Obama on Al-Arabiya

Interesting piece from Time on how Al-Arabiya ended up with the very first interview with Obama as President.

Also interesting to hear about the connection between the interviewer and the President - although, like others before him, especially Bill Clinton, Obama may have the gift of making whoever he's speaking to feel like the most important person in the room.

But this should definitely send a message - a positive message - to the Arab and Muslim world about Obama's approach to the whole 'Clash of Civilisations' thing (ie, suggesting it's largely tosh).

'Cello scrotum'

Headline of the day from the Beeb: "Peer reveals 'cello scrotum' hoax"

The grinding sound is the noise of a million journos and subs seething and gnashing their teeth in envy.

That is all.

Thinking inside the very big box

PRs seem to love giving journos slightly pointless gifts, from stress balls to glass ornaments, to endless, endless pens.

HP, however, is taking a different tack - by sending hacks its own products. The product in question? Printer cartridges, according to the ITP.net blog.

Yes, ITP's hard-working tech reporters are now the proud owners of assorted HP ink cartridges, but sadly no free printers to go with them.

And nice to see HP is sticking with its long-held "destruction of all natural life" packaging policy, by enclosing said cartridges in vast boxes - one for each journo.

Good to see that newly-appointed Promax is getting stuck in to the HP account.

Social idiocy

Social media "expert" pisses off client via social media. Ooops.

This is the charming story of senior Ketchum veep James Andrews, who managed to rile FedEx via his injudicious use of Twitter - unfortunately while explaining to FedEx how to use social media more effectively.

"We do not know the total millions of dollars FedEx Corporation pays Ketchum annually for the valuable and important work your company does for us around the globe. We are confident however, it is enough to expect a greater level of respect and awareness from someone in your position..."

Yeah, never a good sign when the client starts writing those sorts of emails.

Hey James, your village Twittered - they want their idiot back.

(Nabbed from Samer Costantini - cheers...)

'Step away from the door...'

Hello, everyone.

I'm back from a quick trip to the UK, where people look very miserable, and London Mayor Boris Johnson wants to build an airport on a river.

But here's a tip for travellers, at least on Emirates' new A380 Whalejet: DON'T TOUCH THE DOORS.

(In this context, "doors" means those big things on the outside of the plane, not toilets, etc.)

It seems the A380 (and poss other planes?) have cameras everywhere, which apparently picked me up "touching" the door, which roused the captain's suspicions that I was about to pull the Big Lever and plunge the jet screaming into the middle of Turkey.

For the record, I was LOOKING OUT OF THE WINDOW in the door, while I waited for one of the crew to find something.

Nevertheless, I was taken aside by the purser, and asked if everything was ok, and to check I didn't unaccountably feel like playing with the slide at 39,000 feet. I said I was fine.

So, frequent flyers, beware! Your captain is watching you...

Oh, site stuff - you might notice a few things appearing or disappearing from the AdNation homepage, and some random stuff every now and again. We're tweaking the site, so do bear with us, keep your seatbelt fastened when the seatbelt sign is on, and rest assured that we have your saftey at heart.

Excuses, excuses

Following up on an interview request, I rang the company in question to find out if we could arrange anything.

It had been just under a week since I'd heard back from the agency, a new arrival in Dubai (who will remain nameless, for now...). This isn't a vast amount of time, especially as I replied a day or so after the last email - so I'm not complaining.

"I was wondering..." is about as far as I get after introducing myself to the staffer.

Suddenly, a very unapologetic torrent of excuses: "... new office... no printer or scanner... deleted your email... moving office..."

And it's very clear that this is all my fault, for daring to contact the company and ask for an interview, despite the publicly-issued press release and initial positive response.

I'm a journalist - I'm very used to being given the brush-off, with varying degrees of politeness. And I'm always happy to accept something like "I'm really sorry, but we're just setting up and to be honest, the MD's got no free time" as a valid reason for not giving an interview.

But "I deleted your email"? Er, no. That comes under the category of "just not doing your job".

Despite my initial urge to be sarcastic, and then write it off as a bad lot, I've tried again. Further idiocy will result in the company in question being named and shamed.

Delaware: the next Dubai Media City?

Delaware, the most boring state in America according to a thousand jokes, should reinvent itself as a major media hub - taking Dubai Media City as its model, according to a Delaware website.

Now, now, come on. Stop laughing at the back there...

Despite its reputation for tedium, Delaware has played the commerce game pretty cannily in the past, as the article above makes clear. Vast numbers of US corporations, especially finance-based firms, use Delaware as their base thanks to the lenient tax laws.

