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?

Dubai

“Hello. I want to get a refund on this Shiny.”
“We don’t give refunds.”
“Well, I want one. It’s no good.”
“No good? What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s not shiny anymore. It was just painted with an incredibly thin layer of shiny stuff. It’s all dull underneath and my kids have become ill playing with it.”
“We never told you it was shiny all the way through!”
“You said it was iconic and dared me to dream of a new future.”
“That was our advertising agency. They made us say that.”
“You didn’t mean it?”
“Yes! No. Well, we meant it at the time.”
“At the time you painted this Shiny with a thin layer of cheap paint that you knew would wear off.”
“Well, yes. But we didn’t make you buy it.”
“You promised it would stay Shiny!”
“We didn’t! We just showed you what it would be like if it stayed Shiny!”
“You didn’t tell me it wouldn’t stay shiny and that it would make my family ill. And you didn’t tell me I’d have to pay lots of extra money every year, either.”
“You didn’t ask. Anyway, nobody else is complaining!”
“What about all the people holding broken Shinys in the queue behind me?”
“They’re not complaining. They’re queuing for identity cards.”
“I want a refund.”
“Look. If you promise to shut up about your damn Shiny and causing trouble with the people behind you, we’ll re-spray your Shiny.”
“But it’ll just wear off again!”
“No it won’t. We’ve got a new type of paint. It stays Shiny for ever.”
“Really?”
“Yup.”
“How can I trust you?”
“We’ve got a regulator now. We were a free market laissez faire economy before. Now we’re a regulated market. You can trust us.”
“Oh, OK then. I’ll go for the respray.”
“Cool. Great. When do you want to give us your kidney?”
“My kidney?”
“Sure.”
“But why should I give you my kidney?”
“Well, dah, numbnut! You didn’t think Shiny resprays were free did you?”
“But you just said you’d respray my Shiny if I didn’t make trouble!”
“We changed our mind on account of the global recession.”

Identity

Identity is the crisis can't you see
Identity, Identity
X-Ray Spex
Identity

Pal Dom has been trying to get his identity sorted out this week. Tuesday he went down to get an appointment, the website having failed to work. He queued for two hours only to be told, when he asked a guard what was happening, that he was queuing for nothing - the numbers for the day had been allocated and it was 'over' for the day.

He went back, earlier this time, on Wednesday only to find something like 400 people had had the same idea. The bloke at the front of the queue had been there since 2.30am to get pole position. Again, they ran out of numbers by the time our man got to the front.

Dogged, if nothing else, our man went down this morning at 5.25am. At 08:23am it is announced to the waiting crowd that only 50 tickets were being handed out today.

I tried using their mobile booking service. The website crashed. It doesn't work for the appointments service either - so if you want to book an appointment to get an ID card issued, you have to join the queues with my pal Dom and about 400 other hapless souls. People are even driving to Dhaid to avoid the queues.

I'm not playing the queueing up game, myself - I simply can't be bothered.

This is not working terribly well, is it chaps?

Cheap

Flew Air Arabia again today.

Again, no complaints. Sharjah airport is easy to use, efficient and small enough to be just, well, fine. And AA's service is prompt and just, well, fine.

But I can't tell you about the Spandex 50. Or I'd have to kill you...

Scream

I’m sorry to go on about it, really I am, but the Business Breakfast team won’t let me talk about it on air and I’ve got to vent somewhere. Even at the risk of being incredibly, incredibly, incredibly repetitive.

Which addle-pated nincompoop was responsible for the Business in Dubai conference radio advertisement? If there were (and don’t you believe for a second I won’t be lobbying for it) an award for the worst radio advertisement of the year, not only would it be the most hotly contested award in the region, but my money says the BID ad would win hands down.

Who thought that what I needed on my way into work was to listen to fifteen seconds of random thrashing, feedback and screaming followed by some smug sounding git telling me that if my business isn’t working I can go to their damn conference? Great way to advertise a conference, by the way – go down there when it’s on and have a look at a room full of self-selected business failures.

