This link came to me thanks to Charles Arthur. It's an amazing blog that charts job cuts in US newspapers. It's looking like carnage out there: US media houses are reporting drops in their profits anywhere from 47 to 87%.
US newspaper advertising, local and national both, dropped by over 7% in 2007, together with smaller drops in specialist magazines, radio and a number of TV categories. The biggest rise in advertising volumes was the Internet, a growth of almost 19%.
UK newspaper sales have dived over 11% over the past four years on average, with year on year drops to April 2008 as high as 10 and 12%, as people move to the Internet for their news, views and conversations.
At the same time, many journalists are also using the 'new tools', including blogs. A survey by Pleon's US partner, Brodeur, showed that over 50% of journalists spent an hour a day reading blogs. Almost 50% of them blog themselves - and 4 out of 5 US journalists believe that blogs have made reporting more diverse. 65% of US media regularly read blogs that cover their area of reporting. We're even seeing a re-birth of media interest in, and reporting of, blogging in the UAE, although I honestly think this article today that quotes a certain devilishly attractive cove could, and should, have gone a lot further.
It's probably no coincidence that the biggest recent influx of journalists from 'more sophisticated' world markets recently to the UAE was to Abu Dhabi's The National - and that there are something like 20 blogs coming out of that team right now, including a 'team blog'. In other words, blogging is part of life for journalists from other parts of the world - online habits are ingrained in them that are perhaps lacking in our regional media - but that's changing fast.
If you doubt that change, read this (courtesy Gianni)...
What on earth am I getting at? Well, there's a movement going on here. As consumers' eyeballs are moving online, the money's following them. And media houses are being dragged along behind the money, trying to find new revenue streams that will replace the advertising and copy sales revenue of the 'conventional' media model. It does remind me of the struggles of circuit-switch mentality telecom operators trying to deny the existence of the virtually free of charge Internet telephony. And the typesetters I used to work with who didn't believe that desktop publishing would replace professional compositors. And the people at travel agent Thompsons who lost their jobs to people like me who book holidays on the Internet. And on and on and on.
The list is, of course, of people being disintermediated by the Internet. And media in key world markets are facing that self same pressure right now. To misquote Larry Ellison, "It's online business or out of business". The problem is that online revenue streams aren't acting like conventional revenue streams - and there's a shortfall in revenue that's behaving conventionally.
This, therefore, would seem to be a time to behave unconventionally...
Sunday, 27 July 2008
Thursday, 24 July 2008
Guildford
They used to be called The Guildford Stranglers. Then they dropped the Guildford, which is sort of lucky.
They were a huge influence on my protracted and turbulent adolescence. I used to clip their media coverage and kept it in a number of scrapbooks, but no, I don’t think that influenced my current choice of occupation. I used to pick up anything I could find on them: I’ll never forgive Melody Maker’s snide, ‘greasy white reggae’ review of No More Heroes. Bastards.
I have every single one of their records right up until the point just before Hugh Cornwell left, the point where they had started to lose me. To make ends meet, before the Stranglers and after he left Sweden and Emile and the Detectives, Cornwell used to play acoustic guitar for diners at Keith Floyd’s restaurant – Floyd still uses their music for his food programmes on British TV. I love him for that and, OK, for being a deliciously maverick boozy foodie too. But I’ve got ‘em all – every recording: Choosy Susie, the limited edition white vinyl Walk On By, the Peaches picture cover – rarities that I can no longer play because I don’t have a record player any more. Walk On By was the longest single, over seven minutes, ever to chart in the UK top 20, a massive jam session that still makes me grin like a lunatic when I play it.
10 was the album at the end of the road for me, when the magic of the best years was nothing but a distant memory. But oh, what magic. Battersea Park, Nice and Sleazy and a stage full of strippers. Shite ‘punk comedian’ Johnny Rubbish getting pelted with cans for being crap. He’d shouted that he’d walk off the stage if anyone else threw a can and the sky turned black. Agincourt.
Walking one day, a lonely kid failing to make sense of pretty much anything, past a block of flats and hearing The Stranglers playing. Knocking on the door: it’s a bloke in his 30s; he’s friendly, sees I’m a little taken aback and thrown by my own random action. I explain it’s the music. He asks me in. I’m confused. I just thought it might be someone I could talk to and I can’t explain to him and I turn and leave him there, on the doorstep. It’s a consequence of going to school over an hour’s drive away and living somewhere you don’t belong: I don’t know anyone in the town where I live. My mate Cliff was a boarder from Swaziland, just as alienated as I was. We got into trouble together. A great deal of trouble. The Stranglers were my criminal soundtrack.
Playing bass, that double punch at the start of Hanging Around... baow baow, then the heaving rhythm, putting little flourishes into it. Gigs at school, thrown off stage in Stanmore.
Stumbling with my schoolboy crush, the lovely Kay, out of the Rainbow, deafened by Dave Greenfield’s wailing, buzzing, rise and fall Oberheim OBX solo at the end of Raven, marvelling at her: dressed in black; vibrant, laughing, smelling gorgeous and sexy as fuck. I ached for her for years, then rejected her the night she finally got me to realise that she wanted me, too.
