McIrony

Hello again everybody. Been a bit busy here, so apologies for the lack of updates.

Starting the catch-up, we have that old favourite: unfortunate ad placement.

Exhibit A: Sunday's 7Days. Splash - too much junk food for kids. Ads (both of them) - McDonald's.

Nice one, guys.

(Thanks to Nitin Mathew)

Quack stats say Belgians care about branding. Perhaps.

"Shoppers vote with feet after Belgian supermarket removes Unilever products" says the headline in Marketing Magazine - apparently almost a third of supermarket chain Delhaize's shoppers will head off to where they can get their hands on lovely Unilever bits.

Er, or will they?

As of the survey taking place, Delhaize hadn't actually taken ANYTHING off its shelves - that only happens this week. So the survey only looked at intentions, rather than reality.

Judging from the article, it looks like the question might have been slightly loaded as well: "... 31% of Delhaize shoppers had decided to shop elsewhere for Unilever goods..." (emphasis mine). If the survery was asking specifically about Unilever goods, how many people actually know what they're buying is Unilever? I don't, much of the time, and I would class myself as more interested than most.

A commenter on the article makes similar points - and also raises the suggestion that almost 70% of shoppers really DON'T care about Unilever going AWOL.

Gotta love them surveys...

Pepsi: really IS the centre of the universe

Covering the marketing and advertising sector, I have come to terms with the fact that the "bullshit quotient" of much of what I write about will be higher than the global average.

But then there's the Pepsi rebrand.

Oh sweet lord.

So apparently Pepsi actually is the centre of the universe, a fact hitherto suspected only by senior Pepsi execs, and possibly an eight-year-old.

But the internal briefing document [PDF] detailing the genesis of Pepsi's new logo - basically just like the old logo, but wonkier - tells us that, in fact, most of the history of the universe, planet Earth, and humanity's art and culture and science, has been leading to the moment of sheer joy and epiphany that is the Pepsi logo - including gravity.



More highlights on Gawker, if you can't be bothered with the whole, hillarious, briefing document.

How NOT to brand, ladies and gents.

Dubai gets the Greer treatment - badly

[Sunday 15 February: Apologies for the lack of posts last week - technical problems with Blogger at the office meant posts got written, just not posted...]

Four hours in Dubai is apparently sufficient for arch-feminist and all-round lefty-meddler Germaine Greer to dismiss the entire emirate and all its dirty doings.

"After years of popping in and out of Dubai airport on my way to and from Australia, this time I deliberately managed my travel itinerary so that I had a long layover, four hours of which I spent on the open top of a double-decker bus," says Greer.

Her tour took her past well-known landmarks such as Deira City Centre, Wafi, the World Trade Centre, and something at the other end of town called "Dubai World".

We think she means "The World" - that surreal collection of artificial islands in the Gulf - but ol' Germaine has obviously grown a few dozen metres if she's able to see it from the top of a bus.

Unsurprisingly, Greer's conclusions are not at all flattering. More unfortunately, this example of yet more sloppy journalism does Greer a greater disservice than the city.

Seabee has recently carried a number of posts about the shocking standard of journalism ABOUT Dubai, rather than from it, and we can now add this gem to the myriad examples he lists.

Has a retail exodus started?

Anecdotal reports of the economic crisis abound in Dubai - 3,000 cars left at the airport (probably not), ships left out at sea, full of supplies (er...), the newly-unemployed choosing to advertise themselves on their Porsches (as opposed to selling the damn thing).

But this weekend, I saw some very real evidence of something going wrong: newly-opened shops in Jumeirah Beach Residence, closed and devoid of stock.

Click on the picture for a bigger version - unfortunately, this was the only snap I could get before a security guard asked me (politely) if I had a permit, so apologies for the glare.

Pumpkin Patch, Adams Kids (Adams in the UK went belly-up a few weeks ago), Celio and some other stores were all dark and locked as of the weekend. All belong to the same group: 'BR. of Outfit, LLC'.

