issued on the 15th July by security company SMobile Systems. The company, which positions itself as 'the leading provider of security solutions for mobile phones and maker of the only antivirus and antispyware applications in the world for BlackBerry devices, has released a solution for the (in their words) 'recent spyware-laden update sent out to BlackBerry users on the Etisalat network'. That press release in full can be found here.

The company's release claims, 'The BlackBerry Spyware, which intercepts email and drains battery life quickly, was pushed as an update to BlackBerry's on the Etisalat network. Sent to users as a wide-area protocol (WAP) message, the Java file intercepts data and sends a copy to a server without the user's knowledge.'

That is an extraordinary claim to make regarding a piece of software that Etisalat's official statement says was software 'required for service enhancements particularly for issues identified related to the handover between 2G to 3G network coverage areas.'

It is perhaps worth noting that the Chairman of SMobile Systems, quoted in the release, is a former White House Deputy Chief of Staff and so, we must reluctantly admit, carries some weight.

SMobile is not the only expert testimony that claims the notorious update is other than it seems. Besides the many people who believe that the Etisalat network is 100% 3G now and therefore does not present 2G to 3G cell handover problems, there are also a number who point out the fact that BlackBerrys haven't experienced cell handover issues for some time now - in fact, the only online references I can find to the handover issue date back to 2006.

Added to this, you have those who have examined the code - Qatar based programmer Nigel Gourlay was quoted widely in the initial coverage of the issue, but his assertions that the network update was in fact an attempt to install monitoring software have been backed up by respected security blog Chirashi Security - a white paper analysing the code in some detail, written by Sheran Gunarsekera, is linked here.

That white paper asserts that the code is a monitoring application. It also points out that the application was not properly implemented, pointing out that the application developers had not used any form of source code obfuscation - in other words, it shouldn't have been as simple to trace, upload and analyse the code as it in fact was. The code, according to the White Paper, is set up to hide itself from the user, attach itself to network events and report these to the service-provider's server and look out for control messages that enable interception of user messages. If enabled, the application will forward a copy of emails sent by the subscriber to the service provider's servers.

Damningly, the White Paper asserts that the code 'was not mature enough to be deployed. This is especially relevant if Etisalat planned to conduct full-scale legal interception on BlackBerry users.'

The Chirashi White Paper is scrupulous to point out that the application only forwards outgoing emails and not other message types and then only when the application has been enabled to do so - it does not report on emails by default. But it does make the point that the version of the interceptor software it analysed should not have been deployed - particularly not as part of a legal interception.

The White Paper also strays out of geekland into my domain when it asserts, in the context of requiring legal interception software to meet two criteria, to do no harm and to be thoroughly tested: 'A service provider should always be prepared for the worst. In case things do not work out as planned, there needs to be a dedicated PR team who is ready to step up and deal with the public. Users should not be lied to or ignored, they will accept it better if they know the provider is well within legal rights to perform such interception.' (The italics are mine, BTW)

Security company Veracode also analysed the upgrade last week, asking whether the fact that the implemented update contained both .jar and .cod versions was down to 'arrogance or incompetence?'. That's an area explored by a journalist from the region's leading telecommunications magazine, Comms MEA, here. Again, Veracode's Chris Eng reports that the clear purpose of the update, in his expert view, is to install a piece of software that, when activated, will forward user data to a third party server, presumably owned by the service provider.

All of this leaves me wondering quite what on earth Etisalat thought it was doing. And quite how our media is standing by and allowing Etisalat to simply claim that the great big elephant in the cupboard is in fact a pair of shoes.

Nobody I know has a problem with legal interception. I think most of us would recognise that it is highly desirable that the security agencies employed by our governments have access to the information they need in order to protect society in general. Those agencies are constantly monitoring network traffic, legally and within the charters and frameworks that govern their activity. We need them to be competent and we desperately need to believe in their competence and efficacy.

Similarly, we need to trust our telcos. As a commercial entity operating in a regulated and competitive free market environment, even the biggest telco has a duty towards its subscribers and a duty to tell the truth - not only to earn the trust of its customers, but to underpin the level of trust required by investors and multinational companies who wish to trade in that environment. Mendacity and silence are not good enough - people are still facing problems with their terminals even now because there has been no clear attempt to reach out to customers and fix this issue - let alone roll back the update. There are critical issues related to privacy and security that the operator has refused to address - and questions are now being asked by a wider community about the long-term implications for BlackBerry security in general as a result of this whole farago.

Finally, there is the issue of responsibility. Someone was responsible for this Keystone Cops attempt to police BlackBerrys and the subsequent lack of timely and appropriate response that turned a customer service problem into a full-blown case study in how fumbled issues management rapidly evolves nto crisis management and how ignoring a crisis simply, in today's commercial environment, won't do.

