March of 37,000 unemployed journos

Ulp. That's torn it.

Up until now, the received wisdom, especially on Dubai Media Observer, is that if you're working in the Middle East as a journalist, you're crap.

Or at least weird, suffering from a breakdown, or actually enjoying life in the Sandlands - which probably makes you a congenital arsehole, in the eyes of the naysayers.

Now, according to the report linked above, you won't be crap - just desperate.

All those layed off hacks are searching for work - any work, anywhere. And as a region that a) has a reasonable English-language media sector, and b) is still hiring, many highly-trained US journalists are making their way over here (and UK ones can't be far behind, but probably not on the same scale).

For the rest of us, this is good news and bad. Good, because it's likely the region is going to get its game raised, whether it likes it or not. Bad, because the days of nonchalantly job hopping once a year, and upping one's salary every time, will be of the past.

I for one welcome our new Yankee overlords - anything that improves the overall quality of the media in the region has to be A Good Thing.

And one interesting possible side-effect is that when all these hacks get visits, or go back home, or move back to the US for good, they will take with them a much more realistic view of the Middle East, for better or worse.

Who knows - maybe this will even filter down a little bit?

Peace and understanding through an economic depression - whoever would have thought?

SITE NEWS: As you may have noticed, it's nearly Christmas, which means I'm off for a break. There'll still be new stuff appearing on AdNation, but it will be back to normal service come the start of January.

Toodle-pip.

Everything is broken

Aaaah! Those blasted cable cuts are making life somewhat difficult here at AdNation Towers.

Being hosted outside of the region, AdNation is running a little slow today. Yes, even more than usual.

At least we still seem to be up, though - as I write, I can't access The National's website at all, depriving me of Keach Hagey's stories, and thus a major source of news (just joking! But not really...)

Amazingly, ArabianBusiness.com seems to be little affected - it's still as intermittent as ever, but hanging on in there.

Some are predicting some sort of domino effect, whereby corporate users deprived of their private networks will fall back on the public internet, putting it under more strain, causing more connections to fail - and so on and so on.

As this failed to happen in January, when the region suffered a couple of catastrophic cuts, I'm guessing things will just be a bit crap for a while.

Anyone got any more theories? I'll be taking a lack of comments as evidence of YET MORE DISRUPTION, by the way, rather than apathy.

The eyes, the eyes...

So America's shiny new president - as yet untainted (mostly) by petty squabbles and scandal - is inspiring people to trademark Obama-related products, reports The Smoking Gun.

It has a nice slideshow with a few of the examples on display - including this:



The eyes... they won't stop staring. Make it stop.

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S GOOD, MAKE IT STOP!

Spoof branding II

More from the emails:

Financial Onanism

Headline spotted in Gulf News business section earlier this week: 'Whack off financial stress' and alongside it 'Relief options'.

Obviously GN staff are taking matters into their own hands.

[Cymbal crash]

(Thanks to N)

Everyone's a winner

Sahara gets an award. Good for Sahara. Er, except it got the award for sponsoring the event in question.

You have to ask, is this really worth a press release?

"We are proud to receive this honorary award, as it confirms to us that our vision of using all possible means to spread knowledge throughout Arab communities is a sound one. The award encourages us to continue with our efforts, and we look forward to sponsoring similar cultural and educational conferences and activities in the future," said Bassam M Dean, Sahara's branch manager.

In other news, AdNation awards itself the Top Prize For Being Great award.

I'm proud and honoured to accept this award...

Spoof branding I

One good thing about the economic crisis - lots of good jokes.

From an email doing the rounds, some spoof logos, retouched to be more appropriate for the current circumstances:









(no idea if these have gone round before, but they're amusing so they're going up)

AB.com's magical time machine

BT chief says Mideast growth set to slow trumpets ArabianBusiness.com, accompanied by a nice image of a BT phone box. Circa 1992.

The charming BT "piper" logo, adopted by the firm in 1991, and as featured in the AB.com story, was scrapped in favour of its current swishy balls (which probably say a lot more about BT, to be fair).

(Actually the Getty Images pic was from 2006, when - we guess - a desperate Getty staff photographer was unable to find a BT maintenance van, office block, headquarters, etc, and plumped instead for a retro-90s phone box.)

In other news, the UK's Tory party has squeaked home in a general election, and an unknown Democrat called Bill Clinton has trounced George Bush in the US presidential race. And some stuff happened in Bosnia.

The yo-yo of online advertising

MediaME supremo Zeid Nasser thinks online advertising growth is going to slow next year.

Other people out there think online advertising growth will accelerate next year.

Which is it?

Nasserites would point to the abject ignorance throughout much of the regional marketing industry - and, possibly, to the lack of Old Boys' Club/nepotism/Lebanese Mafia/whatever contacts among the new online upstarts in the region.

"Others" - whoever they may be - say that in the new economic climate of blind panic, clients will be less willing to put up with the Bad Old Ways of no ROI, no meaningful data, and inflated old media rates.

Rational types would probably hope for the latter - but as far as I can see, we just can't tell what will happen, until the economy starts to bite more widely. Which just isn't happening yet - and in some sectors, may not happen at all.

AdNation will be paying close attention to this one. Thoughts welcome.

Oh sh...

2009 is payback year

Uh-oh.

I know we're not in Europe over here, but we're not immune. And we're not out of the woods yet...

These shoes were made for throwing...

I know it's everywhere this morning, but still. Priceless.

It's images like this that have a tendency to hang around. It's almost sad it makes no difference now...

Also, kudos for Dubya's reflexes. [insert political joke about ducking issues, questions, etc here]

Dodgy research not everyone's cup of tea

Pumping out client-favourable research has a long and ignoble history in the annals of PR, but you would hope that by this point companies might have got the hang of it.

Apparently not: Bus stop advertising great, says bus stop owner

What makes this so depressing is the utter contempt Right Angle Media seems to be showing to the press. Normally research so blatantly pro-sponsor is released with the paymaster's name gently buried - relying on the laziness of journos (yep, that's us) to prevent them from digging any further.

Taking one example at random - tea and its purported health benefits - a quick trawl of the BBC News website for 2007-2008 revealed positive tea-related stories here, here, here, here, here and here. In contrast, only two stories - here and here - cast any doubt on tea's efficacy as the cure of all our ills.

Notably, the first of the latter two stories still has a positive spin, and the second is the ruling of an advertising watchdog, striking down claims by one tea-maker about the brew's healthful properties.

The former, positive, set of stories is notable for an absence of any information on who sponsored the research in each case. Some may be genuine, but I doubt all six would be without at least the taint of tea or tea-related producers.

Sadly, this is just one of many lessons Right Angle has failed to pick up. Ultimately, of course, it's all the better for transparency, etc - but it does strike me that this is basically a colossal waste of time.

Money, it's a hit

The Arabian Business Rich List is out again - and this time Anil Bhoyrul managed to get access to Prince Alwaleed's accounts. Must be a coincidence that this shock move into openness comes just after all those rumours about Alwaleed being broke due to the economic ruination. Surely.

So it turns out HRH is worth just over $17bn - and AB helpfully gives a breakdown of his holdings.

Oddly, the mag gets a little coy when it comes to how much cash Alwaleed has down the back of his many fine sofas: "We cannot disclose the exact amount as it is confidential, but have seen the verified total figure."

But thanks to the detailed info AB has on the rest of his empire, AdNation can exclusively reveal...

[scribbles on back of napkin]

Yep - according to AB's figures, Alwaleed appears to have roughly $2.614 billion in cash.

Loose change, really.

Now why would Alwaleed not want to reveal what seemingly anyone can easily work out...?

Blame This Man

A profile by The Times on Dick Fuld, quite possibly the man who brought down Lehman Bros.

Not so much "gotcha" journalism than "go get 'em" journalism...

Somebody answer the phone....

Maybe it's just me being an unreasonable sod, but if you're going to issue a press release, you'd make sure the designated spokesperson was in town, right?

Similarly, if you're the local operation of a major international corporation, with a staff of hundreds here in the region, it's not unreasonable to, oh I don't know, HIRE RECEPTIONISTS TO ANSWER THE DARN PHONES?

Not one, not two, but three sets of people failing to pick up their phones today.

Maybe it is just me. Maybe I'm the last man standing. The Omega Man.

Yes, despite appearances - I am Charlton Heston.

The weight of recession

Spot On's Alexander McNabb has been conducting an interesting experiment: weighing various issues of Gulf News, after discovering one was a little light in the hand.

His first post revealed GN had plunged almost 50% in weight, to a paltry 690g on 11 December. Surely this emaciated newspaper was a dire threat of the recession to come?

Happily, Gulf News is back up to a plumper 1.2kg today it seems. Recession over - back to the trough...

Welcome to the AdNation Middle East Blog!

Hello and welcome to the blogging event of the century. Possibly.

This is the official blog for AdNation Middle East, the news and community site for the region's advertising, marketing and media industry.

I'm Eliot Beer, the site's Editor, and here I'll be posting some of the more random or tangential bits and bobs I come across, as well as the odd bit of commentary on stories on the site, background information, and so on.

This blog will be somewhat more informal than the main site - if such a thing is possible - so content may occasionally be unsuitable for young'uns, those of a delicate disposition, or idiots. If any of these labels apply to you, STAY AWAY!

All posts and feedback are welcome, especially those telling me what an idiot I am. We love those. Comments pointing out that until now I affected to despise blogging will be studiously ignored.

You can reach me here, or by email on editor@adnationme.com.

Carry on.