More than a month ago, the world-wide CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Kevin Roberts attacked advertising in the Middle East and described it as a total crap, this happened in a lunch with members of the UAE Chapter of the International Advertising Association - IAA UAE.
Now the president of the IAA, Joseph Ghossoub, who happened to be the Chairman of the THG - The Holding Group, repeats Roberts words and criticizes Real Estate advertising in the Middle East, just like the Saatchi’s dude did.
As a start, isn’t Ghossoub one of the earlier advertising professionals in our region? Doesn’t this mean that he is among those who set the standards that he is criticizing today? I wonder what did the IAA contribute to the industry during the past years of it’s operation in the region?
I don’t think that Emaar’s iconic image came as a result of THG’s efforts, I guess it was the natural reflection of the huge projects being launched and managed by this real estate giant.
Why do we always wait for someone from outside the region to tell us that we are wrong? Can’t we evolve internally? Can’t we understand our needs and resources to realize our potential?
Note: jazarah! welcomes everybody despite their sexual orientations! I mean everybody!
The Jordanian Ministry of Health “took the bold step” when it decided to break the silence about homosexuality in Jordan through conducting a research about numbers of gays and lesbians in the country, and guess how much they found? 20! Boy, Jordan does lack resources I guess the government should enforce rules to protect those 20 people to save diversity in the Jordanian community
Only 20 Jordanians are homosexuals! This is even funnier than AhmadiNejad’s statement when he said: Unlike USA, We don’t have homosexuals in Iran. This number doesn’t seem rational at all, I’m sure there are much much more than this, I mean if the government consider homosexuality a problem, denial is not the right approach to solve it, salvation begins with acknowledgment then applying solutions and perform follow-ups.
I don’t know the tools and methods used by the ministry to conduct this research, but go to couple of places in Amman like Books@Cafe or RGB and you will see tens, if not hundreds. Surf Facebook and you will find even more.
Cool, interesting, crazy, unusual, insane, amazing… you name it, Gulf News reports that the first group of Dubai’s 1,000 air-conditioned bus shelters is on, offering up to 14 people a soothing haven from Dubai’s hellish weather. As a start, these shelters along with the metro offer a new advertising space in the number one country in terms of advertising spends in the Middle East.
Some people say it’s too fancy, too opulent to do such thing, but I guess the idea is to offer practical alternatives that might convince people to use their cars less, and by that find a solution that might decrease traffic jams and parking lots shortage.
Gulf states are awfully hot in the summer, not to mention the humidity in some of these states, and having such shelters is a good idea to make life easier, instead of getting sweaty and suffering a headache while waiting for a bus, you can wait in a cool place till you get your ride.
Once I had an interesting debate with a friend about mixing brands with products they represent, whether if it’s healthy or not, I believe it could be an advantage if the brand knew how to benefit out of it, I mean to go smart and heavy in advertising and PR.
I grew-up in Saudi Arabia, there was a well-known tissues brand called “Kleenex”, all of the sudden the word Kleenex replaced the word tissues, and then we had more adaptation for this word, like kleenexeh for a single tissue, kleenextain for two, and so, in Jordan, the dominating brand is “Fine”, again fine is the alternative for tissues, fineh for one tissue, finetain for two, and so on.
I remember that Jeep from Chrysler tried to benefit of a confusion between Jeep the brand and Jeep the term that people use to call SUVs and 4X4, they used to say: no jeep but Jeep, I don’t think it really worked.
Seems like Coca-Cola is facing the same situation with its competitor, PEPSI, many people believe that this carbonated black drink is PEPSI not cola, it is tattooed in their brains, and I think I’m not an exception most of the time. The other day I saw a Coca-Cola refrigerator full of their new Zero product, so I thought to myself: Oh PEPSI I’m gonna grab one!
I laughed as I remembered an old joke about Coca-Cola trying to go aggressive to make it clear to Jordanians that they are a different brand that produces cola, drink just like PEPSI does, they went to a city and branded everything; buildings, streets, shops even people, lots of giveaways were given, celebrations and carnivals, and of course free Cokes all day long.
But what was the result of that, they interviewed a person on TV and he said that they painted everything red, they gave us cool gifts and they distributed free PEPSI all day long!
I think Coca-Cola needs an intensive educational campaign to get more consumers to use the term Coca-Cola instead of PEPSI whenever they point or think of Coca-Cola.
To begin with, I’m totally against anything that is offensive to religions, values and cultures, and by that I’m totally against the Danish cartoons about the prophet (PBUH) and the Dutch movie about Islam. I support reasonable freedom of speech, but if it’s going to offend others, then it’s rudeness and pointless.
Muslims raged against the movie and cartoons, in other words: kill us, destroy us, steal our fortunes, humiliate us in anyway you like, but don’t publish a movie or some cartoons, we are a sensitive nation.
What frustrates me the most is the stupid reaction towards such issues, yes let’s boycott their products for a while, then let’s go back to using it, then let’s boycott it again and again each time they offend our religion, yea right, good plan. Isn’t this motivating enough to have our own products, how difficult is it to raise few cows and produce a decent butter?
I wonder how is our life going to be if the whole world decided to criticize Islam; no cars, no mobiles, computers, internet, clothes, even praying stuff, no food… etc. I guess we will be riding camels and sending pigeons for SMS.
Now a group on facebook is promoting boycotting the Dutch products, the list includes beer, which is forbidden in Islam, yea I will espouse Islam and the Prophet through drinking Bud Light instead of Amstel and Heineken.
This is chaos, who’s behind this whole buzz? Some people believe that the “let’s boycott Dutch products” campaign were so effective even before it starts; this TV presenter Amr Adib said that this campaign stopped the offensive Dutch movies, I wonder why boycotting Danish products didn’t prevent the European media of republishing those cartoons, over and over, and over.
A friend of mine who lives in Europe told me that the Danish cartoons are being published yearly since 1998.
Perhaps the funniest and most innovative promotion you might think of, I mean in Jordan, Mint advertising had this nice idea to headhunt employees from their competitor Team Y&R.
A guy in a tree costume was standing in front of Y&R building in the morning so that all Y&R employees see it when they come to work, the message was visit SpyingTree.com and then when you visit the website you’ll see that Mint is spying for new talents.
I guess the government should enforce rules to protect those 20 people to save diversity in the Jordanian community 