Silence is Golden

Image via Wikipedia

The Etisalat BlackBerry update story has started to grow little legs now, with the coverage from Gulf News and ITP.net yesterday joined today by a story from The National and a GN followup. Both of today's UAE dailies focus on the irritation of subscribers and the silence of Etisalat, an angle that The National, in particular, highlights:

"Etisalat does not lack the ability to talk to the public. It is one of the UAE’s largest advertisers and it would be difficult to spend a day without seeing one of its promotions in print or on television. Its public relations machine is well oiled, putting out press releases daily..." says reporter Tom Gara before launching into an entertaining, if slightly surreal, series of nautical metaphors spanking the uncommunicative communications company.

Now coverage has gone international, with stories from Wired and from the UK's rightly feared (or revered, depending on which side of the industry fence you sit on. Rather marvellously, its tagline is 'Biting the hand that feeds IT') The Register.

It is, yes, a wee social media case study, this one. A single user posts some stuff he found on a specialist forum, triggering the swift passing of that information among a frustrated customer base that is being poorly communicated with. The news is examined, refined and passed on again, a great deal of that traffic going via Twitter BTW, and now it's going wild. Many media reports internationally are focusing on one or two media reports locally - the role of a single Qatari software expert being key right now in the coverage from 'mainstream' media as it is picked up by media outlets. In fact, both Wired and The Register covered the story from ITP.Net. And now uber-blog engadget has covered it from The Register. And if that isn't as bad as ReTweeting, I don't know what is!

Now major international technology media outlets are repeating a story based on the stated views of one man following his comments on a local blog. Scary, in its way. I'm not denigrating that expert, BTW: Nigel (and original discoverer DXBLouie) are both chaps that certainly appear to know a great deal about what they're talking about - as does Steve Halzinski, whose post on BlackBerrycool here still contains his considered view on the nature of the 'network update' that apparently forced BlackBerries into meltdown as they scrambled to contact an overloaded server.

News expands to fill a vacuum. Particularly a social vacuum. For what it's worth, my prediction is that this story will grow - Etisalat really needs to fill that vacuum before it does, although I suspect that by now the genie is well and truly out of the bottle.

Thanks, Gulf News!

Image via Wikipedia

Nice to see Gulf News' Abbas Lawati covering the BlackBerry software patch story today - great reporting, from surfacing the story and 'getting' what was going on in the first place right through to finding Qatar- based progammer Nigel Gourlay to comment on the actual functionality of the patch. Great journalism, top marks for effort and really cutting through to the heart of the story.

Thanks, BTW, to the lads at the most excellent Stuff Magazine for the link back they included in their story!

It's going to be interesting seeing how Etisalat deals with this one now from a communications perspective. The company could choose to clam up and fillibuster any journalist unwise enough to pursue the story further, ignoring the howls of pain from customers while it quietly fixes the problem. Or could institute a wide-ranging reaction to the unfortunate incident, apologising for the inconvenience the move has caused, communicating effectively with customers, explaining what has gone wrong and how they can restore their devices and performing as clean and efficient a 'roll back' as possible.

There have been reports of users buying new Dhs200 batteries for their BlackBerries as a solution to the sudden battery-drain they experienced - and performance of the handsets has also reportedly been affected. So there is a strong argument for a smart, transparent customer service push that redresses at least some of the key customer irritations.

Meanwhile, if you want to get into the security software business, here are some handy hints and tips.

Make sure that nobody knows you're trying to install a security or monitoring patch because they might be scared or protest. Tell them it enhances teddy bears or something. Having done that:

• Do make sure that your software is called something scary, like 'Raptor', 'Destroyer' or 'Interceptor'. Name the subroutines you are using after the software so that users can see the name and be spooked by it.
  

• Do make sure you install all software into a directory clearly named after the security company that is providing the solution. This helps curious customers, bloggers and yes, even journalists, quickly and easily find out more about what you're up to.
  

• Do try and work with a security company whose website shrieks 'Be Scared! Be Very Scared!' or at least trumpets how it makes interception and monitoring software that allows intelligence agencies to monitor and analyze targets. Nothing makes consumers happier than being referred to as 'targets', except possibly the sight of red laser dots on their chest.

Meanwhile, I'd just like to say that my Nokia battery has ground to a virtual halt, supporting no more than 20 minutes of talk time before failing. And that didn't even need a patch from Etisalat to achieve!

Plug

Image via Wikipedia

As you may or may not know, I have the pleasure to work for the Middle East's first technology specialised public relations and communications agency, Spot On Public Relations. I don't often blog directly about work stuff, although my work obviously informs many of my opinions, but I'm going to talk shop for a second here.

