DIABLOG CAFE

The antisocial brand

2011-03-02T20:19:00.006+04:00

Today, every marketing conference, agency boardroom, brand planner and marketing director are propagating the importance of creating 'participation', 'two way dialogues' or 'engagement'. Brand morals preaching that your brand must become social, you must be conversational, you must make friends, dominate marketing conversation. It’s become scripture; Social brand good and profitable, antisocial brand bad and broke. While there is a truck load of academic and practical merit behind this theory, id like to take on the unpopular side of disagreeing with it, purely out of the joy of disagreeing with self proclaimed social media gurus.

As always in our industry, for the purpose of simplicity, It helps to use human beings as examples or metaphors to simplify an argument. Now imagine one day showing up to the office and every single person in the office tries really really hard to be friendly. Imagine it for a second....your office filled with people sauntering around cracking jokes, striking up meaningless conversations in the lift, sending cute forwards to one another, wishing each other a ‘good day’, signing off every email with a smiley face or giving you fist bumps in meetings. You’d off yourself by lunch. The thought of some of the characters across your office being sent into social overdrive send shivers down your spine. The reality is, many people are just not built to be social and there’s no shame in that, ill be the first to admit I’m one of them. Some people are naturals at striking up conversations, others aren’t. There are fewer more awkward things than forcing sociability on a character not suited for it. Instead, we as regular shy people, recognize our limitations, keep to our friends and establish fewer yet, I could argue, deeper connections. Some people are simply not suited to be social.

On the other end of the spectrum are the uber social people, who also coincidentally happen to be the most annoying people you know. They are the huggers, the squealers, the oh my Goooooooooooooders, the people in dire need of attention begging to be liked both in real and virtual life. Extend them onto facebook and you’ve got impulsive updates, innumerable comments, terabytes of pics, showers of compliments and lots of annoying quotes that don't belong to them. Overly social people simply piss us off. The point I’m making with both examples of these two very different people is being social, doesn’t mean being liked, in many instances it could result in quite the opposite effect.

So, back to brands. I’m sure by now you’ve already caught onto my point. Like people, brands have a character, and I don’t mean in form of the ingenious branding documents clients pay hefty sums for. I’m referring to real characters. The genetic makeup of a company’s character is a composite of the people running the company, the culture, the products, the environment and many other variables. Like people, some of these company characters are not conducive toward social acceleration. If you take 95% of the regions advertising and personify it, you’d wind up with a considerably aggravating personality, preachy, boring, uninteresting and obtuse, not someone you’d want to participate, engage or have a conversation with, unless obliged. Most of us, work on or for some of these brands, and by no means should we take it insult to this reality, I’ll be the first to declare that some of the brands I’ve worked for and on are prime examples.

It is these very brands that I’d argue get further by being antisocial than they would by being social. If you do not have the company character that enables you to genuinely generate participation and a personality that people would want to spend time with, pretending to, is only going to place you in a worse place than where you started. If you’re an annoying brand in a burden category, your mission shouldn’t be try and get people to hang out with you and inspire an 'emotional connection' instead, your objective should be; how do I make interactions with consumers as brief as I possibly can. The few interactions I have had with my bank mades me hate them. Recently however, I’ve notice myself growing fonder of them with every fewer interaction I have with them. I don’t want to be friends with my bank, I don’t even want to hear from them unless I have a question, request or suggestion. So be honest with yourself, ask yourself; is the company I work for annoying?If the answer is yes, then I assure you, there is absolutely nothing wrong with ignoring every social media douche that makes you feel insecure about not having a facebook group. Keep your definition of participation limited to questions like ‘how can I create an interaction that’d make future interactions briefer and smoother’. People respect a brand more that knows what it does well, and gets it done for you without trying to be your friend over a brand that’s trying too hard and wants you to upload a picture of yourself with a biscuit or bribes you to ‘like’ them. Contrary to popular belief, antisocial brands can still remain as profitable and as successful as any other example of a participatory brand. There is nothing wrong with some brands simply being antisocial, accept it, embrace it, people will respect you more.

Telcos: Getting the best out of your agencies...

2011-02-06T16:46:00.008+04:00

I've spent the last 5 years of my life working on telco's. Its been a particular point of interest for me for some time now, i've put down some thoughts and points of views that i've accumulated along the way on how to make get the best out of your agency.
Might or might not prove useful.

Doing the ugly stuff better than they do the pretty stuff.

The measure of a good agency isn’t their capacity to develop big beautiful brand ads rather their capacity to do the other 98% of the work that people get exposed to. Any agency can put together a brand campaign, not any agency can make the more prominent body of work look half decent. Understand that it is not exclusively the role of a brand campaign to build brand values. Every little piece of work is an opportunity to build the brand from office signage to the retail experience across to the bare tariff announcements as Jaime Pabon (planning director at leo) says, see du as a good reference. Stress on the importance of focusing on the little things as much as they do on the larger more traditionally exciting project.

Get your agency to present their big idea through tactical briefs

One of the many reasons why non brand work clearly looks like non brand work is that the organizing idea that should sit across all work has been thought through the lense of a brand campaign. Brand campaigns are the most irresponsible type of advertising agencies create. Most aren’t tasked with carrying any concrete message, neither do they carry the pressure of tightly set objectives and stringent success measures. When your agency are crafting an idea that’s going to sit with you for the next two or three years, get them to think about how it’ll work in the contexts of service umbrella work, promotions, retail etc. If they can prove it works, then you’ve got an idea. If not, what started off as a fancy campaign that’s meant to drive your brand into the future, winds up serving as a headline with little to no purpose beyond sitting awkwardly underneath your logo.

Sticking to the brand guidelines no matter how much the ad agency hates the branding agency.

Your brand guidelines should be scripture irrespective of how many art directors tell you they need creative freedom. What the naïve art director fails to see is that the quantity of work that gets put out paired with the tight timelines makes it literally impossible for any operator to consistently deliver the quantity of messages it does without flaws and inconsistencies. Guidelines, once absorbed and understood, help streamline message development and offer a reliable platform to deliver news quickly without eroding the consistency or integrity of a brand. Take it from an adman; not every piece of work that comes out of the agency needs to have an idea glued to it. Sometimes, the promotion is the idea.

Balancing the innate desire for agency’s to take risk: The experimentation budget

Risk seems to be something that comes in either absolute abundance or absolute absence, nothing in between. What your agency needs to understand is that all of these fantastic virals examples they keep showing you always existed as a subset of a much broader campaign that most likely isn’t in the Cannes reel. Risk should be heavily encouraged within a calculated area. Allocate roughly 3% of every campaign budget for experimental purposes; the social stuff, mobile stuff, the character they want to create, appreciating that this isn’t about results its more about learning. Nine out of ten times the results will be negligible, but a single hit and you’ve got disproportionate results that make up for your total investment, not to mention the invaluable learning’s you’ll pick up.

The obsession with people forwarding and uploading stuff

Media agency’s, advertising agency’s as well as clients get overly enthusiastic about the idea of owned and earned media in the form of fan pages and sites where people upload stuff etc. The assumption is that the work is so mind bogglingly participatory and the product so earth shattering that everyone would want to upload, like, take pictures and throw hoards of attention your way. If the logic alarm goes off in your head when your agency suggest you emails all CEO’s with a special code that grants them access to your amazing microsite which they visit and forward too all their CEO friends, don’t be afraid to voice your concern. Usually a good gauge of something working is simply asking yourself “could I imagine someone doing this?” If you’re still unsure and the agency resilience is clouding things, suggest they show you similar work they’ve produced for other clients. This isn’t about killing creativity, this is about pragmatism.

Get your media agency to understand that not everything should be ‘the talk of the town’

Media have a tendency to want to make news out of everything, and maybe in categories where new news is rare, that’d make sense. However our industry could potentially launch up to 30 new products or promos a year, so optimizing becomes increasingly more important for the sake of clarity and efficiencies. Building prioritization models that incorporate key metrics like: the business importance, the halo effect on the brand, the products breadth of appeal, will help you prioritize and mediate a discussion about what products and services should or shouldn’t be ‘the talk of the town’. Even Skybar doesn’t stop the music and start the fireworks when you pop open a beer bottle.

Set objectives, measure the results, learn, apply, measure.

Setting tangible communication objectives is an essential part of the communication process that often gets left out. Stick your ad agency, pr agency, media agency and research person in the room and set objectives for all your larger campaigns. Ensure they are realistic but more importantly ensure they are measurable. ‘Boosting brand affinity and sales’ is not tangibly measurable. If you’re struggling to start some place, study your previous successfully campaigns and build objectives based on the past. Furthermore, I stress on the importance having that post campaign meeting that never takes place. Once you’ve run the campaigns, make sure you have those meetings post campaign with all your agency partners to evaluate what you did well and what can be improved, incorporate those learning’s into the next campaign. Post campaign meetings are probably as important as the pre campaign briefings.

Why Dimitri should get off his couch…

2009-04-19T15:48:00.002+04:00

Owning a good brand positioning in people’s heads today is like owning prime real estate smack in the middle of overpopulated Tokyo. If you’re living in prime area, you’ve either invested early through a first mover advantage, or you’ve spend hefty sums and bought your way through. The rest are stuck living in the middle of nowhere or squeezing into a back alley studio at a ridiculous cost just to be near anything.

The old greats own prime space in our minds facing the most interested of our nodes. Adidas spent a bulk of cash on media, sponsorships and endorsements and now overlook the glorious Arc of Triumph and Transcendence with ‘Impossible is nothing’ and just walks away from the older neighbor who bought early, Johnnie Walker’s ‘Keep Walking’. Most big beer brands like Bud light and Heineken have lofts with prime views overlooking the Gardens of Male bonding. Axe and Old Spice look over the River ‘Poony’ - a place where all men long to bathe. Honda managed to find a flat facing The Bay of Dreams and of course, not too far away, Obama’s latest mansion smack in the middle of Hope Town has probably made what was once a cheesy urban settlement the next hot place for brands to live. We’ve already seen the big boys like Pepsi try to move in next door.

People’s minds have become so over populated that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to own an interesting, relevant position or spot without forking out enough dough to keep your media buyers happily Lebanese for a long time. So it’s best we drop this illusion that one day we’ll come up with 3 lines so original that all the clever turtle neck wearing planners around the world and across time would smack themselves in the face for not having thought of it and all the people would gawk with enthusiasm gushing from their eyes money raining from their hands at the very site of your brand sitting atop this uninhabited plot of land.

Today, if we look at the brands that are surfacing, or have surfaced, they have abandoned real estate. Instead, they have gone to the streets with something more meaningful to people than just an association – they have taken to the streets with a Purpose. A meaningful human purpose exists at the center of these brands. Not a promise. Not a benefit. Not a position. A purpose. Dove campaign for real beauty, Google arrange the worlds information, Starbucks exists to provide a ‘third place’ to relax and enjoy a cup of coffee, Cadbury deliver joy, and so on. Most of today’s brands with strong momentum have abandoned this idea of real estate and have instead taken to the streets with a Purpose and acted upon that purpose. It’s time for big brands to step out of their big beautiful homes, tell us what they care about… and act on it.

Why Dimitri should go back to Greece and make Souvlakia

2009-04-05T15:25:00.001+04:00

There has been no shortage of criticism on Dubai’s marketing zeitgeist. Beyond that dispensed by the pompous westerner whose sole motive was to bask in the reflected glory of the home he couldn’t make it in, a lot of the criticism was well warranted. We got lazy, Dubai was doing such a good job of marketing itself that it didn’t matter what we did, everyone won anyway. There was no such thing as zero-sum game. Anyone who ever remembers downloading a cheat code that made their shooter invincible knows exactly what I’m talking about. You simply didn’t have to be creative or talented to win. More so, I think many of us have networked enough to confirm the notion that you might even get along quite nicely by being daft.

The need for risk, an important prerequisite for creativity, was also absent in Dubai. Only a sadistic fool would roll a dice while lying on his six figure salary, guaranteed bonus and Jumeirah Jane and all while meeting his quotas without breaking a sweat. No need for the risk associated with differentiation. Instead, you can produce a big narcissistic TV spot that looks about as different as two Lebanese women hanging off a bottle champagne and you’d do just fine. Dubai’s halo was so powerful that your brand could spend millions of dirhams vomiting all over its highways and you’d still sell out apartments overnight. Come to think of it, Dubai’s marketing landscape resembled that of the US in the late 50’s and early 60’s, the biggers, the brighters, the betters that formed the brash baseline that Big Billy B’ used to flip the script on the remix when he asked us to ‘Think Small’. Yesterday, our beautiful Dubai was kicking so much ass that we looked like heroes sitting on its shoulders pretending our little pencils made a difference in the battle.

Today, the sun shines on a very different place. A Dubai that smells different, sounds different and looks different. We all see it, read it, hear it, smell it, talk about it and worry about it. ‘It’s bad’, I was told by a left brained econometrician who was one bonus shy of a sun-seeker, but after the dust clears, the echoes of schadenfreude reside and the smug greasy talentless Marketing Director who came up with the line ‘really real real-estate’ disappears, a new face for Dubai shall emerge; a better one. A place where talent and hard work are rewarded and just showing up to work won’t cut it anymore. No longer will brands get by without distinguishing themselves, which will heighten the threshold and need for risk and consequently creativity. Marketers that go the extra mile for people will thrive over those that get lazy. Agency creatives will now have to spend more time thinking about the behavior of real people and less time thinking about the behavior of Philip Thomas. Trust will play a monumental role and brands that act not just advertise will triumph. Both media and advertising agencies will now be asked to do something they haven’t done properly in a while, their jobs.

You remember those conversations we used to have when we’d complain about Dubai not being a real city. We’d say it resembled Pleasantville in that it was too perfect? Well voila...Welcome to the era of accountability.

Some thoughts on The Creative Farmhouse

2008-12-04T01:52:00.005+04:00

I just got out of a long drawn out session with 30 planners on what inspires creatives. It’s one of those meetings where everyone carries themselves into the room huffing and puffing even more so when the young enthusiastic planner wants to go first and pops his 15 slide presentation on 'why they didn't kick me out of the briefing this time round'.

Contrary to the strategic cynics, turns out the session wasn’t too bad and got everyone pretty involved, led to some heated debate, some swearing and a 20 minute run over the schedualed time, 2 hours. The initial premise I was arguing was boycotting anything called a systematic approach to briefings. A while back I was wasting my time reading a crappy sequel to beyond disruption entitled 'how disruption brought about order'… and despite it’s mediocrity in relation to its predecessors, it did make me feel good about working in adverting for a change by reflecting on one interesting point; we have more difference in an ad agency than most other industries…That led me to wonder whether or not a 'standard operating procedure', whereby you stick a coin in a creative and out pops an idea, is a good idea. Essentially, to assume there is one single way to brief all is to assume that there is one single type of creative. Although after viewing most of their work you wouldn't be crazy to presume it is the case, the more optimistic of us would like to believe that there is difference in creative departments. A difference celebrated by observing any work produced by Mr. Ogilvy and Mr.Bernbach or Bill and David as they're known to their friends.

