Gulf-based airline companies went shopping for airplanes with billions and billions of dollars in their pockets, yesterday 4 airline carriers revealed news about agreements that aims at enforcing their fleets with various new aircrafts.
The biggest deal was made by Etihad Airways, the Abu Dhabi-based airline, as they announced earlier yesterday a deal ordering 55 Airbus aircrafts, later the same day Etihad announced that they increased number of aircrafts to 205 brand new Airbus aircrafts, the total value of the deal is 43 billion USD$. This deal is the biggest in the history of commercial aviation.
FlyDubai, the new low-cost airline carrier in Dubai, announced a deal that is considered to be the biggest deal made by a Gulf-based low-cost airline, the value of the deal is 4 billion USD$, the total price of 54 Boeing aircrafts.
Saudi Arabian airlines, which ordered 22 Airbus aircrafts back at the end of 2007, signed a new deal to buy-out 8 Airbus aircrafts. Qatar Airways announced a deal to acquire 4 new Airbus aircrafts, the value of the last two agreements wasn’t revealed yet.
Expectations were talking about a decline in the number of air travelers due to craziness in fuel prices, which will lead to expensive traveling prices, but seems like those airline companies are really optimistic about the future of traveling.
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.
Interesting campaign for a newly launched lingerie brand in Saudi Arabia, I think that there is a spelling mistake, they wrote censor with an “S”, anyway you can read about the campaign below:
CHANGE is an international upscale brand providing quality lingerie, swimwear and homewear. The objective of the ad was to announce the launch of CHANGE in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The ads’ main focus is to utilize the concept behind censorship in Saudi Arabia to pull focus on the Brand’s product line and to transform censorship into art. The ads are all in English, as they target an upscale bilingual audience.
Advertising Agency: Ogilvy Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Creative Director: Mazen Hassan
Art Director / Illustrator: Yasser Alireza
Copywriters: Yasser Alireza, Fitna Nazer
Account management: Khaled Shalha
This is really interesting, OMD Digital, the digital arm of Omnicom Media Group one of the largest advertising groups in the world, penetrated a new advertising medium; games!
The first client to tap into this new digital medium is the Saudi mobile operator Mobily, which will benefit of a range of advertising options in the games like virtual banners, street signs and outdoor billboards, and at the same time it will add a touch of reality to the game, but for some it could be annoying, especially those who hate advertising.
I’m not sure how powerful is their monitoring system in order to manage the impressions, not to mention the targeting, it’s easy to target them by country cause of IP, but what about genders and age groups? It would be easy if each player had a detailed profile, or they will just have to guess based on the type of the game, but for a branding campaign for a client that targets the mass, it’s not a problem, everyone is targeted.
According to their press release: For its initial project, OMD Digital bought 250,000 impressions over two months in Saudi homes, across major X-Box and PC titles, including Burnout (X-Box 360), Guitar Hero (PC and X-Box 360), Tony Hawk’s Wasteland (PC and X Box 360), NFS Pro Street (PC and X-Box 360), Pro Evolution Soccer (PC and X-Box 360). The ads are downloaded onto new-generation game consoles and PCs linked to the Internet.
Advertising Agency: IMPACT/BBDO Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Creative Directors: Philip Deraprahamain, Mohamad Sarhi
Copywriter: Ghandi Mouhtar
Art Director: Mohamad Sarhi
Account Supervisor: Irfan Fatmi
Advertiser’s Supervisor: Ahmed Ali AlHashmi
Production Company: CITY FILMS, Beirut
Producer: Joyce Hadife
Director: Marc Hadife
Music - Artist/Title: Philip Khayat
Post Production: VTR