It’s a new, horrible, trend in Dubai radio advertising: use some random sound as an example of the concept you want to introduce. The problem with this is that the sound takes half the ad, then explaining the lame idea behind the sound takes up the rest. The poor, sad, brand being pushed takes a definite second fiddle to the awkward, gangly execution of an idea that should have been strangled at birth – and, come to think of it, so should the ‘creative’ behind it.

Something’s got to change, as The Stranglers tell us.

Bye!

I'm waving goodbye to her, but something tells me we haven't seen the last of the appalling Sarah Palin. The Africa thing was fun, but now another thread of stories has broken out that she had to be bullied onto stage at times.

Details are now emerging from both campaign camps about what really went on behind the scenes and, not surprisingly, the Republican stories are increasingly fascinating as recriminations and back-biting break out in various quarters. This quote from a most excellent article about the final days of the campaign by the Newsweek team, to be found in its fascinating entirety here.

"The day of the third debate, Palin refused to go onstage with New Hampshire GOP Sen. John Sununu and Jeb Bradley, a New Hampshire congressman running for the Senate, because they were pro-choice and because Bradley opposed drilling in Alaska. The McCain campaign ordered her onstage at the next campaign stop, but she refused to acknowledge the two Republican candidates standing behind her. McCain himself rarely spoke to Palin (perhaps once a week when they were not traveling together, estimated one adviser). Aides kept him in the dark about Palin's spending on clothes because they were sure he'd be offended. In his concession speech, McCain praised Palin, but the body language between them onstage was not particularly friendly. (Palin had asked to speak; Schmidt vetoed the request.)"

What a shame that Hunter isn't around to see this. I rather think he'd have enjoyed it immensely.

Ziggy

Sitting on an Air Arabia flight (perfectly pleasant, incidentally) and flicking through the inflight mag, when I saw an article on the Six Senses Hotel and Spa at Zighi Bay. This bay used to be a great weekend campsite, just off the Wadi Bih track up the Hajar mountains North of Dibba. It was only relatively recently that a tortuous track was cut up the hill past the army firing range that used to be up there, over the hill and down to the fishing village that always, always has me humming David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust.

It was a lovely place to camp or picnic, Zighi Bay. Now I can pay nigh on a thousand bucks to ‘chill out’ on the self same beach.

The thing in the article that jarred with me was the claim that ‘there was a rudimentary, albeit treacherous, road that was regularly washed away by rains.’ The article goes on to say that there’s now a safe road to the bay, developed over eight months by the hotel. It somehow seems to me to frame this as a really positive benefit from the hotel's development, a selfless contribution.

Well, the fact is that there was a graded track up the hill and down to the village that was steep but perfectly serviceable and that I never saw washed away once. The villagers had accessed the bay by sea for time immemorial; they are fishermen. But the track was a fun drive, a tad precipitous, but fun. But it certainly wasn't up to the standard you'd need for hotel delivery vehicles. They HAD to build a new road for their own purposes.

It’s just a tiny thing, hardly worth bothering about. But it got up my nose for some reason.

Baywash.

Bank

You’ve issued me with a new Visa card. Can I ask why? The old one doesn’t expire for two years.
You asked for it.

I didn’t.
It’s the new black card.

So’s the old one.
It’s because your wife’s card was taken by the ATM.

No it’s not. Her card’s been replaced, you agreed not to replace mine. And that was months ago.
Pause. It’s a process.

It’s a what?
A process. By the system. It’s the system.

The system?
Yes. That’s it. The System.

Is this because of the security issues you've been having?
No. No. Not possible. I don't know. Yes, it's not. I have to get someone to call you back. Overload. Overload. My mind is going. Dave? Dave? I don't believe you wanted to do that Daaave....

I followed the complaints procedure and faxed a complaint form to my bank after Dubai’s RTA took Dhs750 from me in error and refused to refund it. Over three months later, the bank hasn’t responded.

Almost a month ago, the same bank failed to make a transfer to the UK in good order. The consequence was a botched transfer and an exchange loss, charged for me for some reason, of some Dhs 1200.

Two weeks ago I was suddenly issued with a new visa card, although my old one hadn’t expired. It has a new security number. Concerned, as they have messed up standing payments on the card before and we have, after all, just been asked to change all our PINs because of a security issue, I called the bank to ask them to confirm why they had issued a new card. The conversation above (only the last line is makety-uppity, BTW), is just one of many that ended with me insisting that someone, anyone who could take responsibility and tell me why I had a new card that I didn’t want or need, call me back.