Most creatives I work with tend to lean toward, the simple is better, 2 word propositions written on anything that isn’t a template, I suggest napkins. Then again I’ve had my life threatened by a creative who I recall had to borrow words of the legendary ‘White men can’t jump’ when he ever so politely asked me to ‘get that shit out of here’. To assume all creative’s think the same,work the same and are inspired the same is to assume that a collection of what many refer to as a diverse group of individuals are homogenous…it would make sense to keep such planners far away from segmentation studies in the future. So i suppose best to find out how your creative like to work, do they like to be brought in early during the client brief, or at the very end? Find out how much they want to know, do they like elaborate 6 hours briefs? Or 2 words on a handkerchief?

Considering my first point was about difference in the department, it would be clumsy for me to refer to them as creatives instead of at least breaking them down into writers and art directors. Both are dramatically different, their thought process is different. I’ve noticed that art directors think executional a whole lot more than writers who in more cases than not are more conceptual. The best place to hide ‘no idea’ is on a Mac behind a skilled art director. Frankly, I worry about the future of the quintessential perfectionist art directors who spent 5 years in prestigious graphic design institution more than I would worry about the future of a copy writer considering crafting is going to take, if not already has taken, a back stage to concept(another long running sentence).
When interacting with the creative team, I think understanding their group dynamics of who leads art director or writer is essential to 'enabling better work.

A final point I wanted to mention was the importance of understanding creative work from a creative’s stand point. Planners look at things from a very pragmatic stand point, it works, it solves the business problem, it’ll help inspire behavioral change. To many creatives their own work is a piece of art, which isn’t an epiphany. Some planner whoring them out to a client doesn't really gain their trust.

Where most planners seem to fail, including myself, is understanding a creative’s cosmos. Planners need to understand award ceremonies, Cannes, categories, they need to appreciate creative work as art not just business… A creative’s worst nightmare is someone who turns around and says ‘Hey yeah positive hate was great, but show me how many cars it sold’. So learning about art direction, the names of legendary creative directors, who won what in what year, what didn’t make it, what new categories exist, what music a spot used, what categories are easier than others to win in, what creatives are insecure about, what they studied etc…is extremely important for a good relationship with the creative department. One creative defined the role quite nicely of planning in a word… ‘Enabler’. So the question then becomes, what or where? The answer is as obvious as it is denied, Cannes.

Ask a creative what they’d rather have you do, 'enable' them to shake a clients hand over a celebration drink for exceeding forecasts or enabling them to shake a jurors hand after being handed a little statuettes of a lion.

ps. inspire is the least inspirational word one can use.

Picture of my favourite cattle at Leo, Nabil Rashid & Dima 'on the road?' Kronfol.

Thoughts on facebook

2008-10-19T17:10:00.002+04:00

“I don’t want a big house; all I want is a bigger house than my neighbor”

We are in a constant battle to distinguish ourselves from others. We throw our dollars at things that allow us to differentiate ourselves and make us appear special or superior. Trendsetters race ahead of those sporting John Varvatos’ ‘08 collection by wearing his ‘09 collection. Teens want the new iPOD touch because everyone’s got the iPOD classic. One of the key ingredients of cool is uniqueness, so the ‘Sneak Freaks’ want their Nike limited edition Carolina-blue Jordan’s because beyond aesthetics, the word ‘limited’ means that you can’t have them.The word ‘limited’ grants a protective shield against the cool killing kryptonite; commonness.

Sophistication is the enemy of democracy; our whisky drinkers sip Black Label to edge past those drinking Red Label and fewer sip on Blue Label to get away from Black Label drinkers. It only gets more complicated when you throw cigars into the equation. The most desirable of automotive manufacturers have flourished through making cars that allow people to go faster than the next car at the traffic lights. Real estate sells flats for twice the price purely because it’s located in an area where everyone wants to live but most can’t.

Competition goes way beyond the boundaries of what people can or can’t afford, brands have recently exploited our desire to stand apart by flooding the market with greener products that appeal to our sense of morality. Hybrid cars, socially responsible soap bars, handcrafted mugs made by the indigenous people of somewhere poor yet pure, are all being marketed to us by appealing to our desire for moral superiority.

Consumerism has always been driven by rivalry. To steal off Joseph Heath and Andre Potter ‘consumerism, in other words, would appear to be a product of people trying to outdo one another’ .

The Social Economy: ‘That’s so yesterday!’ Tamara Habib

We operate in a vast and complex social economy, our experiences, relationships, and possessions are all cashed in for social tokens. The more in demand and exclusive an experience, possession or relationship, the higher the cash-in value it reaps. So telling a group of people who’ve never been anywhere beyond the borders of their own country about a trip to New York, trades in a higher value than the same story told to a group of socialites who ‘do’ New York for a weekend. Another example could be when we reflect on the fact that six months ago tossing your iPhone on a table held enough social worth to turn a business lunch into a conversation about you and your lovely new gadget. Today its popularization has lessened its value. The people who thrive in this social economy are those who have enough stuff or traits at a given time that other people want but can’t have. It is important to understand that financial power is not necessarily correlated with social power. Each and every group might have varying economic systems; what is desired in a circle of counter culture punk rock rebels is quite contrary to that desired in a group of Lebanese housewives. Yet despite the variations in group currency, each system operates under the same laws, the more in demand and exclusive something is, the higher its cash-in value.

Enter Facebook, the 24-hour competitive trading grounds of the social economy.

Facebook has sent our social economy into overdrive, by providing us with a 24-hour legitimized space that allows us to browse, speculate and trade social value. What was once an experience ‘cashed-in’ around a water-cooler the day back from a trip, is now traded more formally with a much larger group of social traders. Everyone can now see everyone else’s stocks; how many friends people have, political views, who hangs out with who, what clothes people are wearing, the music they listen to, the places they’ve been, what and who they’re doing, and how many comments their pictures gather. This trading ground has severely intensified and sped up the battle to distinguish ourselves from one another, making us work harder, think harder and spend more money in the struggle for superior standing in our respective social economies.

‘Why would I go to New York? Everyone is going there.” -The girl who’s never been to New York

Facebook has led to dramatic depreciation of social experience forcing us to work and spend more for less. News feeds, status updates, picture uploads, all keep us in the loop about where the busiest of us where, are and will be. The problem lies in the erosion of uniqueness. By seeing everyone doing every thing and everybody, going everywhere and being a fan of everyone, exclusivity, one of the key drivers of consumerism and social value, is at best short-lived, harder to attain and results in the depreciating worth of experiences. So a 5 thousand dollar trip to London that used to get you an engrossed audience orbiting around your cubicle now barely musters up enough interest from the pot noodle eating intern desperately seeking a job. This leads us to work harder, try harder and in many cases spend harder in our effort outdo one another.

‘Here, have a dollar in fact no brother man, have two’- Arrested development, Mr Wendel

Like most media, Facebook paints a distorted, romanticized representation of the state of things, leaving many of us to overestimate how much socially richer everyone else is and how much catching up we have to do. Most profiles are representations of idealized versions of ourselves or who we’d like to be. It’s slightly odd that all of a sudden the worlds choice in cinema, quotes and literature have become markedly more sophisticated, citing foreign movies, pensive quotes and musicians none has heard of as their preferences in an effort to distance ourselves from the mainstream mongrels. Our profile pictures are carefully selected to ensure the right image is projected, be it beauty, quirk, rebellion etc. Our albums go through rigorous screening processes and our experiences are well documented and publicized. Bizarrely, everyone seems to be a whole lot more interesting on Facebook; well cultured, better travelled, more popular, better looking, more desirable and all in all, socially prosperous. So the massive influx of post Eid holiday pictures makes those of us that didn’t go anywhere feel inadequate and pressured into making sure we do next time.

‘I went to the Justin Timberlake concert’- The guy that went to the concert but wasn’t there

Perhaps one of the clearest indication of facebooks dramatic impact on the social economy and how hard it’s got us working, is our tendency to trade in real life experience for garnering proof of them. Compare today’s concerts to those 20 years ago; back then, Michael Jackson popped up on stage and 6,000 people fainted due to an emotional rush of adrenalin. Today, Justin Timberlake anthemically poses for 6,000 people watching him through 1.2 inch phone cameras. Facebook has made us so consumed with the social economy that saying we were at the Justin Timberlake concert is more important than actually being there. What’s even more tragic is that the next day as you rush to the Facebook trading grounds to upload the video of the concert you paid 200AED to prove you attended, Tom, Dick, Harry and their cousin Spiky have uploaded their own versions bringing the value of everyone’s video down to zilch. Justin is, however, planning a concert in Amsterdam…

“Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.” Facebook homepage

Facebook helps us connect with friends, colleagues, family members and in many cases strangers. The benefits of it have proven fruitful to any and all of us, one report stated that ‘if you’re not on a social networking site, you’re not on the internet’. However, above and beyond all its wonders, it is important to understand the sociological, cultural and economical implications of Facebook and other social networks. Facebook brings people together, but in doing so, it is perhaps one of the most dramatic catalysts of social rivalry and in turn consumerism bestowed upon us.

The answer to: How the imbecile made it to the top

2008-10-16T16:27:00.007+04:00

I was sitting in a meeting a while back, one of those meeting where you have everyone and anyone there, clients, agencies, more agencies and some more clients. I was sitting back trying to take everything in, all the figures, the data, the percentages, the correlations, the numerous sentences that start with a percentage and then I had one of those epiphanies, you know the ones where I finally get what everyone else already got?

The same way women love diamonds, men love statistics! You see there is nothing more dear to a man then feeling powerful. Be it through wealth, terrorizing people, war, competition, land grabs or merely memorizing statistics, men yearn for power. Power is the ultimate manifestation of a mans desire to stand out, to feel important and unique.

Man dreams of one day waking up, hauling ass in a super charged car more powerful than any on the road, rocking up into the shiny office boardroom, throwing his briefcase onto the table where his minions sit awaiting to throw mountains of undivided attention his way, before listening to and acting upon every word said. In the ideal business world, man speaks, people shut up and listen.

Fortunately for us, few men are born into monarchies or messengers of gods to have such power. However, man has learnt that through the power of ‘The Statistic’ he can elevate himself to command the seas to part and the armies to march… Why? Becuase you can’t disagree with a f*cking statistic, well you can but it’s a whole lot harder to shoot a statistic down then an opinion. We’ve all been there, in meetings where some guy more annoying then rubbing salt on the rash around your balls, is in a position of absurd power blurting out a repertoire of stats that leave those who aren’t econometricians, or as cerebral as the likes of Fadi Khater, or Omar Gammal or the legendary countercultural maverick Anton Reyniers, with little to say or do but twiddle their thumbs and nod in synchrony. The issue becomes a problem when statistics get in the hands of the wrong man, because stats can obviously be horribly illusive, misleading and damaging. Needless to say that the worst combination is a stupid man with a dangerously powerful toy, to me and other ignoramuses the statistic is arguably as dangerous as the nuclear bomb.

Thanks the lord we have Fadi Khater, Omar Gammal or the legendary countercultural maverick Anton Reyniers and institutes like the London School of Economics to keep our world safe from statistics.

Porns virgin territory...

2008-07-24T15:30:00.004+04:00

I love porn, always have, always will...irrespective of the wave of insecurities it bestows upon the average man as well as the mass and largely overlooked mis-education it has on x-rated aficionados which would encompass every male from the average ‘pube’ dawning 12 year old, all the way to heart attack waiting to happen pill popping old geezer. Porn is without a doubt the most active viewer experience we have today, we don’t watch porn while chatting on the phone, or browsing the internet, our attention is absolutely and flawlessly undivided, undisturbed, hypnotic almost Orwellian…

This makes for an untapped utopia for us marketers, with waterfalls of attention for us to come and abuse. Porn allows our for us marketer to catch our entire male demographic with their pants down.

From the obvious nude porn stars sweating away in a pair of Reeboks, to the titillating Chiquita banana branded condoms and the waiting to happen Duracell tattoo on Rocos Sifredi's back side, product placement and branding in porn is a marketers dream, both from a recall rate as well as job description.

It’s flawless, the porn industry needs funding, marketers need a captive audience and men need a subsidized Chasey Lain…

Do you feel like an asshole?

2008-06-12T16:02:00.003+04:00

We are naturally ethical people, we feel guilty when we lie, steal or cheat. The only thing that'd make us feel worse is if we get caught trying to lie, steal or cheat. Simply put, no one wants to be a dick or look like one …and the few that are fine with label lead prosperous careers selling grey import hummers in Aweer.

Yes I know, you're probably thinking ‘fuck me I should’ve thought of that how insightful’, and you'd be right in doing so, because it is through the ephiphany you wish you had that I have ingeniously crafted this new way to evaluate creative work. Whatsmore, a tool that allows you to test the distance between the claim and the substantiation.
I rarely toot my own tooter but this brilliant formula will change the way advertising works and dispensing it upon our industry is probably my reason for being. So here it is

Pick up the ad you'd like to evaluate,skim over it then read it out loud to yourself in the tone you best see fit. Once you’re done reading the very last word on the ad listen very carefully… If you hear nothing, then you’re ad is good to go. However, if you hear a strangely familiar voice resembling your own yell out ‘dick head!’, then maybe it’s best you go back to the drawing board...The larger the distance between claim and substantiation...the larger a dick we feel. So reading Neons (outdoor media company) 'Buy me I'll change you're life forever' conjured up images of Long Don Silver and Ron jeremy.

Simple, easy, effective. Do you feel like a dickhead reading the ad?

Now some of you more gullable creatures may be wondering whether or not your inner check is in check...So here's a test to run that will help you find out.
Pick up the nearest magazine or newspaper, flick through it until you reach any ad for a property developer…read it out to yourself and again, listen carefully. If you don’t hear the voice, then stop wasting your time in this industry and head on up to Aweer.

I went to the Justin Timberlake concert but wasn’t there.

2008-05-17T12:59:00.001+04:00

I’m not big on concerts, they’re stuffy and you’re always stuck next to some asshole who is quite unyielding in bouncing his Pumas over the Havaianas you decide to wear in the heat of what was one of your dimmer moments. So anyhow, every star seems quite persistent about the whole ‘anticipation makes the appetite grow stronger’ thingy and justifiably so. 36 Puma stomps later, Justin Timberlake graces us with his silhouette anthemically poised amidst smoke, strobes and 3000 squealing 14 year olds wearing some type of a crossbreed between a skirt and top, let’s just call them pelvic drapes.