Over the years, Spot On has moved from being a pure-play tech and telecom agency to encompass non-tech clients, from 'Freej' originators Lammtara through Virgin Megastores to publishing company ITP and media consultancy DMA. We still retain tech clients, of course, including IBM and Lenovo, as well as my favourite client (oddly enough), printer company Oki Printing Solutions. And we work with a lot of other companies too, from hotels through to mining and finance through to consumer electronics.

One of the things that's started to happen at work, something that has been a pleasant surprise, is that the old tech heritage has come back to inform how we work with a new wave of clients who are most definitely not technology companies, but who are using technology in their work - increasingly in their communications work. When Spot On started, the Internet was a new, and often regarded as threatening, phenomenon in the Middle East and we were very involved in arguing the case FOR the Internet - it's something that resonates with many conversations I have today, believe me.

Social media, you may have noticed it's taking up more and more of my thinking and even blog posting (And yes, I have had complaints), but it is starting to drive some very interesting ideas for us - increasingly in line with my personal dislike of 'big business' and the ways that 'big business' has been behaving.

I like the idea of companies being more open to communicating with the little guys, actually talking to their customers rather than glibly slapping 'customer-centric' on their brand values and then handing down the call centre to the nearest monkey. I like the idea that customers and companies could actually work together to make things work better - because the customers want to be involved and the companies are willing to listen. I like consumers having voice. (You may have noticed!)

I think we're heading towards more of that stuff and it excites me. Sorry, that's the geek in me showing through.

Anyway, this is all a thinly disguised plug for you to go join Spot On's fabby Facebook group, which you can subscribe to if you want to get more 'inside track' on the stuff we're doing with clients and in the social media space, as well as links to things like interviews and articles from Spot On people and the people we work with in our 'ecosystem' of like-minded partners.

Also, if you've a mind to, you're more than welcome to subscribe to a few of Spot On's other 'social media' resources:

Twitter. The Spot On Twitterfeed tends to focus on sharing news of interest to those who follow media, journalism, new media and Internet innovation. It's quite popular.

Netvibes. Arguably one of the most useful RSS readers, Netvibes allows you to aggregate content from multiple sources, from blogs through to newswires and even sources such as Twitter and Google Alerts. Spot On's public Netvibes page is a great 'one stop' resource for you to swing by every day and check out pretty much everything that's happening in Middle East media, journalism and social media.

Delicious. This is another strong media-related resource, where we basically share our bookmarks of interesting stories that are media, PR and journalism related. Again, quite a powerful resource for anyone that wants to get a fast snapshot of what's happening in these areas across the Middle East.

We use a range of other social media platforms for a number of purposes, audiences and clients - but I thought these might be interesting/useful to many of the people who swing by this blog.

[EndPlug]

The Journalist and the Machine

Image by bunky's pickle via Flickr

Nigel is a journalist on a weekly magazine. He’s good at his job, which means filing two or three incisive and highly readable features a week plus a good handful of news stories. For these, he relies on a mixture of good contacts, a lot of Google alerts, the local papers and a quick scan of each days’ inbox full of press releases, most of which are dross but some of which can be followed up. On a bad week he might even use one or two with no follow-up, purely because time has a habit of running out now and then.

The features take up most of his time, often requiring a number of interviews and meetings for background as well as more for opinions and quotes. He’ll crack some of these features off quite quickly, others can be on the boil for a few weeks.

Bob is a busy executive with a major US security company and he’s visiting the Middle East to review the company’s 60-strong and growing operation. Security systems for corporates are a big and growing business in the region and Bob’s company has taken the region seriously enough to send him in: he’s global VP of a $3 billion company. The Middle East reports through London and the local GM and marketing manager have already had several conference calls with the slightly panicky communications team in London. They have never had Bob in the EMEA region before and they want to make sure nothing goes wrong. And the corporate team have already let London know that this is a big one for them. The team in Dubai, as a consequence, have really been feeling the heat about Bob’s visit.

Nigel takes a call from a local PR company offering an interview with a real hot-shot executive who’s visiting called Bob Bobbus. Apparently he’s a player in the security market and is here to talk about opening regional operations for a really big security company. Nigel agrees to take the interview with Bob as it sounds interesting. The PR guy is slightly more annoying than usual, asking him about his background and intended story angle.