Travelling down to the Bear Garden by London Bridge on the train, working at the Stranglers Information Service, a new game that school chum Tom Noble turned me onto before he went off to shoot rabbits by lamplight in Australia. Working at SIS for no wage, taking home a bagful of band freebies after every day. Tomorrow was the Hereafter and Nublies, lyric sheets and t-shirts in lieu of pay. Watching their accountant despair after another ruinous tour of Sweden (Jet Black, a big bloke by any standard, had picked up a fruit machine and thrown it at a bar, an incident somehow rolled up with running battles with the Swedish teddy boys), talking to Black’s insufferable brother Paul Roderick, who ran SIS at the time. Mourning Simon Sparrow. The band think the Meninblack got him. Coke-fuelled paranoia or just bad PR?
Buying ‘Gold Watch’ with Jet’s Son, the Ayatollah, and watching the girl at Threshers fail to find the brand (“Gold watch! Scotch, love!” explains the Ayatollah, a true Bow Bells cockney), on the way to a booze and blues party. Going back to my parents’ place in Hemel Hempstead with Andy, a guy I’d met at SIS, and spending the weekend being naughty with some of the naughtier girls I knew ‘cos my parents were away. Getting caught when they copped the state of the bedsheets after they got back.
Jean Burnel’s hand-strengtheners in a box at SIS, handles wrapped in string and stained rust brown with blood. He’s worryingly physical. Playing Black’s warehoused Promuco drumkit (sorry, Jet) and Hazel O’Connor dropping by to say ‘hi’. Toyah Wilcox. Wow.
The Stranglers having to skip Queensland on Hells Angels’ bikes after pissing off the authorities. Hugh Cornwell goes down for three months at Pentonville for drug possession. Thank you, judge. The amazing benefit gig. The Stranglers imprisoned at Nice for inciting a riot: every window in the University Hall broken by infuriated students after the insufficient power fails the band and they walk offstage.
Golden Brown. Being delighted for them getting a real hit – they’d expected so much from The Gospel According to the Men in Black, thought they had it made with Who Wants the World. But they just had to fa fa fade. Strange Little Girl the followup, actually one of their first songs, not quite getting up there. Tori Amos’ cover is brilliant. La Folie, back on form. I’ll never forgive them for selling Golden Brown to Breville for a bloody sandwich toaster advertisement.
And then growing away from it, Aural Sculpture a disappointment but the first time I’d ever encountered an album with ‘content’ – and so the Spectrum led to the Amstrad which led to the computers which shaped my life. But Aural Sculpture was the Wrong Musical Road: horn sections and no life, straining, commercially inept.
Dreamtime, more of the same Linn Drums and parping horns. Losing interest and then the years when the rest of the world took priority, leaving home and finding my own way, discovering new stuff and then Hugh left to become one in a million children, segueing on to the brilliant, mad experimentalism of Nosferatu and Wired. Seeing them at the Irish Club in Northampton, Ellis on guitar, Paul Roberts on vocals. Not good enough. No Hugh and me feeling old and alienated, wondering what on earth I’d thought I was going to recover by going there. And then, years later and a whole world away, seeing Cornwell at the Dubai Marine Beach; a grumpy, ageing man toting an acoustic guitar and more attitude than stature. Buying a CD at Virgin in Deira City Centre out of sheer curiosity: Norfolk Coast. Not bad at all... playable: enjoyable. A few flashes of the Raven brilliance. Enough reason to go and see them again, that and a strange feeling that these people are part of my growing up, a huge part of me. A chance to let a lost world rush by me again, to relive some of the things I seem not to have truly appreciated at the time – some of which tear at my heartstrings now. Sometimes I watch young me walking down the road and want to shout out to myself, to tell me how to do it better.
I just bought my tickets for The Stranglers’ Dubai gig at the Irish Village on the 3rd October, in case you were wondering what the hell my head’s doing...
They were a huge influence on my protracted and turbulent adolescence. I used to clip their media coverage and kept it in a number of scrapbooks, but no, I don’t think that influenced my current choice of occupation. I used to pick up anything I could find on them: I’ll never forgive Melody Maker’s snide, ‘greasy white reggae’ review of No More Heroes. Bastards.
I have every single one of their records right up until the point just before Hugh Cornwell left, the point where they had started to lose me. To make ends meet, before the Stranglers and after he left Sweden and Emile and the Detectives, Cornwell used to play acoustic guitar for diners at Keith Floyd’s restaurant – Floyd still uses their music for his food programmes on British TV. I love him for that and, OK, for being a deliciously maverick boozy foodie too. But I’ve got ‘em all – every recording: Choosy Susie, the limited edition white vinyl Walk On By, the Peaches picture cover – rarities that I can no longer play because I don’t have a record player any more. Walk On By was the longest single, over seven minutes, ever to chart in the UK top 20, a massive jam session that still makes me grin like a lunatic when I play it.
10 was the album at the end of the road for me, when the magic of the best years was nothing but a distant memory. But oh, what magic. Battersea Park, Nice and Sleazy and a stage full of strippers. Shite ‘punk comedian’ Johnny Rubbish getting pelted with cans for being crap. He’d shouted that he’d walk off the stage if anyone else threw a can and the sky turned black. Agincourt.
Walking one day, a lonely kid failing to make sense of pretty much anything, past a block of flats and hearing The Stranglers playing. Knocking on the door: it’s a bloke in his 30s; he’s friendly, sees I’m a little taken aback and thrown by my own random action. I explain it’s the music. He asks me in. I’m confused. I just thought it might be someone I could talk to and I can’t explain to him and I turn and leave him there, on the doorstep. It’s a consequence of going to school over an hour’s drive away and living somewhere you don’t belong: I don’t know anyone in the town where I live. My mate Cliff was a boarder from Swaziland, just as alienated as I was. We got into trouble together. A great deal of trouble. The Stranglers were my criminal soundtrack.
Playing bass, that double punch at the start of Hanging Around... baow baow, then the heaving rhythm, putting little flourishes into it. Gigs at school, thrown off stage in Stanmore.
Stumbling with my schoolboy crush, the lovely Kay, out of the Rainbow, deafened by Dave Greenfield’s wailing, buzzing, rise and fall Oberheim OBX solo at the end of Raven, marvelling at her: dressed in black; vibrant, laughing, smelling gorgeous and sexy as fuck. I ached for her for years, then rejected her the night she finally got me to realise that she wanted me, too.
Travelling down to the Bear Garden by London Bridge on the train, working at the Stranglers Information Service, a new game that school chum Tom Noble turned me onto before he went off to shoot rabbits by lamplight in Australia. Working at SIS for no wage, taking home a bagful of band freebies after every day. Tomorrow was the Hereafter and Nublies, lyric sheets and t-shirts in lieu of pay. Watching their accountant despair after another ruinous tour of Sweden (Jet Black, a big bloke by any standard, had picked up a fruit machine and thrown it at a bar, an incident somehow rolled up with running battles with the Swedish teddy boys), talking to Black’s insufferable brother Paul Roderick, who ran SIS at the time. Mourning Simon Sparrow. The band think the Meninblack got him. Coke-fuelled paranoia or just bad PR?
Buying ‘Gold Watch’ with Jet’s Son, the Ayatollah, and watching the girl at Threshers fail to find the brand (“Gold watch! Scotch, love!” explains the Ayatollah, a true Bow Bells cockney), on the way to a booze and blues party. Going back to my parents’ place in Hemel Hempstead with Andy, a guy I’d met at SIS, and spending the weekend being naughty with some of the naughtier girls I knew ‘cos my parents were away. Getting caught when they copped the state of the bedsheets after they got back.
Jean Burnel’s hand-strengtheners in a box at SIS, handles wrapped in string and stained rust brown with blood. He’s worryingly physical. Playing Black’s warehoused Promuco drumkit (sorry, Jet) and Hazel O’Connor dropping by to say ‘hi’. Toyah Wilcox. Wow.
The Stranglers having to skip Queensland on Hells Angels’ bikes after pissing off the authorities. Hugh Cornwell goes down for three months at Pentonville for drug possession. Thank you, judge. The amazing benefit gig. The Stranglers imprisoned at Nice for inciting a riot: every window in the University Hall broken by infuriated students after the insufficient power fails the band and they walk offstage.
Golden Brown. Being delighted for them getting a real hit – they’d expected so much from The Gospel According to the Men in Black, thought they had it made with Who Wants the World. But they just had to fa fa fade. Strange Little Girl the followup, actually one of their first songs, not quite getting up there. Tori Amos’ cover is brilliant. La Folie, back on form. I’ll never forgive them for selling Golden Brown to Breville for a bloody sandwich toaster advertisement.
And then growing away from it, Aural Sculpture a disappointment but the first time I’d ever encountered an album with ‘content’ – and so the Spectrum led to the Amstrad which led to the computers which shaped my life. But Aural Sculpture was the Wrong Musical Road: horn sections and no life, straining, commercially inept.
Dreamtime, more of the same Linn Drums and parping horns. Losing interest and then the years when the rest of the world took priority, leaving home and finding my own way, discovering new stuff and then Hugh left to become one in a million children, segueing on to the brilliant, mad experimentalism of Nosferatu and Wired. Seeing them at the Irish Club in Northampton, Ellis on guitar, Paul Roberts on vocals. Not good enough. No Hugh and me feeling old and alienated, wondering what on earth I’d thought I was going to recover by going there. And then, years later and a whole world away, seeing Cornwell at the Dubai Marine Beach; a grumpy, ageing man toting an acoustic guitar and more attitude than stature. Buying a CD at Virgin in Deira City Centre out of sheer curiosity: Norfolk Coast. Not bad at all... playable: enjoyable. A few flashes of the Raven brilliance. Enough reason to go and see them again, that and a strange feeling that these people are part of my growing up, a huge part of me. A chance to let a lost world rush by me again, to relive some of the things I seem not to have truly appreciated at the time – some of which tear at my heartstrings now. Sometimes I watch young me walking down the road and want to shout out to myself, to tell me how to do it better.