Now the very same scene 15 years ago at a Michael Jackson concert wouldn’t fair too differently, more squealing 14 years olds many of which are on stretchers and sporting slightly wider pelvic drapes. Both concerts kick off in the same manner the music erupts, the ponytail sporting pyrotechnic pushes a couple of buttons, lights blaze and the vague silhouette comes to life in a majestic multisensory uproar. What happens next is where difference occurs. Today instead of 10,000 people erupting in unified frenzied sacrificing their undivided attention to the god on the alter-like stage, you have 10,000 people who opt to pull out their phone cameras and start watching the Justin Timberlake concert they paid their monthly allowance on through a 1.2 inch Nokia screen…

It seems apparent that people today are more adamant about garnering proof of presence as opposed to actually being present at certain events. This collected factoid, and I stress on the word factoid in due of the existential theory that you were there but weren’t really, is then taken and poured into public sphere that makes up their identity…Facebook, Youtube, Emails and Blogs as a testament…Yes I was there, I saw Justin Timberlake.

Through the decades, I would argue that little has changed in terms of our innate human desire to gloat about our experiences in an attempt to construct idealized versions of ourselves. The only difference is that today we are provided with the illusion of a mass collective interest in ourselves making us more self conscious than ever. To put it simply; we all think we’re famous to some degree. We blog to an assumed audience of 1,000,000 when in reality my site tracker clocked in 9 visits yesterday, our profiles on facebook are carefully scripted with quotes, foreign film preferences, lists of books we never really finished and detailed list of artists no one has heard of. Even those counterculture rebels who consciously opt to leave profiles blank are making some form of a statement. Our status’s get consistent updates with attempts at deep and clever mindboggling statements where ‘Nabil is what is isn’t’ to snippets of our interesting opinions on the narratives populating today’s collective consciousness, ‘Rami is pissed’. And of course, we are quite enthusiastic on adding innumerable applications that provide answers to many of life’s antagonizing questions like what type of condom we are. All of these applications specifically engineered and enthused by the innate human desire to talk and talk and talk about our most favorite subject in the world…us.

So to head back to the starting point of this rant, the notion of the Justin Timberlake experience or lack thereof, attendance has now transformed from an experience to a social currency leaving me intrigued as a marketer, worried as a human and slightly sympathetic toward an isolated Justin who now performs to Bobs facebook friend list…

You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake …

2008-04-10T14:18:00.002+04:00

Human beings like to feel special, we’re all about the ‘specialness’, our car is special, our house is special, our clothes are special, even the tird in our toilet bowl looks special. Someone a lot smarter than me said that love is overestimating the difference between two people…which off course lends itself to the controversial theory that those we love are special!…Yes to steal of Chuck Palahniuks, we all want to be beautiful and unique snowflakes.…Which brings me, to the hardest part of all of this free flowing hostility, admitting to myself that in this industry, the stuff we promote…wait for it, isn’t special either…

Now yes, I did ponder nose diving from the creative department into the lobby resulting in one of those dignity depleting landings whereby the last remaining memory of you involves you lying in a pool of your own blood with one of your legs awkwardly twisted and a receptionist screaming ‘somebody help’, a plea that holds relevance only to the cleaning squad responsible for mopping you up and picking up your left finger which was severed by the second floor railing…
But, having grown up in suburbs of Greece and gone to a school in a place where parents donate buildings to ensure their kids get away with crapping in the teachers pigeon hole, has made me a strong person capable of dealing with immalleable truths…

No one could contest the fact that working in this industry is getting tougher by the day. Once upon a time, our jobs was made easy by difference which ,for successful brands came in the form of a unique selling proposition or competitive advantage. Today replication is everywhere, redundancy is ubiquitous, everything works, clothes get white, coke tastes like coke and what maybe unfortunate for the aspiring gold-digger… condoms no longer rip…all products are simply excellent. This conjures up images of the precarious day I scored a 83 in algebra and was over the moon until I found out the class average was a 96. Excellence has become a table stake without which you’re mostly likely filing for bankruptcy, operating in a monopoly or living in a country where the guy in the picture is from…

Miss you Cherm

What's a viral and why does everyone want one anyway!

2008-03-12T10:58:00.006+04:00

Yes, after about 4 years the word ‘viral’ has finally trickled it’s way down to the middle east’s marketer collective consciousness…It’s cheap, it’s cool and everybody wants one!
Unfortunately, the viral mania is being met with serious disappointment…Both agency’s and clients are getting bitch slapped back to earth. There ECD'S dreams of putting the 'tird' the client wont run on air on the web and it being 'ravaged by startving content consumers with nothing better to do but to click the forward button, have been shattered.

Yup the smarter lot of us have realized that you can’t just go putting your tv ad on youtube and expect it to take off…Nope, there is a little more tact involved than opening a simple youtube account and uploading a low res version of your TV ad…

Well for starters, here’s a little something we might need to consider before actually mustering up the master plan of mayhem chaos and mass digital outbreak.

You do not shoot a viral!You shoot a web film that you get down on your knees and pray becomes viral…Viral is the ends not the means…

You don’t see your grandma looking up at you from her glasses and knitting gear saying ‘I’m knitting you a trend’

So get ur facts straight... I was looking at some of the stuff out there that actually became viral and decided to create a stupid axis that might help me when crafting viral content…
These two ends are all a subsets of ‘entertaining’, qualities of entertainment…

Extremity, something extreme is something original in it’s very nature. A logical premise for most online content…but to delve a little further on the word VW suicide bomber is an example of extreme controversy. Saudi road skating is the epitome of what someone would call extreme behaviour…I guess, what I’m trying to get at is if we can’t put the word extreme in front of whatever adjective describes the piece of content…the most likely it ain’t going to pick up much…Extreme humor-Obey the suit (thanking our BBH planner for introducing me to that), Extreme gore- Those ridiculous images of car crash victims on emirates road that you hate to open but just do. Extreme stupidity- Miss Alabama

Relevance…Seeing a guy jumping off Burj el Arab will most likely spread quicker in the UAE, then a jump off some tower in Shanghai…Melody hits ‘All English’ campaign picked up in the middle east due it’s local relevance in juxtaposition with it’s western twist…How many nodes the piece of content assimilates with and how many of the node are held in the collective consciousness of a homogeneous group…Bush visits Dubai, they close the entire city and someone takes a series of snapshots of the empty S Zayed road and voila…Saudi woman driving etc…

So to go back to the word viral and steal from a quote sent in by the hot Miss Y

'A viral is not a viral until it has become a viral'

THOSE CLEVER CLEVER PRINT ADS...

2008-01-02T16:19:00.001+04:00

Manya times have I seen print work that I have to focus on for a good minute or so before I get what the sh*t it's on about...Yes to the point where I actually smile sometimes hiding my incomprehension...'Nice...niiiiice, clever bastards!!'

I think we have all exprienced something of the sort when an eager art director strolls up to you and throws the layout or art directors club annual on to your desk with an eager smile leaving you feeling pretty stupid for a couple of days...

Yes these are the ads that have populated much of the print awards spectrum, the spectrum that dominates the collective consiouness of any creative team with a hint of ambition...

I don't doubt that there was a time when people might have wanted to allocate sometime with an ad, trying to figure it out...

Linda Stone went on about continuous partial attention, it is was it sounds like. Think of the type of attention you devoted to a madium 15 years ago and compare that to the same medium today...you might struggle to narrow down your present day media selection due to it's chaotic nature...You've got Lost on, poking away on facebook while you check our emails and reply to someone on msn,not to mention texting away on ur phone etc...
15 years ago if you're playing Shinobi on your Amiga, then you're playing Shinobi on your Amiga...and if your mother yells out 'pick up the phone' from the next room, you're pissed off...

We once sat at a table with 1 maincourse and we loved it, now we have a collection of mezza, sushi, steak and an array of desert to pick from...the way we eat has changed...there is no longer an appetizer, main and desert...nope now we are binging on sushi, cheesecake, fries, steak and kibi bi laban while sipping on Jose, Raki and 'Ocha'

In simpler terms, content supply has flooded content demand...and our attention is being gang-banged.

So amidst the plethora of attention craving content, where does a magazine fit in, where does an ad in that magazine fit in...subtle advertising requires someone to actively sit scan an image in an ad that looks normal and search for that pun.

The only people I can imagine doing that today are the minority of 1) People on the crapper who keep forgetting to change crapper reading material and have read every word in Maxim and 2) People who spend 3 hours a day pissing on each others work on adsoftheworld

Oh and the judges

ps. The picture is of a friend of mine and ex colleague who struggled so much he became a consultant who spends his life on a plane.

Merry Christmas...

2007-12-24T14:32:00.000+04:00

Campaign- Mother London

Coffee with BBDO strategist, Tanya Marar

2007-11-07T17:31:00.000+04:00

D: Ok, so Tanya I have had first time experience working with you, and you are without a doubt one of the most original thinkers I have met…In this industry we expose ourselves to sh#t loads of advertising (competitive reviews, ads of the day, forwards etc), would you agree with the theory that this primes us into subconscious uniformity and makes the fight against convention that much tougher?

TANYA: You’re way too generous with the compliment…

the way I see it is the ‘fight against convention’ especially in this part of the world isn’t going to be easy any time soon, some people find comfort in the conventional.. As for theory, I would actually argue the opposite. imo, being exposed to communications – especially the good stuff, should be a source of inspiration, specifically seeing the good work that’s been emerging from regional agencies (case in point Melody Tunes, or the snickers spot). It’s like being a musician. Musicians will almost always refer to the kind of music they were exposed to growing up, and having that inspiration doesn’t mean they have a hard time creating music that’s unique to them (plus I’ve never actually met a musician who only listens to their own stuff). Also seeing crappy work in theory should make us consciously reject it. As local agencies go, there are always people trying to be ‘unconventional’, but we still have a lot to learn, and being exposed to things going on around the world, is what’s going to give us ammunition to stand out.

D: You have an entire artillery of interesting blogs or sites you frequent…you could recommend a couple to people interested in planning that do not start with a ‘Rus’ and end with a ‘vies’?

TANYA: Lol. Almost too many to list… and not all are planners... Most of them also have links to hundreds of other cools ones as well. A few of my favourites at the moment: (also a lot of the interesting discussions comes in the comments sections of these blogs)

http://almostalwaysthinking.wordpress.com/
http://scampblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.adliterate.com/
http://robcampbell.wordpress.com/
http://charlesfrith.blogspot.com/
http://wannabeadman.blogspot.com/

D: Well its good to know Diablog is on there :). A little bout the region, your home away from home is London, a city considered referential in our industry, if we are running a 1KM race against them and they have reached the 500meter point, where do you think dubai is in relation?

TANYA: Shit! Of course it is… I thought you wanted international blogs

I might as well add Incognito’s blog to that list as well!!

The Dubai dude is still tying his shoelace
I don’t meant to be harsh, sometimes I meet people from all kinds of agencies here and think that there is so much talent. Still, I’m yet to see (with exception of the handful - and I say that generously - of good stuff) things that can compare on an international level – and I’m not talking about the “I won a lynx award last year” ad, I still can’t put my finger on the problem. Is it clients, agency management, the culture? I don’t know but what I do know is that we have so much at our disposal from cash to talent and not a lot of excuses

D: Lol, ok so last question, you’ve got loads of account people who would love to shift to planning, some because they see it as the fun side of advertising minus the garbage, others because they have a genuine interest in it as a discipline…Any advice you would give that could help em out?

TANYA: It is [the fun side of advertising] but it’s only fun because the work you’re doing doesn’t feel like work – provided you’re passionate about it, and if you’re not, then moving to planning isn’t going to solve much. I made the move (just as you did once upon a time) and I couldn’t be happier. I’m still pretty new at this and got loads to learn, but with account handling you can do your work for the day go home and not give a crap should you chose. With planning – at least for me – you’re mind is constantly thinking about things you’re seeing, hearing, buying, people you’re talking to… if you’re genuinely interested in it then I suggest you start getting involved with the planning department in your agency, learn about the kind of things they do, read up on what’s going on. If you’re not able to change departments within the agency, at least you’ll be ready for when an opportunity comes. If you’re anything like me, you won’t regret it ;)

D: Tanya, already missing you, thanks loads.

IMPACT BBDO JEDDAH

2007-11-07T12:36:00.000+04:00

Impact have without a doubt stepped up their game...from recent creative bombs launched into the world like Snickers and Barlcays to their recent recruits, specifically two great planners, Omar & Tanya (Tanya will be on here shortly). Anyhow, Dubai isn't their only office shaking sh*t up, this recent spot for Pepsi was dropped from the Jeddah base...

Bravo guys!

(Ok i figured out it wasn't so recent, this was produced 2006, but one thing im sure of is that Tanya moved their this year :)

The Importance of Flavour

2007-11-05T11:00:00.000+04:00

Somethings lack any taste, pasta with no sauce, steamed rice...rarely do you find people who hate or obssess over them...Some people lack flavour, no opinions, no point of views, no originality...rarely are these people the subject of hatred, conversation or love...I dunno if strong flavour is better than no flavour...But either way, there are things in life that have flavour to them, the stronger the flavour the more love or hatred they attract...

I was listening to this song on the radio with my girlfriend for the first time, it stimulated two completely opposite reactions, she detested it...i loved it. Irrespective of our conflicting sentiments toward exactly the same stimulus, we agreed that it does have flavour...It is disruptive, original and has a lot of something (dunno what the hell that something is).It is 'marmite' for lack of a better stolen analogy...you either love it or hate but one thing it aint is wallpaper.

I suppose flavour is a difference between commodities and brands, but we can all think of brands that are flavourless, real estate advertising in dubai is an example...probably due to the lack of competition considering everyone is selling out anyway...But if we were to look at a segment with a slightly longer tail (fashion), brands need a distinct flavour to come alive and survive. Obey the suit is a good example (thanks for that Tony)...

I think...

2007-11-02T20:50:00.000+04:00

Funny enough, one of the best regional blogs i have come across so far is by a little guy I had the pleasure and still have the pleasure of interacting with on a project...he's still a student, at his age I was too busy trying figure out what hair gel worked best for me to even bother with the intro/extrospection the guy documents on his blog...Def going to be a grad worth recruiters fighting over...

anyhow, got a permalink on the side and check him out here.

Etisalat sell the water not the plumbing...

2007-10-28T13:56:00.000+04:00

Etisalat have really gotten their stuff together lately, been seeing nicer and nicer work from their end.

Promoting the medium hasn't been worked too well in the past for mobile TV adoption, but etisalat have started to do things the other way around by promoting the content on the medium.
The saying goes 'sell me the water not the plumbing'

The Line-D'angelo

2007-10-26T23:58:00.000+04:00

I've gotta tell you, tell u about it
Ive been gone for so long
I just wanna sing my song
I know u been hearin
hearin a lot of things about me

oh I know, I know
I've heard, i have heard it all to clear
this is what I am going to do

(chorus)
I am goin to hold, hold on to my pride
I'm gonna stick, im gonna stick to my guns
I'm gonna put my finger on the trigger
I'm gonna pull it and we gon see what the deal
I'm for real, i just wanna put it, put it on the line
I've gotta put it on the line
and we havent got much time
I've gotta put it on the line
know what im talking bout this evening
I've gotta put it on the line

I've got a bullet in the chamber
and im not afraid of the danger
we've gotta go down to the wire
ill go through the fire with you
kill and die with you
I know everybody watchin me
the pressure is on
from every angle
political 2 personal
will I hang or b left hangin? will I fall off?
or will it be bangin?
I say its up to the man upstairs

I am goin to hold, hold on to my pride
I'm gonna stick, im gonna stick to my guns
I'm gonna put my finger on the trigger
I'm gonna pull it and we gon see what the deal
I'm for real, i just wanna put it, put it on the line
I've gotta put it on the line
and we havent got much time
I've gotta put it on the line
know what im talking bout this evening
I've gotta put it on the line

REAL MEN OF GENIUS

2007-10-26T11:50:00.000+04:00

So the day has come when i finally pay for advertising...I just got off amazon.com where i placed an order for bud lights real men of genius collection...