The symptoms of big executive fear are always the same: it’s the fifth time this particular PR company has asked him for his background and, what’s more, Nigel does feel the request for his story angle in the same call as the interview’s being sold on is hardly reasonable. A subsequent call, three days before the interview is due to happen, confirms that Bob can only meet Nigel at 7pm in Jebel Ali. Nigel lives in Mirdif and won’t be home to see his young son until way past 9pm. Dinner will be in the dog. Again. Nigel considers canning the whole thing, but he’s got an issue to put to press and nothing else in the bag right now.

The PR company is asking about his story angle again: the exec actually asks him for a copy of his questions. Nigel is polite, but firm: that’s not happening.

The PR company hasn’t actually had any meaningful dialogue with Nigel before, let alone about Bob, his company or its market and so has no idea of what Nigel’s views, interests or approach are likely to be. This is now turning into a problem as London is insisting on full information about the journalist, the publication and a market briefing for Bob.

The Dubai office gives the PR company a hard time and they finally deliver the documents the day before Bob Bobbus flies in. They’re sketchy and London is concerned as a result: they insist that the Dubai GM and his marketing manager sit in on the interview.

The day of Bob’s visit dawns and everything goes pretty well: a customer event in the morning, a number of customer meetings following and a visit to a major site in the afternoon. The major site, a very sensitive customer, is a significant account to Bob’s company and the customer is really interested in some of the new things that the company is bringing out and so Bob and the group are delayed.

Nigel, who arrived a little early, waits at the hotel they’ve arranged to meet at – he’s joined by the PR guy, who arrived a little late. The PR guy tries to be friendly, but Nigel’s irritated and concerned about getting home now and just stares into his coffee.

Bob arrives 35 minutes late. He’s got his GM and marketing manager in tow and they all file into a meeting room together with the PR. Nigel waits outside, checking his skin for signs of leprosy.

After another ten minutes, Nigel is called in to the room for his audience with Bob. He’s sat at a boardroom table facing four people in suits. A normally relatively mild-mannered man, Nigel is really quite irritated by now, but is professional enough to put this to one side and get on with the interview. It quickly becomes obvious that Bob knows nothing about the Middle East and precious little about the world outside the continental USA. He is evasive regarding any financial information, future plans or disclosing details of any large deals or customers.

Nigel knows a little bit about Bob’s company and asks about the big customer that Bob visited that afternoon. Bob denies the meeting. Nigel’s wife works for the company and so he continues to probe regarding the relationship between Bob and his customer.

The local GM interrupts Nigel to tell him that it would probably be better to drop this line of questioning. Nigel points out that he’s perfectly entitled to pursue the line of questioning. The PR guy steps in and suggests a change of topic.

Nigel disagrees. He wants to know why Bob is lying about the customer site visit. The atmosphere is by now quite electric. And then Nigel asks about the Saudi bank that’s filing a case against Bob’s company in London. It’s common knowledge in the regional market and has even popped up on a couple of websites. However, it’s news to Bob and all hell quietly breaks loose. Bob handles the question badly, his GM steps in and makes it worse and the marketing manager jumps in, too, and refers to the Saudi incident as merely one of a number of issues that security companies have to deal with in a difficult region like the Middle East. Nigel, who is taping the interview, is told that this comment was off the record when he asks follow up questions.

Nigel’s wife calls to ask where he is. In the circumstances, he takes the call, leaving the room briefly. He returns and finishes the interview as quickly as possible. It hasn’t been an enjoyable experience.

The next day, Nigel has the tape transcribed. It contains Bob and his team complaining about Nigel as he was out of the room and also the whispered briefing that Bob was given by his team on the four lawsuits that had been filed by unhappy customers in the region, totalling millions of dollars.

Does he use the material in his subsequent feature?

(I'd completely forgotten about this feature wot I wrote for ArabianBusiness.com until Shufflegazine's Magnus commented on it, which lead to me re-reading it. Having done so, I thought I'd post it here, because I think, in hindsight, it's actually an interesting question!)

Judas or journalist?

Image by pythonboot via Flickr

I'm not sure how many silver coins are worth a gold one, but let's just put it at 30 for the sake of a decent headline.

It's a fine day when Emirates Business 24x7 is the only newspaper to expose a company that blatantly offers journalists the gift of gold for turning up to a press event, but that's precisely what reporter Dima Hamadeh did today. Her story 'outs' the World Gold Council and its PR company for sending a press invitation that promises all attendees to a WGC media event would receive a gold coin.

When taken to task by Hamadeh, the account manager at the agency responded with: "Why does it offend you? We have done it for years, not only for award announcements but for other events by the WGC as well."

The appropriate note of contrition perhaps lacking there, then...

Another PR person quoted in the story tells Hamadeh that "A lot of journalists call to know what they would be getting as a gift..."