I just bought my tickets for The Stranglers’ Dubai gig at the Irish Village on the 3rd October, in case you were wondering what the hell my head’s doing...
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Wednesday, 23 July 2008
Pooling
Do go to the RTA's new Sharekni website and have a giggle.
Yes! Thanks to the brilliance of the RTA, you can now register to share your car with other people! Other people? Yes! Other people!
For those wondering what on earth is going on about this carpooling business, it was illegal to share your car with other people in the UAE because of the prevalence of illegal taxis - ie people sharing their cars for money. As I've pointed out in the past, if the taxis were a little nicer, neater, more knowledgeable about destinations and carried passengers at a reasonable market rate, the demand for 'illegal' taxis would be practically non-existent.
However, the issue was, apparently, that people were running 'illegal taxis', hence the move to make all car-sharing technically illegal. I'm really not sure that the level of 'illegal sharing' was such a safety threat, or revenue threat to the RTA, but there we go. The imposition of the law into this situation may seem a little draconian: others might have run an awareness campaign about the dangers of car sharing, re-evaluated the taxi service to make it more competitive or perhaps even just put up with a little natural attrition for the taxi company as those less well off shared their cars.
Having imposed the move as law, this obviously poses some problems, such as 'If I want to give my friend/colleague/neighbour/ a lift to work/the club/the beach then I damn well will'. And nobody would be particularly keen to live in an environment so mad as to actually seriously enforce such a piece of legislation. Would they?
The RTA's new solution to the issue, the 'Sharekni' service, attempts to allow drivers to register, stipulate the type of passengers they're willing to share with, the days they're happy to be 'driver' on etc - and then lets them log up to four passengers together. The site also supports passengers looking for a driver. The site then issues a 'permission' document that will satisfy even the most ardent police officer when you're stopped to see who the four strange people in your car are.
As Kipp points out, the Sharekni car pooling website isn't exactly a Web 2.0 marvel. Rather than making it all fun and social, the site is more like a government form filling exercise. The 'quick search' failed to find anything I tried and the registration link failed, the form failed and pretty much everything else I tried to do failed, too. I gave up in the end.
Although I'm sure they'll fix the site in time, the whole idea really does still make my mind boggle. To try and legislate, and enforce that legislation, against people having other people in their cars is surely an utterly pointless exercise. To offer them the chance to register for the chance to share their car with strangers for no incentive other than a 'permissible' sharing of the cost of petrol ("Cash exchange is not allowed between the passengers and the car owner; however the car owner can be compensated by paying the gas price.")?
I somehow don't think it's going to be wow of the century... but then I'm just cynical and overdue leave, so I might simply be wrong...
Yes! Thanks to the brilliance of the RTA, you can now register to share your car with other people! Other people? Yes! Other people!
For those wondering what on earth is going on about this carpooling business, it was illegal to share your car with other people in the UAE because of the prevalence of illegal taxis - ie people sharing their cars for money. As I've pointed out in the past, if the taxis were a little nicer, neater, more knowledgeable about destinations and carried passengers at a reasonable market rate, the demand for 'illegal' taxis would be practically non-existent.
However, the issue was, apparently, that people were running 'illegal taxis', hence the move to make all car-sharing technically illegal. I'm really not sure that the level of 'illegal sharing' was such a safety threat, or revenue threat to the RTA, but there we go. The imposition of the law into this situation may seem a little draconian: others might have run an awareness campaign about the dangers of car sharing, re-evaluated the taxi service to make it more competitive or perhaps even just put up with a little natural attrition for the taxi company as those less well off shared their cars.
Having imposed the move as law, this obviously poses some problems, such as 'If I want to give my friend/colleague/neighbour/ a lift to work/the club/the beach then I damn well will'. And nobody would be particularly keen to live in an environment so mad as to actually seriously enforce such a piece of legislation. Would they?
The RTA's new solution to the issue, the 'Sharekni' service, attempts to allow drivers to register, stipulate the type of passengers they're willing to share with, the days they're happy to be 'driver' on etc - and then lets them log up to four passengers together. The site also supports passengers looking for a driver. The site then issues a 'permission' document that will satisfy even the most ardent police officer when you're stopped to see who the four strange people in your car are.
As Kipp points out, the Sharekni car pooling website isn't exactly a Web 2.0 marvel. Rather than making it all fun and social, the site is more like a government form filling exercise. The 'quick search' failed to find anything I tried and the registration link failed, the form failed and pretty much everything else I tried to do failed, too. I gave up in the end.
Although I'm sure they'll fix the site in time, the whole idea really does still make my mind boggle. To try and legislate, and enforce that legislation, against people having other people in their cars is surely an utterly pointless exercise. To offer them the chance to register for the chance to share their car with strangers for no incentive other than a 'permissible' sharing of the cost of petrol ("Cash exchange is not allowed between the passengers and the car owner; however the car owner can be compensated by paying the gas price.")?