Here's to you Mr realmenofgeniusddbccopywriiter....

Brands in facebook

2007-10-24T17:23:00.000+04:00

In a recent interview, i was asked about brands entering social networking sites...my answer (far from rocket science) was simply brands need to create relevant content that people would want to seek out and engage with.

This is a gift on facebook is a pretty good example by axe...

Who killed the insight...

2007-10-23T14:08:00.001+04:00

Lets be realistic, we all use words we aren’t exactly unequivocally clear about the meaning, it’s normal and we do it on a day to day basis…not to say we use words we don’t understand, but we do use words on a daily basis that if asked to drop everything and throw in a proper definition of, we might struggle with. This results in the loss of a specified meaning through broadening of meaning. The signifier remains the same, (the word) but the signified is in a minor state of flux, assuming slightly different meaning in each context it’s being used…thus the loss of it’s original meaning and a words expansive connotation.

’Insight’ is one of those words. We use it so often in our industry; it tends to be on our corporate websites as a means to building business and unlocking growth. But you ask people in the industry and I’m pretty sure many would struggle to define a word they use in almost every meeting, you ask research arms and they’ll throw the lame and mundane obviousness that had been drilled with a Black and Decker into everyone collective consciousness, ‘youth want to express themselves’.

What once started as a beautiful word with some sort of virgin epiphanic magic to it, has been beaten, raped, slapped and abused in boardrooms into an unrecognizable state that means everything and nothing…

Ask 10 people in our industry what the difference between an insight and an observation is, I’ll be willing to bet that half haven’t a clue…

Nike 'Kicks' for Lebanon

2007-10-11T16:49:00.000+04:00

'Unlike Adidas, Nike have chosen to completely ignore the Middle East. Until now. Here are the Nike Blazer Lebanon.

Unfortunately, they've decided to drop them only in SB (skateboard) joints. And the nearest one is E. Europe.

They are fine. Check the box and the insole. These will cost an absolute mint in the future.'

Simon Raffaghello

2007-10-11T14:10:00.000+04:00

Beautiful clip that will without a doubt get ripped off somewhere someplace, if not already...

Alex Gopher track...

The sacrificial road to mobile gaming...

2007-10-08T17:48:00.000+04:00

So I got back from a new media conference in London last week. Manal Khater, the superior planner in the agency, always asks when new media stop being new…

Anyhow, going to have the next couple of posts as refreshers of the conference sessions…here is the firt accompanied with my thoughts

Ad Funded Mobile Entertainment

So the mobile phone’s importance has gone up a couple of notches in a marketers priority gauge to say the least…It now just falls short of 1'keeping their jobs' and 2'making consumers miserable.'

The reason obviously being, the phone is ubiquitous thus should their annoying ads and offcourse this benevolant cause lends itself quite nicely to priotity 2...

So up until today when discussing mobile gaming, there usually tends to be 3 stakeholders…

1The content providers…the guys who make the games and sell them to the…
2 telco operators…the guys who buy the games then sell em to…
3 The consumer…the guys who pay to play the game
…
But now there is the introduction of a 4th stakeholder, the ubiquitous marketer who wants to advertise, on, inm through and possibly around the game…

This is where it gets a little complicated…

So now the dynamics with the 4 stakeholder has changed a little…

The content providers make the game…
They sell it to the telco operators…
which then gets bought by the marketers who then pass it on to
the consumer who get to play the game for free so long as they watch the ad preceding the free game they just downloaded…
Offcourse, the hope being that the last standing screen between you and your free game that says (more info?) will divert your decision and make you want to find out more about a biscuit instead of playing Desert Rally 4.

If you have read up this far, thank you for baring with me, I have no hypothesis at this point…Other than…someone, who goes through trouble of logging on to the telco portal, or web to download a game is most likely not going to have any further interaction with the ad they are forced to see with the exception of stimulated annoyance, which would most likely (looking for the antonym of halo) have a horn effect? I.e piss em off.

On your way to the park, some guy who steps in your way and kicks off on a sales pitch is not going to engage anyone...

It’s not a difficult equation, brands should provide entertainment, not obstruct it (even if they are bringing it to you for free)…and this my friends, is the eternal dichotomy seperating good brands and bad brands…

Good brands entertain bad brands obstruct...

NEW BLOG IN THE UAE- BITS & PIECES

2007-09-17T13:29:00.000+04:00

So my childhood friend/flatmate and work colleague Dimitri launched his blog last night...I'm not quite sure how to describe it other than its 'bits and pieces' of anything and everything he finds on the web, being the internet whore he is...Anyhow, i love it...but the again I am biased so have a read below at one of his first posts elaborating ever so articulately on what his blogs about...

About Bits & Pieces by Bits & Pieces...

Internet Whore

I am an Internet whore. Plain and simple. Give me a computer and a high speed connection and I can go for days.

However, for the last 6 months I have essentially been celibate due to lack of connectivity at my house. Even though I am online all day at the office its not really the same thing.... I am now on the verge of being reconnected to the huge whore house of the web and in celebration I am starting a blog that knowing me, will be defunct in 2 weeks, but I will give it my best.

I will be posting links to some of the things on the web that I think are worth a read, look, dollar, comment or any type of reaction.

Read the rest of the post here

New Zain Spot

2007-09-16T16:44:00.000+04:00

So MTC dump Vodafone and rebrand to Zain, here is the launch spot developed by Saatchi Beirut.

Well in line with the whole personalization zeitgeist.

Your thoughts?

1ST rule of Youth Marketing 'BE COOL?'

2007-09-10T18:32:00.000+04:00

I was at a youth conference quite recently and I remember a 50 year old man on stage who resembled more of a stoned car salesmen with a 9 point plan talking about how to 'target' youth. Right before the toothpicks holding my eyes open snapped, I recall a slide telling me that i need to 'BE COOL'. Which made me think of the plethora of youth marketing rubbish out there that follow the same yesteryears zeitgeist emulation strategy as the man lecturing me. I started thinking of the abundance of mind boggling slogans and scripts crafted for youth that are 'as cool' as your drunk dad dancing the watusi on your 16th birthday party…

Youth nowadays (losely defined as anyone with an alter-identity in the virtual world) can spot a fake a mile away.

Ok, so the point I'm getting it is that Y&R (i think it is Y&R and if it isn't please sub in the respective agency responsible for this spot)seemed to have missed that conference I went to, enabling them to do something that in my personal and ,contrary to popular belief humble opinion is pretty damn good!

I love this spot, think it's great and I am seeing loads more Ford Edge's on the street so I'm both assuming and hoping it is effective.

So hats off to the people responsible for this spot not to mention the music selection, I'm actually trying to find the title for.

Bravo Y&R

Web 2.0

2007-09-04T14:29:00.000+04:00

A great little clip demonstrating and personifying the web 2.0 spiel.

The Medium is the message.

2007-08-26T10:56:00.000+04:00

I particularly loved the ‘mouth watering steaks’ part.

Big up to BBDO Dubai!

2007-08-23T10:42:00.000+04:00

BBDO Dubai came home with a well deserved Loerie grand prix for their snickers spot winning over a handful of large SA agencys including legendary agency TBWA/Hunt/Lascaris.

Great spot and a personal favorite...

Have a look at the spot right here

Congrats to BBDO Dubai and more specifically Jennie Morris and Sean Binder.

The pros of producing cr*p...

2007-08-22T15:06:00.000+04:00

I think we as human beings derive this sick voyeuristic pleasure from watching other people make a completely and obscenely ridiculous a*s out of themselves…I suppose the reason for the 1.2 million hits this video got on youtube is its simply so bad it becomes entertaining…

So I guess, some ad people and marketers can learn a thing or two from this gentleman, if you are aiming for complete sh*t, go all out.

Coffee with Cannes Winner Chermine Assadian

2007-08-21T15:35:00.000+04:00

I gate crashed Chermine Assadian's office for the 5th time today, this time with a Mic and my laptop...

And the result is our first Coffee with audio interview, it is, as expected quite crap...but at least will give me a chance to meet face to face over an actual cup of coffee with you guys instead of through email.

Anton, your up in October.

See other parts here.

Leo Burnett Cairo Strong Contender for a Lynx Repeat

2007-08-20T15:04:00.000+04:00

Leo Cairo, last years lynx TV grand prix winners have developed a series of spots for Melody TV which are simply hilarious. Some of the best work I have seen this year and my pick for this years lynx and a strong contender for international accolades.

Yes yes as a burnetter it’s only natural I would say that….

Have a look at the rest of the campaign here.

Hi again!

2007-07-17T16:16:00.000+04:00

Ahhh yes, it is indeed good to be back. For the few of you wondering where I have been, well to be completely honest…right here. I just have nothing to say, and I pretty much still feel like I have nothing to say…but I figured why not try and write about something anyhow...u know kind of like pick up a basketball again and shoot around.

So here are a couple of my allegorical shots…

I am finally starting to figure out the importance of what people mean by a big idea…too many creatives have been bred under the treacherous umbrella of the ‘TL’ days and are nurtured to think as such…So the conception of anything has to do with a tv spot…then from there onwards it is watered off into print, radio and other bastardized mediums…

I don’t really blame them, it’s kinda like that cartoonist who is always producing content to populate 3 boxes and now all of a sudden they guys has got 4 triangles, 6 circles and an octagon along with his 3 boxes. It’s goanna be tough as shit to alter your storytelling habit…irrespective these new elements are there so figure out how to use them or someone else will…

The better creative’s are distancing themselves from the three boxes, they understand that certain spaces allocated are better suited for certain content and most importantly when you look at all the space as one, it makes sense and is not a mere replication of the same cartoon in the different spaces…I think that would be labeled ‘integration’.

You browse the internet
You watch TV
You read a newspaper
You see a billboard
You engage with these medium in differing manners because they are different and yet we still create exactly the same content for all of them, shove tv in magazine, tv in radio and tv on the web…

Ok, I’m going to put the ball down now.

Night out with da Planning Community

2007-05-31T09:35:00.000+04:00

Was great seeing and chatting to all of you last night, for those who couldn't make it...this will def be a monthly thing, i believe we confirmed every wed of the last week of every month...So the next one is on the 27th.

2007-05-30T10:23:00.000+04:00

See you all there...

2007-05-22T14:30:00.000+04:00

"Insensitive, extreme, sell-out, genius, but it's absurd, but still spot on, but no! but why not...but he's dead...but its brilliant...but no...but yes...but..."

2007-05-15T15:29:00.000+04:00

So I was running through site tracker only to come across a referring URL, as always I was flattered that a fellow blogger was ‘sweatin’ da technique’ as Erik B and Rakim would say…I hop on to the blog that refers to Diablog to discover that it’s actually a damn good one that puts me to shame…mobile marketing, trends, short punchy posts on randomness, a plethora of great links…the more I browsed through the posts the more flattered I felt…until I realized that It was actually a friend of mine at Arc, Stephanie T, or the Terminator, as she eloquently dubs herself. It all made sense!!!!!

So after the horror of finding out she had been blogging all this time without notifying me, I decided to write this post without telling her.

Check out her awesome blog here.

Coffee with Y&R's strategist, Maria Iankova

2007-04-29T09:40:00.000+04:00

D: So tell us a little about your professional background…

M: I've been working in the field of marketing, marcom and research for more than seven years already. My career began as a consultant in the area of economic and social development promotion in Bulgaria. Then I moved to North Carolina, USA to complete my MBA and worked on market research and brand management projects for clients from various industries such as Sara Lee Branded Apparel, biotech companies in Research Triangle Park and others.

Formally, I became an account planner in 2004, when I came to the UAE. Initially – at Zaman, a boutique brand consultancy in Dubai , and then – at Young & Rubicam, Abu Dhabi.

Looking back, I believe I've been quite lucky so far because I had the opportunity to work on superb assignments: re-branding of large family holding companies, launches of newly-established corporate brands, product launches… I also got involved in various aspects of planning: from getting consumer insights and brand strategy development to ad testing, developing IMC programs and creative briefing.

That's pretty much about it.

D: How would you describe a snapshot of the UAEs planning scene?

M: In my opinion, planning is still in a state of flux, searching for its own identity and its own place in UAE agencies. There's a lack of unanimity (and clarity)as far as the role and the unique value added of planning are concerned. Thus, the shape that planning assumes in the various agencies depends very much on the philosophy of agency management and the personal strengths of planners.

On the other hand, it's indisputable that large UAE clients do expect deep understanding of their customers' mindset, good knowledge of market trends, and carefully crafted messages that reflect their brand's mantra and vision. Their requirements highlight the value of strategic planning and encourage agencies to strengthen their planning capabilities.
As a person who believes in research, I also can't help observing that the account planning approach in the UAE has become more "scientific". Perception audits, database research, copy testing, campaign evaluations, theoretical frameworks etc. - they are no longer just tools requested by global players, but are being more and more often used for local brands. Which I believe is a great sign that the UAE market is maturing and planners have many more opportunities to base their work on a solid foundation.

D: What in your opinion is the world's greatest proposition?

M: Well, that's an ambitious question :)
I'll tell you one of my favorite ones: Apple's promise of technology for "the crazy ones", so brilliantly articulated through its "Think different" statement.

Stemming from a clear understanding of human needs & motivations. Capturing the essence of the brand. Desirable. Distinctive. Breaking all conventions. Deliverable. Providing an inspiration. Crossing cultures. Relevant over time… It provides all preconditions for building a great brand.

D: Actually one of my favorites as well!
But Maria, today, do you think some people are starting to grow cynical of such communication by realizing the duplicity it represents? 'Creative tools for creative people' telling people to think different when the actuality of the matter is, every tom dick and Harry has an Ipod and every graphic designer an Ibook...Apple today stands for the antithesis of thinking different…it stands for conformity. Do you think such a platform is as powerful today as it was during the anarchistic 1984 campaign?

M: Driven by the desire to capture a larger market share and to demonstrate higher growth to shareholders, companies often face the danger of diluting their brand's equity and making people cynical about their brand claims. But, in my opinion, Apple hasn't reached that point yet and its proposition is still relevant.

Yes, it's true that some of its products like the iBook and the iPod are being adopted by more mainstream users. But, that's what happens when you move down the product lifecycle path. They are facing a challenge and need to think harder on a product level.