Now that's news to me - in my 12 (grief) years in public relations I have never been asked by a journalist what gift is on offer at an event. In fact, I just checked around the Spot On office, and nobody else has, either. I can tell you that the answer to such a question would be very short indeed.

What on earth is the point of even wasting time talking to a roomful of journalists who have just pitched up to collect their bribe? What's the value of the debased coverage they would give you in their debased media? Besides, if you can own them enough to travel across town and listen to you for an hour for a coin, just send them the damn coin and the rubbish you want them to publish and save everyone some time, no?

The Middle East PR Association, MEPRA, stipulates a limit of $50 for media gifts - set as a reasonable limit for a small gift expected to represent a token of appreciation or thanks. The limit was set in response to a growing culture of outrageous attempts to bribe media, including gifts of consumer electronics such as games consoles, mobile phones and DVD players.

But gold coins are so much subtle, don't you think?

Now. Which publications have covered the World Gold Council jewellery design competition, Auditions? And can their journalists confirm they didn't take the coin?

Don't Panic

I tried to do the lettering above in relaxing colours, but it didn't work. You'll just have to imagine them...

The National today reports that EIDA, the Emirates Identity Authority, has told us not to panic. Which is nice!

"Calm down, don't panic, your deadline isn't until the end of 2010," Darwish al Zarouni, the director general of EIDA told the newspaper.

Gulf News (600g) meanwhile is still carrying the clear message that 430,000 expat professionals haven't registered and there are only 13 days left for the deadline to expire.

I, who hold an appointment to get my card in September (the first available at the Rashidiya ID centre when I booked) am going to go with The National on this one.

The communications aspect alone of the ID card initiative has been a fascinating case study for me. Truly fascinating...

Socialite

Here are some ‘social media’ predictions for 2009, just for fun. Why social media? Well, my first prediction is that we’re going to see a lot more fuss about ‘social media’ here in the Middle East in 2009. And the trick there will be sorting the wheat from the chaff – because you’re about to see a load of ‘experts’ talking with great authority on the subject. And, as usual, the expertise on offer will all too frequently be scant. I recently had an advertising agency offer to ‘infiltrate the forums’ on behalf of a client, for instance. That to me is a signal of quite how bad it’s going to get before we settle down and work out who are the practitioners delivering new and insightful programmes using the social media tools that are revolutionising communications practice elsewhere in the world.

So I think we’re probably going to see one or two high profile social media gaffes in our region, quite a lot of weighty pronouncements and agencies rushing to show how they can package their ‘unique insight’ into the social media paradigm for clients. This is what my very good friend Gianni Catalfamo, the uber-geek and European Web 2.0 guru, calls 2.0Wash. Like Greenwash that preceded it, 2.0Wash is when every programme contains a blog, just because, well, they should all contain a blog these days...

In the meantime, I think we’ll see an increasing pressure on regional telcos to stop blocking these social media networks – orkut, flikr and other important components of the ‘Web 2.0’ mix remain blocked. These blocks continue to contribute to retarding our region’s use of some of the most powerful communication tools to emerge since Thomas Caxton started thinking about Ps and Qs.

My final social media prediction for 2009 is that we’ll start to realise quite how powerful the grassroots movement towards using these tools can be. It’s already happened in other world markets and it’s late arriving here precisely because of the blocks. But more people in the Middle East are using FaceBook than read any single newspaper. More people in the UAE are using FaceBook than read any single newspaper. And FaceBook is only one of many, many social media platforms...

This piece originally appeared as one of the chucklesomely named 'A Moment with McNabb' columns in Campaign Middle East magazine.

2009: Flat is the new up...

I have been hearing a few comments that 2009 will be a good time for public relations because companies will be looking to save money and PR is a better way to reach people for less than advertising.

I disagree strongly. For sure companies will be reducing budgets in 2009, although I believe there are enough people out there that understand slashing A&P to zero is not a smart reaction to a bear market. But this is a time of unparalleled opportunity, a time where brands will be made or broken. And the differentiator, IMHO, will be how cleverly companies communicate – how they explore new ideas and approaches, integrating social media and other innovative ways of reacting to customers and communicating with customers. The winners will be the companies that communicate more effectively with their customers and stakeholders throughout times of uncertainty.

You might think that a recession is a time to be conservative and play it safe. You know, do the things that you know work, perhaps just less of them. But 2009 is going to be an amazing time for those who are brave enough to try new approaches and bring innovation to play, to invest in building their brands while competitors are trying to just protect their brands using old tools and scant resources.

The need to bring a new intelligence into play means challenging existing strategies, tools and relationships. It’s going to mean re-examining the company and its communications needs, adapting processes and strategies to meet the demands of a fast-moving market and embracing fast changes in media and other channels to reach customers and the people that influence them.

This is a good time to bring in experienced communicators to work alongside your own teams, to start challenging the business from C-level down, reworking the way that the organisation talks to its audiences to drive more value into the company’s communications using smarter, technology-led direct communications and online communications tools in particular.

Advertising has its role to play, so does PR. But the opportunity is for smart communicators – whatever their discipline, client-side and agency-side. It's not just about 'this way is cheaper', because it really needs to be about 'this way is smarter'...

This piece originally appeared as one of the chucklesomely named 'A Moment with McNabb' colums in Campaign Middle East magazine.

Campaign

Campaign Middle East doesn't have a website yet. So I'm going to take to posting my columns up here as and when they happen. That means you'll get a slice of PR advice once every two weeks or so, but I think you'll probably survive.

It’s amazing how fast the climate in which we operate can change: that rich mixture of social, political, financial and moral influences on our opinions. Get it wrong, and you could find yourself in serious trouble.

Regardless of where you think you are communicating, your audience is global. That change in opinion could be taking place, and being influenced, anywhere – and so fast that you’ve got to be fleet of foot to spot what’s relevant, what’s new and what’s being talked about. And then you need to share that information with the right people, fast.

Gauging public opinion is in many ways easier than it ever has been before because of the ‘consumer voice’ out there. Blogs and other social media mean that people find expression more easily than ever before – in fact, a recent Universal McCann survey of some 17,000 global consumers found respondents more ready than ever before to comment on and recommend companies and their products: over 44% of respondents had used messenger or email applications to share information about consumer experiences, 29% had used blogs, 27% social networks. Almost 80% of respondents read blogs, up from 50% two years ago. Something like 82% of consumers are researching products through search.

An article in New York could be impacting your operations in Dubai on the day it breaks: the reaction, information sharing and comment will be starting within minutes. The opinion of your public is often being influenced a good 48 hours before the, usually less than helpful ‘escalate to us’ email comes from corporate communications. An organisation’s communicators need to be using the same tools as consumers to communicate with each other so they can stay up to speed.

Communications has become a discipline where a truly global context needs to be established and constantly refreshed, where the tide and tone of public opinion needs to guide virtually every decision and where constantly listening to the ebb and flow of consumer voice must become a vital part of the marketing communications mix, because the consumer has become empowered with a global voice and a global audience.

Which is good news, no?

Gumpf

Well, General Motors certainly don't think much about the treatment they've been getting at the hands of bloggers.

According to a report in the Financial Times, carried today by Gulf News, GM's spokesman Tom Wilkinson reckons, "We've found that the travails of the auto industry have spread beyond the business pages to the general media. Bloggers and others tend to pick up misinformation and recycle it endlessly."

So here, perhaps, is an example of a company that didn't just sit back and sulk when it doesn't like what's happening out there in the Internet. It got off its bum and did something about it. GM's GMfactsandfiction.com website not only directly addresses hard questions, it even asks readers to submit rumours!

"If you’ve read or heard something about GM we’d love to know about it so that we can have an opportunity to address it."

It's certainly an agressive and targeted outreach effort that pulled major global media hits when it was announced on the 5th September. The editor of GMFactsandfiction.com is, incidentally, one Tom Wilkinson!

If you Google General Motors Blogs, you'll find that at least the first three pages of results are utterly dominated by GM's own blogs: a nice effort at SEO domination, for sure. A quick search of other coverage shows much of it is 'on message', too. Top marks for GM?

Well, let's not be so quick to go clapping backs.

It's actually quite hard to find the 'negatives' that GM has reacted so strongly to. So at first glance, we've got an impressive piece of PR work that got GM's story out there and shouted down the critical voices quite neatly, apparently addressing their assertions and restoring 'balance' to the debate. But it's done so with such efficiency that there's no debate at all to speak of...

And the GMF&F site doesn't allow people to post comments. So it's not really dialogue: it's just big-budget shout it from the rooftops assertion. And the trouble with that kind of assertion is that you can't really take a realistic tone and address the debate as a participant - you're just blaring your viewpoint and not listening to others. And that's not polite conversation.

There's this blog, for instance, which accuses GMF&F of 'cherry picking' and then goes on to take a sharp cutlass to the site. And, in fact, there is an increasing volume of comment on blogs of a similar nature, although the tone of response is generally cautious and wary rather than condemnatory.

As one forum comment put it: "I looked at that website. It's sad when a formerly proud American corporation resorts to peddling half truths like that on a website. No solid facts are provided about their dire financial situation and yet GM has the arrogance to try and dupe the public into believing they aren't receiving a government handout. Sad, sad, sad."