I'm sure there's a bigger story here, but someone in the retail world can have a go at that one. Whatever has happened, this is not a good sign.

Like a buzzsaw through the brain

Anyone heard of Microsoft Songsmith? No? Well neither had I...

... until someone sent me this link.

Be warned, bravery and a strong stomach is needed to make it through many of these user-generated efforts, such as lounge-style Creep, and the unspeakable atrocity that is Wonderwall.

But nothing, nothing is worse than Microsoft's own effort.

For all those who say the Middle East is a haven for really terrible work, this one's for you.



The horror. The horror....

(Thanks to Matt Wade for alerting me. Your present is on its way, once it's been through the cat...)

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?? No! It's... the iPhone

So we're finally getting it - Etisalat has snagged distribution rights for both the UAE and Saudi Arabia, through its Mobily subsidiary there.

The excitement...

Unfortunately for all those early adopters - especially the ones overly-fond of wafting their new advice ostentatiously in a lift (despite it not working there) - the cache-factor of Apple's shiny handset is about to go waaaaaay down.

So what you gonna pose with now, huh, huh, huh? Hah.

Interestingly, Etisalat may have also inadvertently tipped the wink as to the release of the next model of iPhone, according to AppleInsider: "The [newspaper] report went on to say that the 'next version of the device, which is due out in June, will be launched in the UAE at the same time.'"

I'm expecting to see EVEN MORE of the instantly-iconic touchscreen gadgets oh-so-casually being sported on desks of advertising creatives everywhere...

... unless something shinier comes out first.

Shrinking Saudi middle class = long-term problem

'Shrinking Saudi middle class causes concern' says Gulf News.

The headline's a bit misleading for what's more of a feature/think-piece, but it should worry all those marketers and business people who are banking on an increasingly-prosperous KSA.

One of my working assumptions in recent years has generally been that Saudi Arabia can be relied on to be a) growing, b) growing at a reasonable clip thanks to its low starting-point, and c) growing despite most of the global turmoil, thanks to the oil revenues and the fundamental needs of 27-million-odd Saudis - the only market in the Gulf that's really real.

But if this is a faulty assumption...

Hmm.

Literally giving them away...

"Palm real estate agent sees 100% price fall" ArabianBusiness.com tells us, before suggesting that the agent has in fact seen a MORE THAN 100% fall in prices (click on pic for visual proof).

So they're paying US for those swanky villas on the Palm?

Where do we sign...

(More bad maths: US telco Verizon can't tell the difference between dollars and cents... Not new, but a cracker nontheless.)

UPDATE: ... and they've gone and changed it to 50%. Ah, the joy of the web - so easy to erase one's mistakes. Not that I ever have to change anything of course. I'm perfect, me.

Errr...

Car-crash reporting: Obama sells out? That would be a no...

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

"Has President Obama signed $30m endorsement deal?" asks Emirates Business 24/7.

This is the shocking - SHOCKING - story of Obama's new megabucks deal with the maker of BlackBerry phones, which saw him making blatant promotion pitches throughout his campaign, even exhorting kids to "ask mum and dad for a Blackberry!"

Er. No.

A quick - c. 30 second - Google News search revealed the source for this story as spoof-news-site Unconfirmed Resources. A swift glance at the site's jokey piece reveals that, yes, EVERY SINGLE QUOTE from the Business 24/7 story is from the satire, including a quote just inches above the disclaimer: "Unconfirmed Sources political satire and news story parodies as represented above are written as satire or parody. They are, of course, fictitious."

Unfortunately, you'd never know it from the story Our Beloved Paper carried, which appears to have quite obliviously taken it as fact, despite citing "Unconfirmed resources" as a vague source for the details.

Oh dear. Sometimes we think Dubai Media Observer might have a point...

In other news, the shocking - SHOCKING - story of how US prison inmates are complaining about boredom! How dare they. HOW. DARE THEY.

UPDATE: EB24/7 has sadly removed the story from the site now (thanks for the tip, anonymous poster) - but the whole piece is now in the comments below...