I disagree, however, that the corporate brand of Apple stands for conformity. In my opinion, it still keeps its promise and continues to offer innovative, stylish, user-friendly technology for people who expect something beyond the norm. Today, for example, the iPhone is redefining the world of the traditional phone customer and its market entry was almost as powerful as that of the iBook decades ago.

D: Very valid point. What do you think is the most interesting piece of content occupying any medium right now? (movie, print ad, TVC, Youtube, song, game, anything you want)

M: Well, probably Seth Godin's "Idea Virus". I particularly like the thought that ideas spread whether you want them to or not, so you might as well take control.

For me it's also intriguing that it became one of the best selling hard cover books, even though it can be downloaded for free.

D: Damn it's goanna take me a while to read up!!! Thanks for sharing.
So if you were conducting this interview what would you have asked yourself?

M: was hoping you would skip that question :)

Probably I would ask: Which is rule of thumb/ philosophy/ generic insight/ principle that guides you in your work as a planner?

Personally, I try not to forget two things:

1. People don't say what they do and don't do what they say. So, be careful with the insights. :)

2. "To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence. Supreme excellence rests in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." (Sun Tsu) – There's a very nice article by Simon Silvester, which explains how this is relevant to planning. (LINK HERE)

D: Maria, really glad we managed to chat, thanks so much for taking time out for us :) Good luck at Y&R.

note: The opinions expressed in this conversation are those of the respondent and may not always reflect those of Y&R.

All blogged out...

2007-04-26T10:25:00.000+04:00

So this week has been one of those weeks, were every Idea I cough up precedes a series of moments consisting of awkward silence and a long drawn out ‘yeeeeaaahh thanks for that Nic’. One of those weeks, where my focus bears a resemblance to a toddlers’, I can’t read past a paragraph and if I do so, I’m on autopilot. Never thought a book could sometimes transpire into a passively consumed medium where I’m simultaneously reading about ‘The changing value of brands’ while asking myself what the difference is between parsley and coriander...Yes it has been one of those weeks, were my output resembles that of a pug…
So in a nutshell, im all blogged out, got nothing to write, nothing of any value to say, nothing to rant on but my inability to rant… But I’m not too worried, as they say ‘It will pass’.

Thankfully a fellow blogger, colleague and friend is on a role at Telecomadvertising… Fadi Khater is definitely on to something interesting with his impulse advertising.

Coffee with JWTs creative director, Mazen Fayad

2007-04-22T09:31:00.000+04:00

D: What’s an award and how come we have so many of them?

M: Naturally, as people, we need to be recognized and acknowledged. It's a need that motivates us and - in most of the times - massages our egos. We created awards simply because a tap on the back wasn't good enough for mass recognition. So many people in so many fields with diverse specializations who simply want to be more than wallflowers. They want to get up and celebrate with the ego parade. Very human. Some smart people, saw an opportunity there, as a new market development, a lucrative area for expansion..etc. They capitalized on these people's longings and behaviors and hence the various award ceremonies.
At the end of the day, we all seek a certain form of immortality. We want to see our names chiseled somewhere other than our tombstones since that we won't end up seeing anyway!!

D: True true, but Mazen we have more award ceremonies than heart surgeons, police institutions and non profit organizations…Why isn’t there a market there? Would you label us a supersuperficial industry?

M: Heart surgeons have their Freddie's and other guild awards, police institutions have their medals and non-pofit organizations... well this is interesting, they have a CAUSE and it's selfless, hence their prefix: non-profit. But never underestimate their bloating (after achieving a certain environmental, humane,...objective) in the form of press releases to achieve their award, more funding!

Idealistically, awarding oustanding achievement in relation to the respected field is hardly an act of superficiality. However, winning in a class C award ceremony just because the great ones weren't there, and then shouting it from roof tops is non-debatable hypocrisy (prefix needed)... again whatever it takes to satisfy the need for recognition...we all know what we're worth and we all have a tendency to multiply its projection. Then again, you can debate superficiality becoming the norm if we take things at face value.

D: What in your opinion is the most interesting piece of content occupying any medium right now?

M: By far, it's the Mcdonald's Sundial Outdoor!
Enough said.

D: In their essay on The Media Society Fred & Farid of ex Marcel, stated quite adamantly that we, as advertisers, are by far the worst storytellers out there and clients could get more for less by simply throwing their money in Hollywood’s direction… Your thoughts?

M: Interesting article and quite amusing... funny enough it was written at a time when I had had enough of advertising and had started film directing.
Look at me now, answering your question after having sold my soul back to the devil, but for a better bargain :)

I agree that generally we are not as good story tellers as Hollywood is or the likes of it. It's simple, films are in the business of entertainment. We are in the business of business - less contraints. Now how boring is it that I couldn't find a better synonym for what we do for a living. Moreover, how pathetic is it that our story is assessed on the basis of making business sense rather than building a certain affinity with people. I also agree that people love a good story and need to be moved. They are ready to pay handsomely for the prospect of excitement even if it's at the expense of truth. Give me something interesting to rattle about irrespective if it's real, fabricated or tweaked and I'll ensure you a quick word of mouth. Have you ever wondered why 5 tabloids in the UK rank before The Times and the other newspaper spreadsheets in daily circulation? It's one of the best examples where content prompts circulation rather than frequency force feeding the content.

Now having said that, there are two very important points I'd like to tap on regarding getting more for less from Hollywood.

1-Statistically speaking what makes a blockbuster movie is a viewership rate of only 5-7% of the nation's population. Now at best, and it's hard to assess because its stratified segmentation, how much of that population is your brand's target? How about the non- blockbuster movies? The rate definitely drops. It's risky but good for general by the way branding or new product introduction that caters for the masses. But I see it more of a supplement, a complimentary medium.

2- What happens to the brand image, identity, character? Will it change and metamorph with every Hollywood story?

D: but couldn’t you make the same claim for the over stratification of the television audience?

M: That's one of the vices of mass communication. You can't avoid the spill-over factor but you can try to control it. With TV it's easier since you can pick both the programs that appeal to your desired target and the time of day to catch them. However, television proved to be a better medium not only for nailing a specific target group but also in the integration of engaging brand stories. Sunsilk has done it twice so far. Once with "Hairapy" and another with "Love Bites".

The resulting "Hairapy" program centered on a Sex and the City-inspired promotion with gay male characters showing up in ads and on the streets to help women get through their various hair traumas. The Hairapy guys offered their version of tough love to women in need of honest feedback about their problem hair, creating a snarky tone that jibed nicely with the personality of the brand.
Where as the mega succes came afterwards with "Lovebites", a 2 minutes episode mini series produced to promote Sunsilk's haircare products. They ran on HBO right after "Sex and the City" reruns. The New York Post wrote the following about it:

"Lovebites" represents a striking change in television advertising and the latest thinking on Madison Avenue: An ad should not only be as entertaining as the show, it should be the show.The series, consisting of 65 episodes, has averaged a 0.5 rating - equal to or better than the numbers cable channels such as VH1, BET and Bravo put up in prime time."

D: So from an adman to a director back to an adman, you think you’ve found your calling? What is Mazen Fayad goanna be doing this very second when he’s 60?

M: As usual, rebounding ;)

2007-04-17T11:31:00.000+04:00

I always promised myself I would never promote the agency I work at on this blog or discuss any issues related to it but we are looking for good people to fill in some new vacancies and I know this is one place to find some. That, and I have published vacancies for Bren’ at Saatchi before so hey why not my own agency!

Anyhow, I’ll testify to the fact that Leo is a great place to work, with good people and good management…Rarely do you get an agency where an MD pops around every morning to ask everyone how they're doing and actually listens to their replies. Even rarer to find an agency where a balding regional executive creative director hits the beach with agency peasants like myself.
Genuinely good people here and a passion to do good work.

For those living abroad and want to trade in their umbrellas and tax forms for flip-flops, this post also extends to you.

For further propogation I’ve put up the above pics with some captions (click to enlarge) to give you a deeper look into the agency life and stuff you wont find on our website or in communicate magazine.

So here are positions:

Account Handlers

Junior
Executives
Managers
Supervisors

Creatives

Art Director
Senior Art Director/Associates
English Copywriters

For those interested or who know of anyone who would be contact rena.khawly@dubai.leoburnett.com who unlike most HR staff is a sweetheart.

Coffee with BBDO strategist Omar El Gammal

2007-04-15T13:20:00.000+04:00

D: So Omar, you’ve recently made the jump from account handling to planning, any advice you would offer someone wanting to make the same transition?

O: Be persistent. Most people will try to convince you to stay within account management with tempting offers and the promise of moving into planning later. It's not that they have bad intentions – it's just because it's so tough to find/keep talented and dependable people that manage and build a relationship with a client. If you really want to get into planning though, don’t put it off – keep at it and stick to your guns because the right door will open up if you keep looking.

Some people will also tell you that there isn’t a strong demand for planners in the region and that opportunities are scarce and the career ladder is slow. The reality is that more clients are demanding strategic planning and a deeper understanding of consumer insights and market trends. More and more agencies are opening or expanding planning departments as a result. Media conglomerates have already picked up on the need for it and are also evolving their various strategic departments. Planners are going to be in big demand the more savvy consumers get and the more competition tightens. Anyone who tries to convince you otherwise should start looking for another industry to work in.

Finally – make sure you're really into planning and not just running from the day-to-day of a client servicing job. If you think planning means you get to do all the fun stuff just without contact reports and cost estimates – you're probably right, but there's a lot more to it than that. Planning is not about being the philosopher and creating fun looking presentations – it's about being able to analyze loads of research and your own observations and pinpoint what really matters to consumers and how that can make your brand more successful. You can make as many colorful presentations, edits and philosophical statements as you want – if they don’t actually lead to better creative that builds business than your role as a planner is useless. If you’re not ready for that, planning is not for you.

D: You seem to have developed a pretty good grasping of exactly what planning is so early on when you’ll find some seniors still struggling with the definition. Why do you think it’s the case?

O: There are different kinds of planners and different agencies have different definitions of what a planner should be. In some places, their role is purely a 'new business' role. In others, planning is just a fancy word for a research department. In some agencies, planners are there to make the creative better. It really depends on what the agency's philosophy is and how management look at the role of planning in the brand building process.

Planning is really what you make of it at this stage in the region as it's still quite a young discipline (here) and it will still evolve further to suit the region and its consumers.

The funny thing is, I'm still learning more and more about 'what planning is' every day. What I know today is mainly from reading and personal experience. It will probably evolve as my experience as a formal planner grows.

The one unshakable truth I'm sure of though is that our responsibility is to better understand our consumers and uncover insights that will build a brands business. If a planner, senior or not, is not about getting brands to connect with consumers and result ultimately in higher sales – than something is very wrong and they should rethink their role.

D: What about future job prospects for planners?

O: Anywhere you find a need to understand and connect with consumers. Design agencies, new product development departments, branding consultancies – anything and everything that needs to communicate with consumers will need to understand consumers. That's why you see in the West, planners have started to find prospects on the client side (Russell Davies for Nike for example).

Whether or not planners will stay in the confines of the ad agency is in the hands of the ad agency itself. If agency managements recognize the opportunity in their clients' needs, than that's where our job prospects are. If not, we'll definitely be in demand elsewhere.

D: Ok so, what worries you enough to keep you up at night and what excites you when it comes to planning?

O: The answer to both those questions is the same: Ideas.
Ideas that I believe in but can’t make others believe in.
Ideas that I fear I won’t end up acting on.
Ideas that don’t mean anything to anyone.

Those are the things that make me worry most.

Likewise, what I love about planning is the challenge to come up with ideas that are original and relevant.

It's almost like I have little voices in my head constantly going off on tangents and getting excited over ideas – some stupid and some not. Yet there's nothing as wonderful as uncovering an insight.

There's a very good article I read recently by Jeremy Bullmore about how a good insight is like a refrigerator – the moment you look into it a light comes on. Love it.

D: So what question would you have asked yourself had you been conducting this interview?

O: That one. No, not really. I guess I would ask 'If you had the chance to get any job in the world right now what would it be?' (a classic lunch break favorite). For me I'd say it's a toss up between a planner at Nike and ditching the rat race to sell tacos & margaritas on the beach.

D: Omar, we know from personal experience that BBDO made one hell of a good decision by bringing you on board, we wish you all the best.
Thanks so much for chatting with us!

O: A pleasure X. Or the blogger formerly known as…

Telecomadvertising.com launched by Fadi Khater

2007-04-09T10:48:00.000+04:00

So the first Telecom Advertising blog kicks off...What better place to do it from then the Middle East and what better person to do it than Leo Burnett’s' Fadi Khater (aka Hat Sauce). With 5 years telco ad experience, 3 launches, a passion for...'hardware' and a seriously cynical outlook on life…his blog should make for an interesting read.

Here is a tidbit of his latest post on what it would be like to have coffee with Robocop.

A conversation with Robocop

Fadi Khater (telecomadvertising.com)

Tone of Voice: “Our brand needs to sound human, and our copy should read as if you are having a conversation with someone over coffee”

Brand Values: Approachable, Honest, Humble, and Friendly.

If your dreaded brand guideline booklet does not have any resemblance to the above, I’m sure you have come across many brands that do. As trivial as it may sound it is the sole yet high rising and mighty pillar that holds up marketing managers’ false sense of hope. Everyone wants to have an approachable brand that is friendly and human-like; but is setting strict communication guidelines and adhering to preset values the best way to do it? Do you actually set guidelines, values, and conversation parameters before you go out to have coffee with your friends? Imagine that, human beings with tone of voice guidelines…I believe the closest we can get to imagining that would be a cup of coffee with Robocop.

read the rest of the article here

Miss Y on going six feet under

2007-03-29T14:59:00.000+04:00

Think about the typical words that people might use to describe a piece of advertising or design that they liked: beautiful, modern, clean, elegant, happy, funny, cool. And yes, actually that's what many ads and designs strive to be. We want to get people to like the ideas and brands we promote so we give them what they like (to see, hear, read, experience...).

But there's something refreshing in the approach of doing just the opposite of that. Give people what they don't like. Work with concepts and visuals that are unpleasant and/or taboo instead of ones that fit into the norms/comfort zones/the cool. Tap into the things that run through the undercurrents of society. Basically use turn-offs to turn-on people... And it works.

As one of the lighter examples, look at Dove's campaign for real beauty. Where models were regular women (with all kinds of figures) picked out as they went about their daily lives. Where the tricks of Photoshop retouching were revealed. Ads that challenged society's concept of beauty. Or take a look at Naked Communications’ Fray Bentos (pies) campaign that offers “real pies for real blokes” through The 'Real Bloke Challenge' that moved around to various cities in North England getting each city to back its local ‘real bloke’ through various forms of communication. Again, the real bloke comes in all shapes and sizes from anywhere in the social ladder, a challenge to society’s concept of what a real man is. This ad for YouTubers also fits into this category of showing what’s real.

What about something more uncomfortable? Like death. Actually that’s what got me started thinking about this whole thing. I was watching Six Feet Under (my personal favorite) which is about death, and I realized how uncomfortable I was watching the first few episodes especially when they started advertising death products like embalming fluid as if they were selling the world’s best facial moisturizer. The DVD box has this written on the cover: Everything Everyone Everywhere Ends. And I’m not the only twisted one out there that loves this show. It’s a best seller; people just love that someone dared to make a show based on such a taboo subject and that through some dark humor, it makes death an ok thing to talk about, even joke about... Actually AdAge’s Campaign of the Century (Funeral)by DDB NY for the VW Beetle is well ahead of its times in that it uses death and wills in a humorous way to sell a car.

I was reading an article in ICON magazine entitled 'Design is Evil' (Nov.2006). It showcases a variety of contemporary designers who are “producing work that aims to shock and undermine”. While a lot of this work seems a little overboard, they scream out their messages clearly (maybe too clearly) in a way that is very hard to ignore. In advertising this reaction is essential especially given that attention is difficult to capture for very long these days. Shocking and making people even just the slightest bit uncomfortable has the potential to alter peoples perception and reactions to certain subject areas.

The Magical World of Soap Storytelling

2007-03-26T11:23:00.000+04:00

Brands are constantly in search of a great story to tell, to entertain, to engage, to educate, to be discussed, to be memorable and off course, addictive.

Never ever did I think that I would be blogging about the merits of the Bold and the Beautiful and other Soaps, but then again never did I think I’d be blogging… I think it is safe to say that the Soap Opera has revolutionized the way we tell stories and has laid down the foundation for some of today’s best shows, Lost, 24, Prison Break and other addictive entertainment.

So what is it about Soaps that make them so extraordinary? 1 Multiple narratives 2 Intricate interwoven plots and 3 open ended formats.

Multiple narratives deepen the story

Traditionally most story telling involved a single protagonist or hero carrying a single narrative in a linear format e.g. Knight Rider, MacGyver or even Little Red Riding hood. Soap Operas on the other hand, have multiple storylines moving from ‘protagonistic’ to’ polyagonistic’. Multiple narratives give viewers a larger world to grapple with, more to discuss, more to do in terms of linking and theorizing.

Complicated Plot Lines instill the desire to reduce ambiguity

The average soap has anything between 5 to as many as 10 different plot lines co existing. Most will link somewhere in the overall story but storyline predictability is extremely difficult considering the combinations of possibility are innumerable. This ambiguity and the desire to reduce it result in conversation, thought, speculation and conjecture about the plot lines.

Open ended formats are participatory and addictive

Traditionally, most stories come with a basic format, a beginning, a middle and an end. The protagonist and context are established, a struggle introduced and finally transcendence of the respective struggle. Soaps on the other hand offer no such structure, no such closure. After each show the audience is left to participate in thought, theorization and water cooler discussion until the next episode. Open ended plot lines invite the audience to participate with the text itself. Compare the quantity and quality of conversation about a good one off movie in relation to a the dialogue generated by a single episode of 24.

Brands can learn quite a bit from these three traits that lay the foundation for much of today’s entertainment. Multiple layers deepen brand stories, intricate plot lines challenge people to reduce ambiguity and engage themselves. Finally open ended formats offer the consumer a participatory role as opposed to merely a receptive one.
It is the combination of these three traits the could offer the consumer a more sophisticated, interesting and engaging brand story that would lead them to want to spend time with.

Singing along to the Humdrum of The Karaoke Brand

2007-03-22T12:34:00.000+04:00

‘We need to be consistent’ or ‘media neutral’ is a term we hear at least once every other day…and in full honesty I haven’t yet understood the logic behind this dogma. I’m assuming it is rooted somewhere in between the misperception of the consumers incompetence and their gold fish ability for recall.

Now who am I to question decades of branding practice or the collective intelligence of the industry practitioners, but I can say that there is no existence more mundane then a consistently consistent one…a predictable one.

It’s not rocket science, the most boring people on this earth, the people whom if asked to sit next to you at a dinner party you would rip your eyeballs out, squeeze lemon on, sprinkle some salt and shove them back into your sockets, are the ‘Karaoke People’. The karaoke people are the people whose words you can literally mime or sing as they are coming out of their mouths, people in whom you can see the wheels and cogs screeching and gyrating in their heads before they pump out their humdrum lyrics.

Contrary to ‘The Karaoke people ‘,I think the most interesting people we meet are people with multiple layers not personalities, people who surprise us, people who you learn something new about everyday…we as human beings need to have an element of unpredictability to stop us from gunning ourselves down from boredom, I see no reason why brands should be any different…I’m sure I’ll be ranting and raving about this a little later.

Rants From the Right Side - Guest- Miss Y on Street Art

2007-03-18T13:23:00.000+04:00

When you work in advertising you’re always on the lookout for what’s cool, for rising subcultures and trends, etc... anything that you feel will help in breaking out of classic advertising (like TV, radio and print). Anything that will reach target audiences faster and with more impact than what they’ve grown used to (and bored of).

Inspiration comes from the street. Not surprisingly... this has become commonplace: you see classic dance mixed up with some hip hop moves picked up from the ‘streets’ and bang! it’s born again as contemporary dance... you see fashion on the runway inspired by fashion from the subway. Seems like the advertising industry has seen street artists gaining popularity and is attracted to the fact that this activist art form is on the street, it’s surprising, it’s in your face and can stop you in your tracks. So bang! guerrilla advertising is gaining even more popularity... advertising has moved into the street artists’ territory. Which is not something that is going to be accepted very easily I think... Advertising is like the antithesis of street art. Most of this art is actually ad busting, culture jamming, anti-brands, trying to take the street back from corporations and their advertisers...

So we’re in the middle of this now, what will the street artists do (given that their art is based fundamentally on reacting and causing reaction)? What’s happened so far is that some have actually been hired on a freelance basis by advertising agencies or corporations to bring brands back into cool, back into the streets. Others, fuelled by the ‘invasion’ have stuck to their message as artists and even stepped up their activism.

As with any other channel of communication, I’m sure guerilla advertising will be used and abused. The only difference here (as opposed to television and other media) is that nobody can really own the streets so it’ll be interesting to watch the reaction to this tug-of-war.

Check out Wooster Collective for street art from around the world.

A night out with Mr Cuervo

2007-03-15T10:21:00.000+04:00

So the other day I was at this party.

You know… one of those random parties where a cocktail of nationalities and industries mingle polite conversation with dashes of need-to-know gossip. The kind of party that can either be the toast of the Dubai social calendar or fizzle out into a number of sub parties that, at best, leave you talking to the same people you showed up with. This particular party was working out quite nicely, so credit to ‘Dermondt’ the party liaison.

I was chatting to a fellow ad man about industry salaries or how certain campaigns registered on the crap-o-meter and how certain campaigns that were labelled as crap weren’t as crappy as everyone made out, when I was cut off mid-sentence by the kind of entrance that would put Jack Nicholson axing his way through a door of the Overlook Hotel and shrieking ‘Here’s Johnny!’ to shame.

There was nothing particularly ‘ownable’ about the character who’d just walked through the door other than his lack of ‘ownability’. He oozed effortless pretension, his smile exuded an aura of dishonesty, his perfectly styled hair looked like his GQ library was full of torn out pages he used as references during his frequent visits to Tony & Guy. His clothes and shoes inspired a new model of fashion retail whereby you give window mannequins names allowing customer to stroll into a store and try on an ‘Exclusive Youseef’ or ‘Bad Boy Roy’ (fragrance included). Though I was sure I’d never seen him before, something seemed familiar.

He began sauntering through the room, hugging people who I was pretty damn sure didn’t have a clue who he was. His handshakes alternated depending on who he was saying hi to, from the basic hand-to-hand all the way to the African American right shoulder to right shoulder brotherly love embrace. He interrupted three ladies in the middle of their conversation to deliver all-round compliments so impeccably executed his mirror must have shot itself.

And I was up next. I braced myself and crossed my fingers in hope that this was not going to be a time defying activity, where seconds suspend brevity.

‘Yo!’ he smiles. Ok, interesting segmentation, I guess it may be my loose jeans.

‘Hi, how are you?’ I politely respond.

‘Fine, fine…I know you!’ he confidently declares.

‘Here we go’ I think to myself.

Thus begins the name-throwing guessing game. On the 6th round of ‘do you know’ my phone rings ever so expediently. Our conversation ends there. As the night continues, no matter where in the relatively spacious 2 bedroom Barsha apartment I am, his voice carries ubiquitously in the background. Most of his sentences kick off with an ‘I’, though on one occasion I did hear a name (perhaps a reference to himself in the third person?).

Toward the end of the night, as the tequila kicked in, the revelation struck! I knew who he was – He was to me what water is to a fish, and that’s probably why I couldn’t recognize him. He is everywhere, all around me; I hear and see him constantly, a hundred times a day…he is bad advertising.

He is the advertising that thinks it knows me and as a result categorizes me. He is the multiple and contradictory face of corporations with no identity, talking to different categories with affected sensitivity. He is that condescending barrage of mindless compliments that leave you yearning for a phlegmy cold. He is the impeccable packaging that roots itself in the ever-changing zeitgeist of the ‘now’, the packaging that masquerades in post modernistic values like individualism and freedom while standing for nothing short of the contrary- conformity. He is the hypocrisy of a personal message in an impersonal manner, the tedious advertising that made heroes of the inventors of TIVO and DVR. Finally, he is the advertising that enormously overestimates the role it plays in people’s lives…

So, despite the next day’s hangover, I have tequila to thank for two things: First, for sparking my revelation. And second but more importantly, for speeding up the inevitable response to bad advertising-helping me forget.

Thanks!!

2007-03-14T11:50:00.000+04:00

Wanted to thank everyone who voted for our Account Man Popup making it Russells post of the month!

Coffee with Saatchi's head strategist, Brenda Kassir

2007-03-08T15:48:00.000+04:00

D: What's the greatest proposition of all time...

B: Woman don't buy lipstick, they buy hope. Revlon

D: Could you argue that a proposition like that is the antithesis of that supporting the dove campaign for real beauty? i.e 'Hope to be' Revlon vs.. 'just be' Dove?

B: The Dove campaign is tapping into another equally true insight. It is a reaction to years of fashion and cosmetic campaigns which give women an unrealistic image to aspire to.

Both brands appeal to women with different psychographics and needs.

Great brands create a need or fulfill an unmet one. Both Revlon and Dove have carved their niche.

D: You talk about dove carving a new niche, quite typical of this day and age, does more choice at the hands of the consumer mean less loyalty? Or will familiarity remedy excessive choice?

B: On this point I agree with Mark Earls. We behave as if the 'brand' were a tangible thing that exists separate from ourselves - a monstrous deity that demands complete obedience and regular feeding. We create a 'brand world' and assume that people have intense relationships with the products and services we sell. We spend all our energies and time philosophizing on the 'brand essence' and the 'brand triangle' and the 'brand meaning' and 'brand onions'.

A brand is a function of what people have experienced in the past. In reality, most products people buy are low involvement and people will buy the products they have in the past which suit them because of price, distribution, word of mouth, habit, the brand promise etc.

The moment something changes (either in consumers lifestyle circumstances e.g they get wealthier or poorer; or the introduction of a better alternative; or if the brand lets them down; or if they simply get bored because the brand has failed to innovate in product terms or in its image) they can easily change brands. Simple as that. Choice is a great thing. Brands that fail to stay innovative and fail to have a point of view on the world will lose out.

D: So where do the traditional agencys of today fit in tomorrow? The generation C phenomenon saw less agencys hands in superbowl ads this year, consultants are now weaving there way into branding, the plethora of web 2.0 superbrands like eBayYouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia have basically said 'who the hell needs an image when you got engagment'. All in all the new markcom paradigm isn't looking too good for us is it?

B: I think that whilst web 2.0 is opening up the way we use media (and web 4.0 will be even more powerful), it is no substitute for solid, long term brand thinking and creativity that comes out of a truly deep understanding of a brand and the collective psyche. I don't care much for one-off ads and short lived brand strategies. The result is a fad, rather than a long lasting brand idea.

I think we gave up a lot of ground when we decided to get specialised, I liken it to trying to complete a jigsaw without all the pieces of the puzzle. The most fulfilling and effective campaigns are the ones where all elements work together - consumer insights, media strategy, creativity, CRM, PR. In this context, youtube and myspace are just another part of a strong marketing mix.

D: Could you give us a couple of your favorite examples of strategies that ran themselves nicely across both old & new media? Any from the region?

B: Saatchi & Saatchi's work for Folgers coffee is a brilliant insight into waking up or being able to 'tolerate mornings' better with Folgers. http://www.toleratemornings.com It showed a great understanding of the target market (early 20's) not only in terms of its tone of voice and message takeout, but also the integrated media used - print, viral, ambient.

The work done for Telecom New Zealand for the launch of video capabale mobile phones (which enabled people to make and send films on their mobile phones) is another well integrated, and innovative campaign. The campaign objective was to encourage people to start using the video service by driving them to a web site competition for people to create their own films. Advertising for the web site and new video service comprised TV, blogs, sampling, internet. http://www.rff.co.nz.

Regionally, I think the work we do in this region for Red Bull is world class. We bring to life the 'Red Bull gives you wiings' spirit and philosophy in a regionally relevant way through the use of now famous events (E.g Flugtag and Air race), sponsorships, TV, print, ambient and digital.

D: Bren as always it's been great chatting with you, you are without a doubt one of our favourite guests. Many thanks.

VIDEO- The New Account Man Pop-Up

2007-03-05T10:33:00.000+04:00

So I was sitting in a meeting a couple of days ago hearing, not listening, to someone superfluously pre-selling an ad to a client. Now please don't get me wrong, I think pre-selling is important, target, insight, creative strategy, 'campaignability' etc...
But, most pre-sell I hear involves someone explaining execution to someone else who in many cases is a member of the addressed audience which makes the need to explain cause for worry.
This is the part of the meeting where my hearing shuts off and escapism kicks in as I begin to imagine how funny it would be if we had an account man pop out of every magazine ad...

Thought it might look something like THIS!

Many thanks to 'Dolla Sign Doxy' for the much needed comedic input.

(JUST REALIZED LB TORONTO ARE CARRYING OUR POST ON THEIR BLOG SO LOTS OF LOVE GOES OUT TO THEM, KEEP REACHIN' FELLAS!!!

PSS. We are being nominated for Post of the month, vote here

A Heartfelt Letter to all the Planners out there...

2007-03-04T11:47:00.000+04:00

A short video going out to all planners click HERE to view.

Courtesy of Aardman Animations
Image courtesy of Russel

Rants From the Right Side - Guest- Miss Y on Stock Photography

2007-03-01T13:58:00.000+04:00

One picture can say a thousand words. Now try it the other way around: One word can say a thousand pictures. I've been juggling those words around as I try to figure out what to make of the relationship between advertising and stock photography.

First instinct? I hate stock images and the way they stereotype and package people, emotions, moments... I hate how image banks slice up life into categories and neatly fit mostly intangible concepts into 'boxes' you can open with a keyword. Hi, welcome to the image bank. Please enter your
keyword(s) to access the image(s) we have decided appropriately fit your request.

But in advertising, let's face it, time and money are not on our side. We have tight deadlines, low budgets and high demand. So I'm not exactly at liberty to go out and take my own photos (like I did for university projects). Time, models, the right scenery, the perfect lighting...all hard to come by. So the remaining options are stock photography or a hired photographer. I would, if the budget allowed for it, go for the latter where I can at least cater directly to the concept.. I'm not actually taking the photo but I can make sure all the elements are exactly as I envisioned them.

But here's another problem. What's excruciatingly irritating, in this region in particular, is that stock images have become the norm to such an extent that even when the client allows for a photo shoot, he expects the images to be like those of stock photography...forced, fake and disgustingly perfect, lacking any real essence or emotion. I end up back at square one. The concept and layout become controlled by these 'alien' images that take the personal edge off the end result.

Like X so cleverly pointed out, this issue has been around for a long time but the way people perceive and deal with photography is evolving. There's an image overload, everyone's taking pictures (my grandma has a digital camera even though her TV is still one of those 12 channel, the remote is heavier than the TV kind of TVs). People know what real is, they love what real is (YouTube, reality TV). So why do we keep feeding them images that they just know aren't real?

Do advertising and stock images go hand in hand because we're selling stereotypes too or are we selling stereotypes because we use stock photography? I know there's no clear cut answer to this issue (Read this yesterday from Russell: " You get carried away with rhetoric and enthusiasm and forget that the likely scenario will be that everything will be a blurry munge like it was before, with this new element added in") but some blurriness would be nice.

Can an Agency Overshadow its Brands?

2007-02-27T11:27:00.000+04:00

It is no surprise that an agency can elevate a brand to new heights. Some of the most successful brands owe a large share of their success to their agencies...but could it be that an agency actually gets bigger than its brands? Maybe the agency becomes both a means and an end?
Could it be that an agency's communication for all of its brands has a certain, style, wit, humor that is so typical that it overshadows those of the brand itself?
And we are not talking about any agency that simply executes one idea across mulitple brands...nope we are talking about arguably one of the most creative agencys of today, yesterday and most likely, if Colorado proves as inspirational as Miami (yes they are moving), tomorrow.

Yes it sounds pretty bizarre for a piece of communication to resonate an agency's values as opposed to the brand it was conceived for...
I feel that way every time I see a Crispin Porter + Bogusky ad. Wake Up With The King or subservient chicken for Burger King, Let’s Motor.” for MINI, VW's unpimp my ride and Fast, Victoria secrets Pinkpantypoker.com. The ads I have sited seem to resonate more CP+B values than their respective brands...I guess what I am trying to say is that CP+ B has so much damn character in all the communication it develops, I feel like I'm watching a CP+B ad not a burger king ad...

An inside look at Crispin here.

Coffee with BBDO Planning Director, Hubert Boulos

2007-02-25T12:47:00.000+04:00

D: Could you tell us a little about you, sorta bring your life to life!

H: You only live once!

D: Every planner gets the same first kick off question, in your limited experience in this region,is planning undervalued or does the region lack value in planning?

H: Neither. Whether here or in the rest of the world planning has to be defined within the agency and for its clients. I believe planning is an
agency related issue vs a geographic one. Some agencies are better than others at it in the Middle East and elsewhere.

D:So everyone claims a different method to the madness of planning, what's yours?

H: Quantitative research!

D: What is it you look for when hiring a young planner? Could you give us a sneak peak at an unorthodox question you might ask?

H: I look for people with whom I could have a beer after work or with whom I could enjoy a good lunch.

D: So you hired a junior planner what would be their first task you'd assign?

H- Ideally (if a client is running a promotion) I would send the junior
planner to actually sell the product in a supermarket (part of a
promotions team)

D: Someone roles up to you one day and claims to be heavens marketing director. For some odd reason, you believe him (possibly due to his business card being trailed by a halo) He goes on to elaborate on how people are losing faith in heaven and putting all their allegorical eggs in this life's basket. Any idea what any sentence on the brief would look like?

H: What do you have to lose? (though it runs against my personal
philosophy -see answer #1)

D: As planners we are constantly vexing over the right sentence,or words to bring something to life. What sentence or combination of words bring Hubert to life as a planner?

H: If it does not sell it's useless!

D: If you were conducting this interview, what would you have asked yourself?

H: What strategy would you have loved to have written?
Answer: the Axe/Lynx strategy developed by LINTAS Paris (FYI: most
people think it's BBH but it's not!)

D: Many thanks Hubert and good luck at BBDO!

Rants From the Right Side - Guest- Miss Y

2007-02-21T17:34:00.000+04:00

Ever wonder what happens to the ideas that don't make it?

And I'm not talking about the ones you knew never had a chance. More like the ones you'll describe over and over again to whoever shows a glimmer of interest because they sound so damn good. The ones that make time fly as you work on them because, for a change, they're fun and you can't wait to see them out of your head and materialized.

It really doesn't matter how it's done (painfully slow and or heartlessly fast)... good ideas are killed all the time. I'll be the first to admit that I don't accept the death of my (good) ideas easily. But I'm not one to force an idea where it just doesn't work. I'll give it the funeral it deserves and bury it in my own personal idea graveyard.

Some time later, in a brainstorming session turned séance, something will bring that idea back from the dead. A word, smell, image, expression... anything... It’ll just fall into place as if this was the situation it was made for and you just happened to have thought it up too early. You’ll be racking your brain for an idea and coming up blank. Then suddenly somewhere in the recesses of the mind you’ll stumble over it. And there’s no shame in bringing it out to the open again. It doesn’t make you less creative for not coming up with a brand-spanking-new idea. You just found the right time to use it.

(Your idea can also come back to life in someone else’s head. It’s not your idea anymore. It’s gone through their mind and morphed into a new idea. It might have been planted there by you in that discussion you had way back when. Ok. Don’t know where that’s going, I’m just rambling)

Anyway just felt like writing and there was that idea we talked about before so I tried to write about that.

Words of a Mother...

2007-02-06T11:58:00.000+04:00

One of the smartest (in conjunction with the loudest) women I have met to this day also happens to be my best friends mother and on occasion sits in for mine.
I was having a little chat with her a while back when she made one hell of a point that got me thinking a little recently about where the future of brands is headed...the chat went something like this.
(Just to set the stage, she's as greek as you get and I call her Mom)

MOM says: X let me tell you samthing...loyalty is sabjective"

I say: Mom what do you mean by that, are trying to say that it differs with each individuals value system?

Mom says: No X I am not trying to say anything of the sort, its mach simpler than that. X... people are only as loyaal as their options...

...and Mom just in case your son happens to forward this link to you...
Hi! I missed you, as does he, he is fine, his love life is good, he is eating well, doing well at work and looks very healthy (though a little on the plumpy side recently)

Phenomenal video for Sia's Breathe me.

2007-02-05T10:28:00.000+04:00

Courtesy of ndegeocello

Louis Vuitton "Superflat Monogram" Japanese Cartoon

2007-02-04T10:48:00.000+04:00

'An ad campaign for LOUIS VUITTON by Mamoru Hosoda. an updated alice in wonderland, in which a girl, searching for her lost cell phone, floats in a dizzying world of the company's logos. While waiting to meet her friends outside of a Louis Vuitton store, Aya's cell phone is eaten by the LV Panda, who then promptly swallows Aya - but the inside of his stomach is gateway to a psychadelic wonderland. Based on characters created by famed superflat artist Takashi Murakami.'

Many thanks Freckles:)

"PRO-BONO'

2007-01-30T16:06:00.000+04:00

To quote Campaign magazine 'Pro-bono' ads are, as their Latin label suggests, meant to be 'for good'.
I bet a certain young lady that her agency would enter one of the above pro bono campaigns into award ceremonies. She, at the time, adamantly insisted that there was no way...

Our conversation below:

ME: U owe me money... page X campaign, happens to have a pro bono ad I bet you you'd enter...
HER: and why wouldn't I...It got shortlisted!
ME: yes, thank u, i figured that out...u seem to have missed the point.
HER: Scores will be settled on the 12th of Feb...

Then it gets a little personal...

hmmm, awards, awards, awards....

Just to clarify, I think entering both of the above campaigns destroys the idea of 'pro-bono' but hey as she so eloquently put 'it got shortlisted'

Diablog Cafes Ad of the Year

2007-01-25T14:22:00.000+04:00

Diablog Cafes ad of the year here. One of the best pieces of communication we've seen this year.

Is Blogging Killing Planning

2007-01-24T16:00:00.000+04:00

Great post from adliterate on the idea that blogging is killing planning, check it out here.

The Good Samaritans of Pro-Bono PART 2

2007-01-21T14:02:00.000+04:00

A couple of weeks ago we were blogging on the moral dilemma of submitting pro bono work to award ceremonies. Campaign have done quite a nice job in this weeks issue covering the topic, so make sure you have a run through the piece.

BRAYIAN HUMOR

2007-01-18T11:39:00.000+04:00

Greg gave us a ring today and begged us to post these on the blog, after a 30min squabble, the promise of an open tab at the Radisson rooftop, a naked run through Media City, his left thumb ring and an interview we accepted...hesitantly

Have a look at the 2 Brayian Web Films HERE and HERE

Keep em coming Greg.

Guest Rant-Doner Detroit Planner, Tamer Kattan

2007-01-11T09:42:00.000+04:00

"Hunt like an Indian NOT a cowboy"

Most marketers hunt like cowboys. Focusing on the weapons. What kind of rifle are you using? Which media is hot? The focus is on the tool.
Smash a few great drives on the golf course and you'll see the same type of corporate thinking.
Some guy with the ugliest swing in the world will ask you what kind of driver you're using - and inevitably buy one. But his horrible swing (execution) will be the same and the desired outcome will never be achieved.
The focus was on the tool - rather than the knowledge.

Tribes take it back to the Indian way of hunting: Where does my target eat, sleep, hunt, mate, etc etc etc...Tribes put the focus back on the target.
And with much less
expensive weapons - they were the ones who helped feed our starving Pilgrim forefathers.
Living in a very exciting era, where new technology is popping up everywhere, most marketers easily get distracted by the shine of the next new gadget or medium - rather than which is the next medium that will change the way my target will mate, sleep, eat, bond, love, etc etc etc...

P&G Encourage Stage Diving!

2007-01-10T10:45:00.000+04:00

P&G's CEO or Head Proctoid A.G. Lafley urges companies to 'let go' or risk losing touch.
So the time has come when even the most pedantically obsessive compulsive research infested corporation is going to make the metaphorical stage dive...hmm is the stage goanna become redundant?

A.G. Lafley quotes always come in handy with conservative clients, more so a quote like this.

The Good Samaritans of Pro-Bono

2007-01-08T20:24:00.000+04:00

Jack and Harry both do one great deed each, something that really made a difference in someone's life. This deed was not requested of them, but they did it anyway and it genuinely did help someone. Now, Jack never tells anyone of his deed, keeps it to himself and takes his good deed to the grave with him not feeling the need to dispense his actions. Harry on the other hand goes straight to every major publisher in the area.

So the question is - should we submit entries into pro-bono award categories?

THX!

2006-12-26T14:59:00.000+04:00

That's it for 2006, we just wanted to say thanks to all of you for your contributions, genuinely appreciated.
We'll return in 2007 refreshed and possibly a little heavier.

Lebanese Unity

2006-12-14T13:51:00.000+04:00

Powerful campaign for Lebanese Unity, have a look here.

Is Loyalty for Suckers?

2006-12-04T14:01:00.000+04:00

All things being equal, two industry practitioners start their roles as juniors at the same agency (we will call one Bob & the second one Rob), Bob & Rob perform equally well and are top notch juniors. 2 years down the line, Bob & Rob receive 40% increase offers from a competing agency of equal status on an account equal to the previous...
Bob goes
Rob stays
HR Dep say loyalty pays off, realists say loyalty is for suckers...

In 10 years from now, who's shoes would you prefer to be in Bouncy Bob or Stable Rob?

Thoughts?

Coffee with JWT Associate Planning Director, Prabs

2006-11-28T09:33:00.000+04:00

D: Is a regional APG the result of good planning or is good planning a result of an APG ? Is Dubai ready for one?

P: I think it works both ways, they are not mutually exclusive. But that is possible only if a Planning culture exists in its true form even to a lesser extent, currently it doesn’t. So to answer your second question, Dubai is not quite there yet I feel. But that shouldn’t stop us from making an attempt to create the APG Middle East. It just requires getting some of the Planning minds together and starting a dialogue in conjunction with APG UK.

D: Any great campaigns from the region you could site with planning written all over them?

P: NONE :(

D: As a planning director I'm sure you've accumulated an insight or two on spotting talent, could you share any with us? What is it you look for in a young planner?

P: Planners in general need to be driven by and equipped to contribute to outstanding and effective advertising. Obviously, they need to be skilled in some fundamental pre-requisites. What follows is by no means an exhaustive checklist, but works as a good benchmark –
a. Passion for advertising as a business. They need to be infectiously passionate about advertising because that is what we do. If we are not driven by contributing at every step of the advertising development to encourage great advertising (that works), then Account Planning is not the best option. They should have a sensibility about advertising because at the end of the day, a Planner needs to know how to use information to craft advertising.
b. They need to have an intuitive ability to see beyond the façade of a consumer, which is where insights lie. To this effect they need to have a unique understanding of human behavior and advertising’s ability to influence it.
c. Having child-like curiosity, ask probing questions, be deeply curious about why people do what they do. Being both ‘right brain’ and ‘left brain’ thinkers helps - simultaneously creative, innovative, and instinctual, while also being disciplined and logical thinkers.
d. They need to be sensitive to cultural context, pop culture and trends. They must understand the cultural context the brand and consumer live in. They need to have an insatiable appetite for reading, learning and applying their knowledge to brands and communication.
e. While this comes with practice, they must be able to synthesize vast amounts of data and bring it down to a single point of view. This might apply to a seasoned Planner, but part of the art and science of being a Planner is the kind of magic that occurs when they use their intelligence, instinct, judgement, and intuition to integrate information and identify a key compelling insight that becomes the platform for strategic development – not dwell in intellectual reinterpretations of a business problem that lead nowhere.
f. Existence of conceptual skills and imagination, 'inspiration' being the operative word here. Someone who does things in an inspiring manner - who can craft a thought in the most inspiring manner. Again, this will come only from practice, but taking consumer knowledge and packaging it in a palatable and motivating form for creatives. To me it is the ability to understand your intuition – people who trust their instincts to recognize truths. Not simply report back what consumers say, but uncover the meaning behind what is said and why. g. Above all, common sense !
To sum this up, I feel the value of planning is rooted in the unique understanding of human behavior and our ability to influence it. Junior or senior Planners, both need to believe and live by this, only then will they make a meaningful contribution to the creation of advertising and building brands.

D: What do you think is the toughest challenge planners tend to face in their everyday jobs?

P: Juggling the role of a brand strategist and a ‘creative’ planner – time spent on the latter is limited due to many internal and external factors. A struggle to agree on an insight with clients as well as creatives - each person in the business seems to have his or her own definition. Trying to make people in the agency understand that an idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it. Point being, an inspiring brief will result in breakthrough work only if it is given to a bunch of talented people. Insights and creative ideas suggested by Planners being snubbed, either because of lack of understanding or due to insecurities. Either ways, it is frustrating. Constantly educating clients that the memorable never emerged from a formula, and that principles endure, formulas don’t. Most multi national clients love to indulge in over analysis not realizing that logic and over analysis can immobilise and sterilize an idea. Like love – the more you analyse it, the faster it disappears.

D: As planners we are always in search of an idea, the commonly held notion is that ideas come from anywhere. Where is your anywhere?

P: My ‘anywhere’ list is endless - By being eclectic, reading popular magazines, newspapers, poetry, art, literature, going to the cinema and theater, watching TV (occasionally watch ones i don’t want to watch), listening to music, watching music videos, stand up comedy shows, watch ads from around the world, browse the net, talking to people, spending time with people smarter than me, reading books of all kind - creative awards annuals, popular psychology, human behavior, marketing, advertising, case studies of brands from the multitude of sources to cross fertilise, inhabit the real world, not ivory towers, ad land. Just plain watching and observing people every time I go out – at coffee shops, restaurants, bars, malls, while traveling, at airports, even in the flight, everywhere I encounter them.

D: What's wrong with planning?

P: Are you referring specifically to this region ? If yes, at the risk of sounding cynical, it is a highly ill-defined role at the moment and there is no Planning culture in the ‘real’ sense. Worse, within agencies people are unclear about the role. In addition, clients have varying expectations from Planning. Unless there is a clear definition and understanding of the discipline and unless a philosophy is practiced in reality, nothing will be right with Planning in this region.

D: If you were conducting this interview, what would you have asked yourself?

P: Am I a frustrated ‘creative’ disguising as a Planner ?

D: Many thanks Prabs, good luck with JWT!

Post 3 on our Insignificance

2006-11-27T12:37:00.000+04:00

Yes, here we go again...this is the 3rd cynical post on advertising. This time, captured brilliantly by a George Carlin stand-up segment. I think watching this video every so often is a sobering experience that might help keep us rooted in the reality of our roles in consumers lives.

Now for the light hearted, please be warned, this is delivered in classic Carlin style (for those of you unfamiliar with Carlin style, the best way to describe it would be to ask you to imagine a 70 year old pi**sed off drunkard who can make a point.

Credit to Jim Hacker for post this clip.

Greg Brays Sony Ad

2006-11-26T16:29:00.000+04:00

Caught up with Greg Bray (Promoseven) last week, he showed me this ad he shot for kicks on the weekend. Yet another demontration of why Greg is truely one of the best creatives out there...Enjoy

Planners in the Region...

2006-11-22T10:44:00.000+04:00

Everyday other day I find myself browsing through the UK's APG and every other day I worry when I look at the trainings scheduled for young planners ( some listed below)...The dates are too far apart to actually fly to London for all of them.

How to Brief Creatives for Advertising
How to Understand and Use Quantitative Research :
How to facilitate inspirational brainstorming and generate fresh creative thinking
How to Brief Integrated Campaigns
Getting to Know Brand Frameworks & Tools
Understanding Econometrics
Mini Business School
How to make your IPA paper a winner
Intensive Induction into Account Planning

The lack of proper training for junior planners in the region is a scary thought...it's left up to you to extract your education from other peoples blogs, agency planning kits, APG papers and your seniors, but that really only gets you so far...

I know there are some great senior planners in the region who are capable of holding training sessions or facilitating discussion for younger planners and one another, from Brenda, Angela, Prabs, Anil, to Ramzy and many more I'm sure I have yet to meet. I'm equally as sure that there are some pretty fiesty young planners who would definitely throw some serious passion and dexterity back the other way, Incognito, Hadi, Rayan & Talal...(let alone aspiring planners)

Thus this little post is a form of an attempt to spark some talk about creating some form of an informal planning group in the region, be it as simple as getting together every other week for a chat...(as Incognito mentioned to me)

Thoughts?

2006-11-20T19:11:00.000+04:00

An interesting blog, 'Muttawa', with a wealth of knowledge on Saudi Arabia comes to an end after 2 years and a combination of 400 posts...
For those of you that are unfamiliar with the 'Muttawa'have a look here.

Add life to life

2006-11-16T12:02:00.000+04:00

du, the new telecom provider, have launched, check out their ad here.

2006-11-14T11:31:00.000+04:00

Adding more to the pessimistic posts on the fundamentals of advertising, (see It's goanna change your life forever below) I was sitting with a creative director discussing a sign off line to an ad, I made the comment that maybe we are taking it a little too far, maybe a humbler sign off would be more suitable, now as people tended to do he started off his sentence with 'I see your point but...' the rest was basically a haze of words like 'Bigger-Wow' I lost him completely at 'life better'.
Back in Uni I took a course that more or less covered a section on the psychology and dynamics of persuasion. In a nut shell it mentioned two routes to persuasion, 'central' whereby you list the facts- this procedure used to persuade the more knowledgeable crowds, and the 'peripheral' which is basically the show u put on, call it delivery- a prime example was Hitler's methods of propaganda, imagery, music, symbolism etc. But the fate of both these techniques lay at the hands of one integral factor 'The source' of a message..., who they are, what they have to gain, their likeability, credibility etc....
This last point has been leading me into the thought that we tend to forget the context of our message, overrate our existing credibility, forget that this is indeed an ad (very much in the same category as all 'advertising', most of which if sh*t), we are speaking on behalf of a people that the consumer knows very well will tell you anything to take your money,. In spite of all this for some odd reason we assume that anything we say will not be approached with cynicism, we really do expect the consumer to interpret our message at face value. Maybe its sometimes better to say 'Hey it is indeed just another f*cking biscuit but it is a good one' instead of 'Reach paradise', 'Escape' or as Incognito mentioned ' so sweet you wont want to share'
Image courtesy of Organic frog

2006-11-12T11:29:00.000+04:00

Brenda's Secret Revealed!

2006-11-08T16:30:00.000+04:00

Going through the comments on Diablog...i stumbled across a comment by Fertilise your mind AKA Brenda Kassir (Saatchi's senior strategist), turns out Brenda's got a blog she's been hiding from us since May (SINCE MAY BRENDA!!) Below is an extract I loved ( thus stole) off her blog that I think really personifies the creative process...
Now that the news is out, we all look forward to Brenda updating her blog Sensitive Mind more often...

"When I do a design project, I begin by listening carefully to you as you talk about your problem and read whatever background material I can find that relates to the issues you face. If you’re lucky, I have also accidentally acquired some firsthand experience with your situation. Somewhere along the way an idea for the design pops into my head from out of the blue. I can’t really explain that part; it’s like magic. Sometimes it even happens before you have a chance to tell me that much about your problem! Now, if it’s a good idea, I try to figure out some strategic justification for the solution so I can explain it to you without relying on good taste you may or may not have. Along the way, I may add some other ideas, either because you made me agree to do so at the outset, or because I’m not sure of the first idea. At any rate, in the earlier phases hopefully I will have gained your trust so that by this point you’re inclined to take my advice. I don’t have any clue how you’d go about proving that my advice is any good except that other people — at least the ones I’ve told you about — have taken my advice in the past and prospered. In other words, could you just sort of, you know...trust me?"

From Sensitive Mind (Linked on the right, Brenda's Blog)

Guest Rant: Promoseven Strategist, Talal El Kateb

2006-11-06T21:41:00.000+04:00

I know I haven’t been called in for a second interview by the diablogger extraordinaire but I feel like ranting and I believe my only outlets for such drabble is here or on 2-ply pink toilet paper. I’ve run out of the latter.

I feel like venting about research if you don’t mind… well I’m glad no one does. You see I am a firm believer in the power of consumer knowledge. The more you know about those you’re targeting the better you can communicate with them and the easier your task of selling to them… ooops… I meant your task of making them believe in / love / feel affinity for / emotionally bond with… your brand.

But here’s a doozy: how many times have you regretted even asking your client for ad pre-testing when the response was not to your liking? How hard was it to convince your client that pre-testing is meant to give more ammunition to the creative team rather than bore a hole through the bullseye? How close were you to suicide when your client saw a piece of research and asked you to craft a piece of communication around its findings in the most literal way possible?

It just feels like it’s taken us agencies eons to finally get clients to buy into the fact that research is always beneficial to their marketing efforts, only to see it abused in the hands of the number-crunchers, the black or white viewists and those that use research as a safety, existing for the sole purpose of covering their butts when things go wrong… “Wasn’t my fault! Research said adults trust their family doctors with their lives. I don’t know why having them endorse our life insurance product didn’t work out!!!”

Here’s the pickle: yes I am a firm believer in the importance of consumer knowledge, but I’m also an idealist who believes that advertising can change the world, or at least the behaviour of a select few.

You see, research will have banks believe that it’s the Asian population of the UAE who are most prone to saving, the national population most prone to need investment guidance and symbols of status, and the Lebanese populace most prone to taking out loans to fund their Porsches and Maseratis (that last one was a non-PC joke but I’m sure all the Lebs out there feel me).

Sales figures and market share will have us believe that the average Saudi family will always opt for either a gas-guzzling SUV for their extended family to cram in for those joyous Friday picnics on the corniche; or a moderate, affordable Toyota Camry or Corolla.

Are these stereotypes true?

Most definitely!

Should they guide our brand and communication strategies?

Of course not!

I know I’ve used terrible examples above but I know you know what we all know: research and data should set the backdrop but it’s up to us mighty planners of the new age to write the screenplay.

Now that we’ve succeeded in convincing our clients to shell out a small but hefty percentage of their marketing budgets on research, the next step is making the best use of that research instead of just turning it into a brief. On a final note…

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

Thanks for letting me vent.

Diablog: As always our pleasure.

Torture your consumer?

2006-11-05T17:14:00.000+04:00

Was looking through a couple of my books yesterday and came across The Art of Seduction,
a purely Machiavellian look at how to court, or better yet manipulate someone into falling for you. Despite its' somewhat dark nature the book does make a couple of valid points, which I prefer not to get into. However, what I was thinking about was how this might provide some sort of new perspective on branding. I guess you'd have to read through the book to figure out what I'm babbling on about. Basically, what if the consumer wasn't boss? What if we played hard to get with the consumer? What if we sent mixed signals? What if we weren't always available where expected? What if we contrasted the utmost satisfaction and pleasure with a tad of disappointment possibly even pain? What if we appeared to be an object of desire by creating triangles?

Yes now that I am re-reading through this post it does seem a little bizarre but not obscene enough to delete.

Coffee with Blogger/Copywriter, Farrukh Naeem

2006-11-01T13:51:00.000+04:00

D: So lets kick it off with a fellow blogger question, why blog?

F: Blogging is fun. Blogging is interactive. Blogging is free. These are someof the basicreasons. I have always considered writing as a means to make a difference, to cause animpact. I do not seemyself as an artist who is writing to express himself and show the world howgreat his literaryskills are. I write on strategy, to get results. For God's sake, we are in abusiness calledadvertising - it's about strategy, ideas, cause and effect. That is the reasonwhy you will seethat I do not rant and whine and put others down on my blog but rather discussthe importantissues that affect the advertising industry, throw some ideas around, anddiscuss the poststhrough reader comments. Writing to get results, to evoke response, being able to assess the impact ofone's creativeeffort, is important to me. That's why I have a strong direct marketing (DM)portfolio. I haveworked with one of the best DM companies in the world - Wunderman. Blogging,with its blogrollsand comments and tags and trackbacks, is like DM to me. It's all about connecting, interaction, two-way communication. Through my blog,I have been ableto help people look for advertising related jobs, source creative talent,discuss industry relatedissues openly, share ideas, find out how advertising is in our part of theworld. I have made goodfriends. I regularly have people calling and emailing me to tell me that theyenjoy reading myblog. Many editors and clients, after reading what I write on my blog, want meto write for them.That is why, blogging! I think blogs can sometimes give a more objective, quick and personalisedaccount of events thanthe mass media, and this is what I too would like to do as a blogger when itcomes to creativity,marketing and advertising.

D: So what are your thoughts on the English copy writing in Dubai?

F:There is very little of it. Press ad layouts have become so predictable - avisual pun with alogo and a tagline tucked in a corner. Yes, award juries like that. It looksclever. But whateverhappened to persuasive, well crafted copywriting? Copywriters are writing loadsof text inbrochures and direct mailers. But I would like to see great copy in press adstoo - I'm fed upwith Photoshopped visuals and stock pictures and posycard ads.

D: Your top 3 copy writers in Dubai?

F: The cult status and prominence that copywriters enjoy in other parts of theworld is not seenhere in the UAE. We do not have copywriters people talk about, like Neil French,Indra Sinha orPiyush Pandey. Why is it like this? See my answer to the question above. I likethe work ofShehzad Yunus of TBWA, Shahir Ahmad of Team Y&R, and John Mani of The ClassicPartnership - all ofthem are more than copywriters - they head or co-head their creativedepartments.

D: Best slogan you've written?

F: You might come across many slogans I have written that have become anessential part of thebrand's communication like "Stay Ahead" for Alpha Data - an IT company and"Expect More FromEducation" for Al Ghurair University. I am not a big supporter of slogans orcatchlines if allthey have to do is sit under a logo and regurgitate corporate fluff about acompany. The best slogans go on to become a part of everyday usage for people. I haven'twritten such aslogan yet but I did coin a brandname that has become part of everyday language.When I was inIndia working for Wunderman (Y&R), I joined the words 'flyover' and highway' toname an expressbridge The DND 'Flyway' and I later read 'flyway' being used as a common noun.

D: Best slogan you've seen in Dubai?

F: I like the slogan 'Fi Masafi?". It's brilliant because it is not just a tallclaim but acampaign idea - like the legendary 'got milk?' Plus, the word 'fi' and the brandname 'Masafi' gowell together. And, it's in Arabic. We need to have more of such brilliantArabic copywriting.

D: Through your experience as a copy writer how do you perceive the role of planning. Creative support or buzz kill?

F: I tend to get along very well with planners. What planners do today,copywriters were doingwhen planning did not exist. Visiting manufacturing plants, polling their targetaudience, diggingup info on competitive products. And even now, only a handful of agencies haveplanners. So manytimes, the inquisitive copywriter gets fed up of asking questions from theaccount executives whoknow only as much as the client has told them and gets out and does his or herown research onconsumer trends, competitive brands. With a good planner, this would not benecessary. Plus,planners can be the creative's best friend when they know stuff about a brandand consumers thatinspires and lights up a writer's imagination. