Goons

I've just taken a 'phone call from a goon called 'Rob' from Dubai claiming to be building a database for British Airways of people who wish to subscribe to "BA's low price offers for Westerners and Europeans".

The colleague who passed the call to me, as most of my colleagues are, was Arab. And so wouldn't qualify.

I think Rob got a bit more than he bargained for when I lost the head with him entirely. That's a racist policy that would, assuming 'Rob' really was calling from BA, have British Airways hung out to dry in the UK media, let alone opened up to action under the Race Relations Act.

Sadly, when I asked to escalate, Rob put me on hold and then dropped the line. Because I'd have loved to have had a few more choice words with Rob's manager, too.

Only in Dubai...

Sammy

Chirpy Freesheet 7Days appears to have started campaigning for the release of TWSFKAS (The Whale Shark Formerly Known As Sammy). The whole thing seems to have been kickstarted by a piece in Friday's edition and has now gathered pace quite nicely.

As all right minded people know, Sammy was a Gulf News (690g) campaign that ended abruptly with the news that the whale shark being held by the bouillabaisse-themed Atlantis hotel was to be released Some Time In The Future.

The fact that the whale shark is a rare, CITES-listed 'threatened species' has annoyed quite a few conservationists, according to the reports. And so 7Days has joined the fray and taken up where GN left off.

Whether its new-found ardour for the story will last remains to be seen. For instance, try searching Gulf News' website for 'whale shark' or 'Sammy'...

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.

Barry

When brother in law Ritchie asked if we'd mind hosting his sister Breda and husband Barry for a couple of days on their way through Dubai to Ireland and the UK, we readily agreed. Although we didn't know them, any friend of Ritchie's is etc. etc.

The reason they were travelling is so that Barry could say goodbye to everyone, because he was suffering, and had suffered for the past ten years, from cancer.

Now, I'm not very good with that kind of stuff and I can't say that I was looking forward to their visit. As it got closer, I convinced myself that we were in for a couple of days of awful sadness.

And then we picked the two of them up at the airport. Barry started his trip by telling me he'd just carried 40 days' supply of morphine through UAE Customs and nobody had batted an eyelid!!! Given the state of DJ shoe soles around here, I thought that was bloody funny.

I didn't stop laughing, or smiling, for the next 72 hours. Not only were our visitors delightful company, Barry was nothing short of inspirational. Although he'd get the odd twinge of pain in his back and needed to take enzymes to aid his digestion, he was more on top of a disease so chronic that an x-ray of his skeleton showed the cancer was so widespread it was like 'someone had thrown a handful of sticky rice grains at it' than I could ever have imagined. He'd been fighting it for ten years and was still beating it back.

A silver-haired charmer, Barry's face was lined but I could never work out whether they were laughter or pain lines. And it didn't help that he was either laughing or smiling most of the time. You could see the Lothario who swept Breda off her feet all those years ago, and who was still sweeping her off her feet. Full of inquisitiveness, particularly about the many aspects of life in the Emirates, which tickled him enormously, Barry took in Hatta and Mahatta alike with a twinkling, blue-eyed curiosity. His sheer bravery, self-effacing manner and his charm lit up our lives for 72 hours. We were talking about flying to Australia this Easter to go see the two of them.

Yeah, you're right, you do know where this is going.

He died half an hour ago, eight months after saying goodbye.

Blockheads

I have posted a number of times about the sandy snicket that affords relief to intrepid 4WD-owning commuters bypassing the Sharjah-Dubai traffic. Here, for instance. Or here, here and this memorable moment here on the day I caught one of the employees of Dubai's beloved traffic regulator, the RTA (Road and Transport Authority), who regularly use the snicket to escape the chaos they are at least morally partially responsible for.

And then they started to try and block it. Quite who 'they' are remains a mystery. The increasingly insane attempts to block the short cut have meant that this small stretch of inter-Emirate sand is now littered with concrete blocks, barriers, quite extensive sandy berms, trenches and a constant flow of people insisting on crossing anyway. We're a hard lot to stop when we've got an alternative to sitting on the road for 2 hours jostling with every other poor sod on his way to work. (My other alternatives are, BTW, move to Dubai or ship out. I'm not doing the National Paints Shuffle or the Ettihad Road car park every day. No way.)

It's been quite fun, in its way. Seeing the new set of obstacles every night and then finding a way around them really does mix a little fun, a smidgen of winding down after the day adventure and perhaps even a splash of eff-you rebellion.

But it's getting beyond a joke now - the entire stretch is so built-up, blocked off and messed around that people are really damaging their cars trying to get through. The sand's soft, the driving's technical and 9/10 of the border rats are getting stuck. As of today, with the addition of a new set of barriers and impediments, there are only two possible ways through and both are 'difficult' drives.

And I am damned if I will let them win. Whoever 'they' are.

Damned.

Taxi

So Sharjah taxis have implemented the Dhs20 surcharge for going to Dubai but, as far as I have seen, Dubai taxis have not implemented the charge the other way.

The charge was ostensibly to make it easier on drivers reluctant to brave the traffic and not be able to return with a fare due to the odd rule that cabs can't pick up fares in other emirates. A driver rewarded is a driver keen to serve, is the theory, no?

As Gulf News (690g) asserts, in the report linked above: "Taxi companies in both Sharjah and Dubai lobbied for the new flag-fall rate. The decision was taken to provide an incentive to taxi drivers, who have sometimes refused to make the trip between the two emirates, especially during peak hours or on holidays, leaving passengers helpless."

The truth, certainly according to the cabbies I've spoken to, is a little less poetic.

Out of the Dhs20, the cabbie gets only Dhs5. Dhs13 goes directly to the company and the rest gets eaten in 'fees and commissions'.

As usual, the cabbies get screwed over, the cab companies take our money. We get the same old woeful levels of service but get gouged again.

Amazing.

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.

Kidding

Now, this is about as scientific a measure of the exodus as weighing Gulf News (640g) is a measure of real estate advertising revenue, but today was my first 'proper' day back at work this year and the drive to work was significantly eased by a marked decrease in the morning traffic queues. In fact, looking at the length of them, I'd say they were about 30% shorter than in December. And, unless I've missed something big, there's no particular reason why the roads should be light right now.

So we could speculate, perhaps, that the volume of people rushing off to school/work is around 30% down?

Which is partly what makes Damac Properties' ad in Gulf News today (about 2g in) so interesting. It's a desperate-sounding little thing, offering 2007 prices to the first 50 callers for some 'delivery in 2011' property, all headlined with the immortal words, "The property boom is back with a bang!"

They are, your humble correspondent submits, only kidding themselves...

Muscat

I do love Muscat. It sort of tumbles around between the foothills of the Hajjar mountains and the Indian Ocean, dotted with palms and swept by the cool Winter breeze flowing in from the uncertain sea; it's clean and neat, strangely and yet comfortingly similar to the coastal towns of the Eastern UAE. If, like me, you've just spent a day touring Kalba, Fujeirah, Khor Fakkan, Biddaya and Dibba with relatives, you'll instantly recognise Muscat as being cut from the same cloth.

Today Oman played Kuwait in the GCC Cup (the 19th such tournament, if you don't mind. I'm here working for a client on campaigns hung around that self same contest) and managed a nil-nil draw. Which didn't stop the city's youth taking to the streets in a massive teddy-bear hugging, beeping process of cars festooned in Omani flags and streamers that jostled on into the night.

Grief, but what are they going to get up to if they actually win?

Diet

Picked up Gulf News' Weekend edition today. I scratched around in the bottom of Spinneys' newspaper rack thingy for the missing sections before I realised it was actually all there.

550g.

42% down on its November weight.

Given that I'm precisely a kilo up after the Christmas break, I have to confess to feeling rather jealous...