Silence.

For a month I have been leaving messages on the answering machine of my ‘Status’ account manager. For a month I have been leaving urgent messages with the call centre to have someone, anyone call me back to discuss the above. They won’t give me any other telephone number for the bank.

This Saturday I am going to go to HSBC in Bur Dubai in person. Expect to hear about the consequences in Gulf News and other leading daily newspapers. I'll be 'British expatriate A.M.' in case you want to be sure it's me. I’d appreciate if you could all start some sort of ‘Free McNabb’ campaign as soon as the stories break. Thanks.

*Update. We blew this Saturday, so it'll have to be next. The best laid plans of mice and men...

Somme

It's become a battle of wills, the War of the Snicket.

The sandy short cut between Eastern Dubai and Sharjah has been dug up on the Sharjah side, trenches laid across all the accessible areas and earthworks pushed up either side of them. Another tranche of trenches were added to the open desert areas yesterday and sand piled up against any breaks in the fence With the berms and trenches snaking through the landscape, it looks more like the Somme than a short cut out there.

But there were a couple of routes through last night, a group of young nationals camped out by the more difficult pass, whooping with delight when people got through and waving encouragement when they got into difficulties. I must say watching a Hummer get into a stuck is quite impressive: it's the weight of the thing, a massive, slo-mo belly-flop.

There's a certain spirit to it all, a sort of "We've got a short-cut and you're not gonna block us!" indefatigable defiance. They can keep on piling up sand and digging trenches, but you'd be surprised at what a good 4WD can do in careful hands. Quite who is behind this is a mystery, though. If this is the hand of officialdom, surely a couple of bad-tempered coppers and a book of tickets would achieve in a day what this comedy has failed to achieve all week. Although I'm not sure that a 'driving on the sand' charge would stick, would it?

Having said that, the car workshops will be having a field day this weekend. There are an awful lot of car parts sticking out of the soft sand these days as tens of cars get bogged down or screw up in their quest to stay out of the long lines of traffic that glitter across Dubai and Sharjah every morning and evening.

Trial

I’m sorry to go on about the traffic, the last resort of a blog scoundrel, but I can’t help it. It’s been a fact of life ever since we first moved out to the Emirates, back when the Sharjah/Dubai road traffic could get so bad that you could be held up in queues for at least 15 minutes. Scandalous, eh?

But today’s traffic. Now, that’s really traffic. We’re talking about two hour bumper to bumper snarl-ups that are starting at 6am and lasting 3 or 4 hours. Aggressive lane-swapping, frustration and general bad-temperedness make the whole process, for those that endure it, a twice-daily joy. It’s the world’s ‘Dubai talking point’, although poor old Sharjah is fast eclipsing Dubai for sheer traffic hell, despite the RTA’s efforts.

Now Sharjah Police has closed the exit from the infamous National Paints roundabout, forcing any traffic wishing to exit the Emirates Road at that point to take the Mileha Road, which is already partially blocked by roadworks and reduced to a single lane. This then feeds up through the Univesity City, a road restricted by frequent large speed bumps. An alternative is the U-turn in front of Sharjah English school and the feeder road that goes from the previous Emirates Road junction through the industrial area and past the school. Result: a school mired in awful, dangerous levels of confused traffic. It was madness as people tried to muddle through, jostling for some way to get back to their route home.

According to Gulf News’ story on the move today, it is a ‘trial’ to ‘estimate traffic movement’.

So it was ‘a trial’ to see what would happen if you closed the congested National Paints roundabout and re-routed the traffic through roads themselves blocked by roadworks.

An experiment.

I wonder what’ll happen if I bash myself on the head repeatedly with this large meat tenderising hammer? *whamwhamwhamwham*. Interesting. It appears to be causing not inconsiderable pain...

Am I the only person around here thinking that perhaps if they had told people they were going to do this first, if they had proper signage announcing and directing the diversion and if they had announced the move to the public with an awareness campaign, then the initial consequences would have been at least slightly less traumatic?

National Paints is a fine company and its products are most excellent. But avoid its roundabout...