Could it do the same for media? And if it does, why Dubai as its model?

Well judging by the Communitypub.com piece, the author has probably not been to Dubai Media City. While all the points he makes - freedom to publish, facilities for freelancers, tax-free income, etc - are true, strictly speaking, the reality on the ground is somewhat... different.

Add to that the competition just up the coast from New York - in contrast to Dubai's virgin territory - and the idea of DMC II: This Time It's In Delaware starts to look a little more fanciful.

But perhaps the most interesting thing to note is, yet again, Dubai's almost supernatural powers of brand building have claimed another mind.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - whatever else you say about the place, you have to hand it to Dubai on the marketing front, especially outside the UAE itself.

Lightning photograpy: Burj Dubai

Now that's a picture.

It's hard to see the Burj Dubai in this small pic, but click through to the Arabian Business photo gallery for a higher-res version.

AB.com also has a collection of rather samey shots of the nearly-finished Burj Dubai, which is looking pretty good (even if they are going to light it green at night...)

Although, ambitious super structure, nearly completed, in times of turmoil... I can't help but recall Secret Dubai's nickname for the supertall tower:

Deathspire.

[Insert sinister breathing noises here]

PennantWatch I

As we get into the new year, we'll be keeping an eye on empty outdoor ad positions around the region, starting with pennants.

As of 2009-01-14 in Dubai:

Empty pennants on Maktoum Bridge (formerly Samsung), the DIC exit to Sheikh Zayed Road (formerly Nakheel), and the second interchange on SZR (formerly ???).

Anyone got any more?

EDIT: contribution from a Mr A. McNabb of Dubai, UAE, who sends in this snap of a mupi in Dubai's Knowledge Village with an ad for a show that finished in October.



"The agency overbooked? Or the site has never sold since?" asks McNabb.

Europe's true colours...

Imagine you're a well-bred and formerly prosperous fellow, in more recent decades sadly fallen on hard times. Finally things start looking up, and the Gravy Train Club even accepts your application to join, and puts you in charge for a bit.

To make a good impression, you commission some nice pictures of the other members - only to discover that the charming artist you paid quite a lot of money to has made your fellow Gravy Trainers look like the Addams Family.

Sadly, this is what the Czech Republic seems to have done this week to its fellow EU members. Embarrassing highlights; Germany with a motorway-Swastika, Bulgaria as a toilet, and France on strike.

If ever there was an international organisation with a PR problem, it's the EU. And this really isn't going to help.

Still, I'd be curious to see what this artist chappie made of the Middle East, and how big the riots would be afterwards.

Here come the choppers...

Saatchi is doing it, Intermarkets isn't doing it yet, it says, others are thinking about doing it, and Horizon.draft.FCB has done it to five people, with a few more possibly to come.

Job cuts are here, folks.

We're hearing a lot of stories about agencies cutting staff, some of them real, some of them probably malicious wishful thinking.

According to some (Team's Shahir Ahmed and Pirana's Shehzad Yunus, for example) there's plenty of dead wood in the industry that's ripe for cutting.

So, could this potentially be what the region needs? A chance to clear out the weak and infirm?

Or will it set things back five years and cause much wailing and gnashing of teeth?

Stamping down on cutural taboos?

Spotted at the weekend in Dubai Festival City mall: an ad for Egyptian singer Tamer Hosny - performing LIVE on 16 January, pop fans - situated at the bottom of an escalator.

To clarify, the ad was on the floor, and Festival City patrons were busily walking over Hosny's face. (Sadly our correspondent lacked a camera at the time - please feel free to pass on a pic...)

Given all the recent hullabaloo about how grave an insult the soles of a shoe are in regional culture, this seems like a strange bit of placement. Possibly Hosny wouldn't be too happy about it, either...

DVV media - dog fighters not welcome

“If they are a member of a right-wing group, or are interested in things like dog-fighting or things that involve animal cruelty, that’s a major turn off," says DVV publisher in an interview with Khaleej Times, about using Facebook to scope out prospective employees.

Well that's good to know. Although we were rather hoping for 'Cock Fighting Monthly'...

It also makes a change from senior editors at certain other TLA-titled publishers, who have been known to hire based on quality of Facebook photographs. And we're not talking depth-of-field and composition here either. Not unless you really want to stretch the metaphor.

Gaza and Israel - the PR front

When the US invaded Iraq the first time round (ie when it was invited to do so...), much was made of missile-mounted cameras and the transformation of the war into a very immediate media spectacle.

When the US invaded Iraq the SECOND time around, it took the "media war" concept even further, embedding journalists with specific units - and in a masterstroke of PR, matched up regional journos with their local divisions, thus ensuring plenty of positive grass-roots coverage for what was otherwise a deeply unpopular war just about everywhere.

When Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006, it didn't capitalise much on getting the media onside, and suffered on that front as a result.

Now, the story is very different.

This report from The National paints a picture of an Israel determined to control the war agenda on the internet, and bombarding global users with more information than they can process.

Its target is not the Middle East, but those otherwise disinterested observers in the US and Europe - if it can persuade them it is defending itself from attacks, rather than slaughtering innocent civilians, then that's another chunk of pressure off its back.

But this a PR game - so there's no incentive to tell the truth.

In one rather harrowing YouTube video, the IDF purports to show militants loading up a van with rockets. In eerie silence, the camera zooms in and out, before a strike is called in, leaving an expanding fireball where the van once was.

Unfortunately, they probably weren't rockets. According to Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem, cited in The National, the men were almost certainly moving gas canisters, as they shifted a workshop out of a damaged site.

As is all too common in the media, though, whoever gets in first gets to call the tune - and right now that's Israel, as far as the PR war is concerned.

Palestinians, and many across the Middle East and around the world, are fighting back with images of the carnage, but as long as people believe Israel is defending itself against bad men with rockets and bombs, the sad truth is they will accept the carnage as "collateral damage".

And things like this editorial, denying the WWII holocaust, in Gulf News of all papers, really does not help. To the outside world, this gives an image of Israelis as merciless but justified defenders, and Arabs as irrational, illogical terrorist sympathisers - if not terrorists themselves.

Neither of these labels are correct - and neither is the reverse entirely the case either. But like it or not, the Arab world has to get a lot smarter at the PR game and target not the people who will sympathise anyway, but those who do not have strong opinions either way.

AdNation doesn't do politics, but we will be carrying a token of our support for the innocent casualties in Gaza on the site for now.

Whoops

As a journalist, especially on a monthly or weekly mag, it's embarrasing to duplicate a story that one of your competitors has already done. But to duplicate a cover, as highlighted on the Kipp Report blog - oh, that's pretty bad.

It would have been at least amusing if these had appeared at the same time as each other, but the Arabian Business team can have no excuses there, seeing as there must have been at least a month between Trends appearing, and this issue of AB going to press.

On the other hand, there's always a feeling of "there but for the grace of God [or alternate higher power] go I..." with these things.

And you can bet they won't be making that mistake again...

(Image is from Kipp)

You think the Gulf has it bad?

Perspective is a wonderful thing. A newspaper in Turkey is losing advertisers, partly due to the economic downturn, but also due to fear of a shadowy, Mafia-like organisation that stands accused of engineering a vast, right-wing conspiracy across the country, according to this report in The National.

In comparison to assassination lists and political intrigue, suddenly the loss of some property advertising doesn't seem so bad.

The National is very good at these big, in-depth stories - which is why, again, it was rather a shame to see the paper tow the Abu Dhabi Is Fabulous line quite so blatantly.

At least it writes in English, though, as opposed to certain other papers, as a Dubai Media Observer commenter noted.

I believe one is publicly horse-whipped at the Daily Mail for that sort of Atrocity Against Language.

Social networking 'not making money' shocker

Facebook, and other social networks, may be in trouble - a story from over the winter break.

No one should be really surprised about this - Facebook was grossly overvalued and the whole data-whoring - sorry, mining - thing has always proved problematic to actually capitalise on.

What does this mean for regional social networking endeavours, such as Jeeran, Dubai Lime, or AdNation itself?

Well, hopefully we might all be in better shape, having not squandered countless millions on development, or indeed strawberries and muffins. You would also hope that internet operations in the Middle East are more aware of how limited development has been in internet advertising here, and so have set their sights lower.

H2O - the developer behind Dubai Lime, and the technical stuff of AdNation, has just launched its own attempt to unlock some of the monetary potential from social networks. I'll be trying to speak to H2O headman Steve Vaile about this, and what potential he sees in the market - stay tuned for that.

And we're back

Hello, and happy new year to all. I've just got back into the office, to be confronted by...

Well, not by much, really. Still seems quiet.

But the first rumblings of bigger problems are starting to be heard - layoffs and pay freezes, and empty spots on hoardings and pennants, at least here in Dubai.

I'll be keeping my eye out for signs of all this economic turmoil hitting the marketing sector - if you spot anything revealing, do let me know: editor@adnationme.com.

Back to the grindstone...