Perhaps interestingly, the day before the outreach on facts and fiction started, GM apparently recalled almost a million vehicles due to a fire hazard... the recall is also carried on the US NHTSA database under NHTSA Campaign Number 08V441000.

Although GM appears not to have issued a release on that... Almost a million fire hazards wouldn't be as important as 'addressing myths'.

Or am I just being too cynical again...

Blogs

VLPW
Very Long Post Warning

I’m sure there have been gigabytes written on this topic, but I somehow feel the need to add to the weighty wodge that’s clogging up the useful stuff (like this) flowing around the Internet.

What should you do if a blog slags off your company or makes snarky comments about your customer service? What are your rights and how can you fix the damage? Here’s a handy ten point guide for companies that feel themselves wronged by blogs. And it's FREE! It might even help the smattering of dorks that have tried to ‘right wrongs’ on this blog by posting inane comments from behind their corporate firewalls.

1. Think
Before you rush to make a dim-witted comment on the blog, think about it. What has the blogger said that you disagree with? Is it an opinion or a factual error? Can you back up your assertion that there is a fundamental error? Can you provide evidence that the opinion expressed is ill-founded or at odds with the majority of people? If you work with a PR or communications agency, get their counsel before you act.

2. Remember: it’s a conversation
If you’re being attacked by blogs, it may be worth taking a look at the situation they’re highlighting and seeing if the point is valid and addressable – and then addressing it before going online and saying so. If the attack is invalid, then it’s worth acknowledging the point that’s been made before making your, well-argued, counterpoint in a measured, respectful way. The more aggressive the blogger, the more a measured tone will position you as the reasonable and authoritative participant in the conversation. It’s literally just like a face to face conversation – and wagging fingers or shouting will just get people’s backs up – even if in response to someone who’s obviously infuriated. Think how you’d behave in a customer service situation. Well, bloggers are just customers with an audience.

3. Most blogs don’t matter
Before you go making a great big song and dance, consider doing absolutely nothing. Most blogs are read by an average 1.1 people – the 1 being the blogger. Is the blog well respected and well read? Will it influence opinion? Just because someone in the company has emailed a link to the blog around every member of the management team doesn’t mean that the blog is normally well read. And a few hundred visits to a marginal blog prompted by that email, by the way, will just let the blogger know that they’re onto something that gets them more readers. So they’ll likely do more of it, not less.

4. Blogs can matter very quickly
I’m going to be very Delphic now. In deciding to ignore a blog, do bear in mind that blogs can go from zero to hero in absolutely no time. A lot of today’s journalists spend a lot of time on blogs and the oddest things can result in a huge amount of interest. Take a look at this blog, a case study of how a blog can make a fundamental difference – and do note that this is case study from the Middle East. There have been instances of a blog post making national front page headlines within 48 hours in Europe and gaining over 2 million readers as a consequence. And then there are companies that have turned expressions of customer dissatisfaction made on blogs completely to their advantage. The success story is built around actually listening to what people are saying, not ignoring it.

5. Don’t hide your identity
Like the Ray Bans ad says: don’t hide. There may be an urge to post a positive, balancing comment on the blog under an anonymous handle or a pseudonym. Do be aware that most bloggers have access to tools that allow them to track back visitors to the blog. You make a comment on my blog? I know who you are. So if you work for a major daily newspaper or a telco and you don’t like what I’ve got to say, have the guts to say so under your own name. Because I’ll know anyway and just ‘out’ you for being a custard. And so will most other people who write blogs.

6. Find out who the blogger is
No, I don’t mean set the secret service on ‘em. I mean take the time to read some of the blog at least, look at past posts and comments and see if the blogger is authoritative or a loose cannon. There’s nothing more awful than watching some corporate flak try to make a fool out of a widely respected expert because they didn’t bother finding out who the blogger was – regardless of whether they blog under their own names or pseudonyms, bloggers have an ‘identity’ in the overall conversation. Take a look at the blogs that link to/are linked to out of the blog. Look at Technorati and find the blog’s rating. Perhaps do a google or two and find out how the blog ranks on search. Authority is about tone, resonance and reach.

7. Take some time out to understand blogs in general
Know what a troll is? Or a trackback link? Understand the importance of RSS and feed readers? Know what IMHO stands for? If not, find a younger member of your staff and get them to explain it all to you before you start blundering around crashing conversations. By the way, if you want to know what blogs are saying about your company, consider setting up a Google alert.

8. Don’t crash the conversation
Think of it all like you’d think about joining a real-life conversation. In posting to my blog, I’m putting something into the public domain that I think people will find interesting or that I just want to get off my chest. Usually both! It’s a bit like standing on a soap box. People are kind enough to drop by and listen to me – some have a chat with me at the end of the lecture. And I go to their lectures too – to listen and have a chat afterwards. It’s all pretty civilised most of the time. It’s relatively easy to join the conversation as long as you don’t crash in without having bothered to listen to the preceding debate. Again, just as in real life you wouldn’t rudely barge into a group and vent your opinion on a topic without taking the time to find out what the prevailing opinion and tone of debate was like. Well, not unless you want the group to all round on you and tell you to shove off, that is...

9. You can’t make it go away
Barring access to a blog from the corporate network because it has attacked your company will just ensure all your staff go home and take a look at what all the fuss is about. I worked with one company that did just that, in the face of our advice, and we watched in frustration as they embarked on a futile and highly visible witch-hunt that resulted in scoring 11,000 visits to a blog that wouldn’t have got 11 visits otherwise. For one reason or another, you have earned the attention of a blog. Depending on the situation, it’s likely that the best and most advisable course of action is to engage with that blog’s author and balance the POV with your own or even, gasp, act on the input.

10. Consider blogging as a tool
Don’t think of blogs as purely a dangerous manifestation of unfettered opinion and irresponsible ‘citizen journalism’. Blogs are so much more than that. They are a powerful medium of expression that is increasingly becoming an important barometer of public opinion and source of public voice. They are self-correcting in a way that conventional media aren't - people will correct a mistake on a blog faster than you can say 'nmkl pjkl ftmch'. And they're part of the revolution in social media that is changing the way people today communicate. They're not about to go away, in other words. By the way, this post is a very good case in self-correcting point!

You can actually use a blog as a highly effective platform for your company to engage with customers. Take some time out to have a look around and you’ll find that they’re actually a neat tool. You don’t have to have a million readers for a blog to matter, either. It’s better to have a few hundred people that want to interact with you than advertise to 100,000 that don’t. Remember, this is the era of the ‘long tail’. So think about joining ‘the conversation’. I think, after a while, you’ll be glad you did.

Seat

If you've got a little time on your hands, make a cup of coffee, sit down and relax and take 15 minutes or so out to read this 10,250 word post from UAE based blogger and Etisalat customer service victim Sam. It documents his 43-day attempt to get his Internet connection upgraded from 1Mb to 2Mb.

It'll likely resonate with you if you've ever dealt with Etisalat or any other monopoly provider. It'll resonate if you occasionally cry into the void at the sheer frustration of dealing with call centre culture. It'll make you angry. It'll make you marvel at how he didn't commit any acts of violence, vandalism or inappropriate behaviour.

And, with a bit of luck, it'll get widely publicised and lead to a thorough-going witch hunt over at Etisalat towers. Because it's the voice of a frustrated, annoyed, ignored, disrespected and utterly impotent consumer being jerked around by people who represent disempowered, dumb, rote process gone mad.

Enjoy!

Grumpy

A very grumpy little pair of pieces in today’s Gulf News: the ‘phone company that everyone loves to shout at, Etisalat, has released a new block of numbers starting with the prefix 056 and hasn’t bothered telling anyone, according to the paper which gives the grievance front page space (alongside a report of the horrific crash that happened yesterday on the Sheikh Zayed Road outside the Grand Hyatt: a minibus jumped the central barrier and hit an oncoming car with the loss of five lives) and then repeats the story inside.

The source of at least some of GN’s grumpiness is given away in the story, “repeated requests by Gulf News for a comment from etisalat went unanswered”, and then GN gets its revenge, continuing with “Etisalat subscribers regularly complain about the poor customer support.”

Ouch.

The GN story is hung on a single subscriber complaint, which is a tad thin if you ask me. Australian businessman Irshad says he's been given a new number and is facing constant problems with people insisting they’ve got the number wrong. The paper says that ‘apart from a press release’ there has been no attempt at raising awareness of the new number: that press release, as far as I can see, went out in August 2006!!!

Changing a national numbering scheme without any attempt at public awareness is an odd decision to make. Choosing to ignore media enquiries about it an even odder one, particularly given that Etisalat is involved, at least nominally, in a competitive market. The result would appear to be some unwelcome coverage given unusual prominence, I would submit precisely because the company has been ignoring the newspaper's requests.

You can only conclude that there’s a potent cocktail of stupidity and arrogance at work here and that’s surprising given the vast number of very positive changes that have been taking place over at Etisalat towers over the past couple of years.

This news is also bad news for a completely different reason: it’s the death knell for the Du test, because people are going to start asking for the ‘full’ mobile number including the prefix now.

Mind you, I have to confess I’ll be delighted if people start asking “Is that 050 or 056?”...

:)