I somehow don't think it's going to be wow of the century... but then I'm just cynical and overdue leave, so I might simply be wrong...
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Holiday
For those of you who aren't lucky enough to work with Arabic speakers (particularly my lot, who are simply wonderful) or read Arabic and who might, as a result, have missed the news in today's Al Bayan, next Thursday's a holiday.
For some reason, none of today's English papers have the news, but next Wednesday is officially Alisra'a wal Miraaj, the holiday marking the ascent of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) to heaven. The UAE government's giving Thursday in lieu.
So start planning that long weekend, folks...
For some reason, none of today's English papers have the news, but next Wednesday is officially Alisra'a wal Miraaj, the holiday marking the ascent of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) to heaven. The UAE government's giving Thursday in lieu.
So start planning that long weekend, folks...
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Tuesday, 22 July 2008
Stations
We should be hearing from the RTA soon, presumably once it's finished clapping itself on the back on the successful construction of an interchange, as to the naming of those 23 sponsored railway stations as well as the names of the first two Dubai Metro lines. Yes, the Dubai Metro Naming Rights programme, if the RTA's own documents are to be believed, is about to close its first phase, with the RTA datelining July 15th as the end of the month-long negotiation process with the first tranche of companies that submitted 'Expressions of Interest' or EOIs.
It'll be interesting to see how many of those 250 companies that the RTA claims expressed an interest will come through with the minimum 10 year commitment to Dhs6 million per year (30% up front, if you don't mind!) for the right to have people say they're going to take a train to their brand.
The RTA makes a number of stipulations for companies applying. They must be a company or brand, not a personal/family name, which is interesting if you're Al Futtaim or Al Ghurair or any of Dubai's other major family companies. They must have a presence in the UAE . They have to be financially stable (!) and have no history of fraudulent and/or unethical behaviour (One can only speculate as to what criteria they're going to apply there!) and must not be promoting fags, booze, porn or gambling. So Playboy Junction isn't going to happen.
Additionally, it is 'desirable' that companies have a 'commitment to Dubai', have a CSR policy in place or in process, should ideally 'fit' with the location and, if international, should be a Fortune 1000 company and be a 'multi-cultural organisation'.
The ham-fisted attempt above to try and define the 'right sort of company' that Dubai would want splashed all over its Metro system is one of many interesting areas to the whole scheme. We wouldn't want anybody 'wrong' to be splurged all over the city, now would we?
I can't wait for the list of applicants. We can only hope there has been no delay in finding 23 of the 'right sort of companies' out of that avalanche of 250 expressions of interest. I suppose we'll know soon enough when we start to see the 'RTA struggles under five billion applications, extends deadline' releases. Or, alternatively, when we see a list of our new landmarks to be.
It'll be interesting to see how many of those 250 companies that the RTA claims expressed an interest will come through with the minimum 10 year commitment to Dhs6 million per year (30% up front, if you don't mind!) for the right to have people say they're going to take a train to their brand.
The RTA makes a number of stipulations for companies applying. They must be a company or brand, not a personal/family name, which is interesting if you're Al Futtaim or Al Ghurair or any of Dubai's other major family companies. They must have a presence in the UAE . They have to be financially stable (!) and have no history of fraudulent and/or unethical behaviour (One can only speculate as to what criteria they're going to apply there!) and must not be promoting fags, booze, porn or gambling. So Playboy Junction isn't going to happen.
Additionally, it is 'desirable' that companies have a 'commitment to Dubai', have a CSR policy in place or in process, should ideally 'fit' with the location and, if international, should be a Fortune 1000 company and be a 'multi-cultural organisation'.
The ham-fisted attempt above to try and define the 'right sort of company' that Dubai would want splashed all over its Metro system is one of many interesting areas to the whole scheme. We wouldn't want anybody 'wrong' to be splurged all over the city, now would we?
I can't wait for the list of applicants. We can only hope there has been no delay in finding 23 of the 'right sort of companies' out of that avalanche of 250 expressions of interest. I suppose we'll know soon enough when we start to see the 'RTA struggles under five billion applications, extends deadline' releases. Or, alternatively, when we see a list of our new landmarks to be.
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Sunday, 20 July 2008
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!
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!
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Alas
Talking about new lows in advertising, as we were last week, today's soaraway, sizzling slab of superlatives, Gulf News, carries an advertisement for a rather unremarkable little development called, as far as I can see, 'Sundance'.
Buckingham Palace, Mysore Palace, Palace of Versailles...
Trumpets the ad, getting my attention for a start. What new Dubai Lalaland superlative awfulness are we in for next?
ALAS!
Screams the copy.
None are commercial towers!
Oh, alas indeed! I'm sure Liz is bemoaning that very fact as she gets tucked into her tupperware full of Frosties this morning! The copy goes on to warble about how this humdrum little building is to be 'a business space fit for the emperors of the business world' and how 'if you ever feel the need for a space befitting your empire' you need search no more.
It's not often that something cuts through the constant background buzz of Dubai's prozac laced, hyperbolic real-estate promotion and actively manages to provoke irritation. The idiotic comparison between this drab little square of low-rent office space and great works of architecture shouldn't really get my goat. There's even some merit to the scheme. The idea that Buck Palace would be better utilised as commercial tower space would, I know, dovetail very neatly with my Irish and staunchly Republican wife's view that the British Royal family should be fed to the nearest available carnivore.
It must be me. I must be due leave...
Buckingham Palace, Mysore Palace, Palace of Versailles...
Trumpets the ad, getting my attention for a start. What new Dubai Lalaland superlative awfulness are we in for next?
ALAS!
Screams the copy.
None are commercial towers!
Oh, alas indeed! I'm sure Liz is bemoaning that very fact as she gets tucked into her tupperware full of Frosties this morning! The copy goes on to warble about how this humdrum little building is to be 'a business space fit for the emperors of the business world' and how 'if you ever feel the need for a space befitting your empire' you need search no more.
It's not often that something cuts through the constant background buzz of Dubai's prozac laced, hyperbolic real-estate promotion and actively manages to provoke irritation. The idiotic comparison between this drab little square of low-rent office space and great works of architecture shouldn't really get my goat. There's even some merit to the scheme. The idea that Buck Palace would be better utilised as commercial tower space would, I know, dovetail very neatly with my Irish and staunchly Republican wife's view that the British Royal family should be fed to the nearest available carnivore.
It must be me. I must be due leave...
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Thursday, 17 July 2008
Border
It's been almost nine years since the border between the UAE and Oman was agreed between the late Shaikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan and HM Sultan Qaboos bin Said. Detailed negotiations then carried on, resulting in in a detailed and mapped agreement on the border in May 2005, almost six years to the day from the original agreement.
Over the past couple of years, a green fence has started to snake its way along the frontier between the two countries, slicing through the wadi plains and climbing up into the rocky foothills of the Hajjar mountains. The 'rabbit proof fence' is high and topped with razor wire, set into concrete and relatively serious as fences go. And it was built by the UAE, apparently.
It's no easy task, closing this border. Because of the original tribal affiliations of the people living in these areas, there are enclaves of Oman within the main borders of the UAE, including the Northern tip by the Straits of Hormuz, the Musandam Peninsula; a pocket of land inland from Khor Fakkan on the Indian Ocean near the village of Shis and the wadi plains of Vilayat Madha. So you drive from Dubai through Sharjah, Oman and then a little bit of Ajman to get to Hatta, for instance. What's more, if you drive North of Hatta on the road (used to be track, *sigh*) from just beyond the Hatta Fort Hotel to the desert town of Dhaid, which is part of Sharjah, you'll be driving through Ras Al Khaimah to get there.
It's kind of complex, no?
Now they've shut the border between the UAE's desert oasis town of Al Ain and Omani town Buraimi, which have always lived side by side in the desert, sort of semi-morphed into a single town. What's interesting here is that there are now to be two border crossings between the two towns, a move that was hilariously headlined by Gulf News: "Expatriates get separate border crossing at Al Ain" as if it were some kind of benefit to have to drive 15km out of town to cross the border!
The National had an excellent piece on the effects of the move this week, as residents try to manage a border through a community that in many ways had become a single community made up of two adjacent towns in two adjacent countries. A sort of Siamese City.
The other border crossings, including the road through Vilayat Madha to Hatta, remain open. The question is for how long - and how they can be closed. It's hard to find a reason why the border has been so comprehensively locked down, although smuggling and illegal immigration have both been mentioned as the core reasons behind the massive project.
So now you can't just pop over the border to Buraimi and visit the pools at Kitnah or pop over to the Hanging Gardens and then slip up the track from Al Ain to Hatta, perhaps stopping off for a splash around in some of the wadis on the way. It'll be interesting to see how long it'll be before the Hatta Track itself (now blacktop anyway, so no wadi bashing to be had here) is closed off.
Sad times.
Over the past couple of years, a green fence has started to snake its way along the frontier between the two countries, slicing through the wadi plains and climbing up into the rocky foothills of the Hajjar mountains. The 'rabbit proof fence' is high and topped with razor wire, set into concrete and relatively serious as fences go. And it was built by the UAE, apparently.
It's no easy task, closing this border. Because of the original tribal affiliations of the people living in these areas, there are enclaves of Oman within the main borders of the UAE, including the Northern tip by the Straits of Hormuz, the Musandam Peninsula; a pocket of land inland from Khor Fakkan on the Indian Ocean near the village of Shis and the wadi plains of Vilayat Madha. So you drive from Dubai through Sharjah, Oman and then a little bit of Ajman to get to Hatta, for instance. What's more, if you drive North of Hatta on the road (used to be track, *sigh*) from just beyond the Hatta Fort Hotel to the desert town of Dhaid, which is part of Sharjah, you'll be driving through Ras Al Khaimah to get there.
It's kind of complex, no?
Now they've shut the border between the UAE's desert oasis town of Al Ain and Omani town Buraimi, which have always lived side by side in the desert, sort of semi-morphed into a single town. What's interesting here is that there are now to be two border crossings between the two towns, a move that was hilariously headlined by Gulf News: "Expatriates get separate border crossing at Al Ain" as if it were some kind of benefit to have to drive 15km out of town to cross the border!
The National had an excellent piece on the effects of the move this week, as residents try to manage a border through a community that in many ways had become a single community made up of two adjacent towns in two adjacent countries. A sort of Siamese City.
The other border crossings, including the road through Vilayat Madha to Hatta, remain open. The question is for how long - and how they can be closed. It's hard to find a reason why the border has been so comprehensively locked down, although smuggling and illegal immigration have both been mentioned as the core reasons behind the massive project.
So now you can't just pop over the border to Buraimi and visit the pools at Kitnah or pop over to the Hanging Gardens and then slip up the track from Al Ain to Hatta, perhaps stopping off for a splash around in some of the wadis on the way. It'll be interesting to see how long it'll be before the Hatta Track itself (now blacktop anyway, so no wadi bashing to be had here) is closed off.
Sad times.
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Wednesday, 16 July 2008
Dummy
It stands out among the many fine examples of the Worst Advertising In The World to be enjoyed on Dubai’s radio stations, in particular Dubai ‘News Talk Sport’ Eye, where I am occasionally forced to turn off the radio to avoid it. It certainly takes my personal nomination for the Year’s Worst Radio Ad. It’s the RTA ‘dummy’ ad. Remember? It’s the dialogue in a car between AUB American accent and the robotic voice supposed to sound like a crash test dummy... it goes something like this:
“Hey dummy, watch out for that reticulated marmoset!”
“It’s fine.”
“Hey dummy, watch out for the syllogistical conclusion!”
“It’s fine.”
“Hey dummy, watch out for the red light!”
CRASH
“Oh no! Its fine, it's fine, it's fine! Now that’s a whole lot of fines!”
VO: “He’s a dummy but you’re not....”
Who wrote that? What type of dim-witted, addle-pated, misbegotten son of a retarded jack-ass actually wrote that as a creative execution designed to communicate a message? And what message was it supposed to get across in the first place? Worse, what idiot of an account director didn’t strangle the creative at birth? And what kind of client would actually approve that as an awareness campaign ad?
Oh. The RTA. I understand everything now.
Look, the whole point of communication in the modern world is that consumers are less and less likely to buy this kind of advertising. We’re in the Internet age – as consumers, we’re in the driving seat. We know what we want and when we want it. Like now. People are more cynical than ever before: we know that eating your product or drinking your drink won’t make us sexually attractive to hordes of lascivious Lolitas. We’re more likely to know about the calorific content of it and the child labour being used to produce it than any other generation before us. We’re not, in short, idiots.
Similarly, I think we can all take it for granted that we know that driving dangerously is a bad thing. We, residents, probably all know that a new points system has been introduced to punish bad driving. I think the vast majority of us think that, fairly and evenly implemented, that this is a very good idea indeed. But I would suspect that few of us know much more than that – how many points before you lose your license, how points are accumulated, how long they remain on your license. I, for one, am unclear on the actual rules. And this stupid advertisement does nothing to make it any clearer for me. It just annoys me.
I don’t want the creative execution – particularly not when it’s so awfully, irredeemably piss poor, but in any case not when it’s taking the place of clear, straightforward communication of the facts that consumers actually do want.
This is the age of the communicator – an age when it has never been more important to say what you want clearly, succinctly and in a timely fashion. There are powerful tools that let you do that, not least of which are the Internet and the ‘social media’ that are driving such a rapid pace of change in human behaviour right now.
All I want from that 30 seconds of airtime is to know what’s going to affect me and how – and ideally a link to a website where I can find out more information if I want to. That's what an awareness campaign IS in today's world.
By the way, do have a look at the RTA website and see if you can find any information about the blasted points system that they're spending good money 'building awareness' of, but which they can't be bothered to highlight on their website.
And just in case the clots behind the Dubai Water and Electricity advertisement are laughing at the RTA, you lot are even worse. I really don’t need some soapy-voiced nerd talking over a background of whiny, soppy faux-pastoral muzak telling me that there’s a team of people working to bring me ‘enabling’ power. I think I can work that out for myself, you dimwits.
There. That’s much better, thank you!
“Hey dummy, watch out for that reticulated marmoset!”
“It’s fine.”
“Hey dummy, watch out for the syllogistical conclusion!”
“It’s fine.”
“Hey dummy, watch out for the red light!”
CRASH
“Oh no! Its fine, it's fine, it's fine! Now that’s a whole lot of fines!”
VO: “He’s a dummy but you’re not....”
Who wrote that? What type of dim-witted, addle-pated, misbegotten son of a retarded jack-ass actually wrote that as a creative execution designed to communicate a message? And what message was it supposed to get across in the first place? Worse, what idiot of an account director didn’t strangle the creative at birth? And what kind of client would actually approve that as an awareness campaign ad?
Oh. The RTA. I understand everything now.
Look, the whole point of communication in the modern world is that consumers are less and less likely to buy this kind of advertising. We’re in the Internet age – as consumers, we’re in the driving seat. We know what we want and when we want it. Like now. People are more cynical than ever before: we know that eating your product or drinking your drink won’t make us sexually attractive to hordes of lascivious Lolitas. We’re more likely to know about the calorific content of it and the child labour being used to produce it than any other generation before us. We’re not, in short, idiots.
Similarly, I think we can all take it for granted that we know that driving dangerously is a bad thing. We, residents, probably all know that a new points system has been introduced to punish bad driving. I think the vast majority of us think that, fairly and evenly implemented, that this is a very good idea indeed. But I would suspect that few of us know much more than that – how many points before you lose your license, how points are accumulated, how long they remain on your license. I, for one, am unclear on the actual rules. And this stupid advertisement does nothing to make it any clearer for me. It just annoys me.
I don’t want the creative execution – particularly not when it’s so awfully, irredeemably piss poor, but in any case not when it’s taking the place of clear, straightforward communication of the facts that consumers actually do want.
This is the age of the communicator – an age when it has never been more important to say what you want clearly, succinctly and in a timely fashion. There are powerful tools that let you do that, not least of which are the Internet and the ‘social media’ that are driving such a rapid pace of change in human behaviour right now.
All I want from that 30 seconds of airtime is to know what’s going to affect me and how – and ideally a link to a website where I can find out more information if I want to. That's what an awareness campaign IS in today's world.
By the way, do have a look at the RTA website and see if you can find any information about the blasted points system that they're spending good money 'building awareness' of, but which they can't be bothered to highlight on their website.
And just in case the clots behind the Dubai Water and Electricity advertisement are laughing at the RTA, you lot are even worse. I really don’t need some soapy-voiced nerd talking over a background of whiny, soppy faux-pastoral muzak telling me that there’s a team of people working to bring me ‘enabling’ power. I think I can work that out for myself, you dimwits.
There. That’s much better, thank you!
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Tuesday, 15 July 2008
Scoop
In what must stand as a major triumph for ‘citizen journalism’ in the Middle East, I can exclusively reveal to you that this silly little blog has scooped The Gulf News in a deep and fundamental way. Well, in a small and silly way at least.
Today’s multi-kilo wodge of tree landed on my desk containing the excellent story, ‘Special petrol shortage in some pumps’, reporting that ADNOC had run out of ‘Special’ grade petrol (95 octane to you, mate). As regular readers of this motley collection of half-baked bibble will attest, you read it here first - last week, in fact!
I shall refrain from any unseemly triumphalism.
GN also features another story that featured elsewhere first: yesterday’s edition of The National carried the story (chucklesomely headlined ‘Diesel demand delays drivers’) that Abu Dhabi was groaning under the strain of supplying enough diesel to meet the massive demand for ADNOC’s cheap diesel – currently retailing at Dhs10 less than other brands of diesel. As has been mentioned here before, the resultant tailbacks have been massive and Abu Dhabi and Sharjah have both implemented rules to send trucks and large vehicles outside the city limits to refuel.
As GN points out in its story today, ADNOC is not answering press calls, which is really not the way to manage the situation (as we saw yesterday with Etisalat). That’s a shame, because this story is really quite fun.
Why should fuel shortages in Abu Dhabi tickle me?
Well, let’s reflect on this for a second. One of the world’s largest oil producers and a country where the stuff, literally, comes out of the ground, is now facing a wide range of transportation challenges, including the danger of not being able to ferry workers to building sites and food to retailers. Because it’s run out of fuel.
Priceless!
Today’s multi-kilo wodge of tree landed on my desk containing the excellent story, ‘Special petrol shortage in some pumps’, reporting that ADNOC had run out of ‘Special’ grade petrol (95 octane to you, mate). As regular readers of this motley collection of half-baked bibble will attest, you read it here first - last week, in fact!
I shall refrain from any unseemly triumphalism.
GN also features another story that featured elsewhere first: yesterday’s edition of The National carried the story (chucklesomely headlined ‘Diesel demand delays drivers’) that Abu Dhabi was groaning under the strain of supplying enough diesel to meet the massive demand for ADNOC’s cheap diesel – currently retailing at Dhs10 less than other brands of diesel. As has been mentioned here before, the resultant tailbacks have been massive and Abu Dhabi and Sharjah have both implemented rules to send trucks and large vehicles outside the city limits to refuel.
As GN points out in its story today, ADNOC is not answering press calls, which is really not the way to manage the situation (as we saw yesterday with Etisalat). That’s a shame, because this story is really quite fun.
Why should fuel shortages in Abu Dhabi tickle me?
Well, let’s reflect on this for a second. One of the world’s largest oil producers and a country where the stuff, literally, comes out of the ground, is now facing a wide range of transportation challenges, including the danger of not being able to ferry workers to building sites and food to retailers. Because it’s run out of fuel.
Priceless!
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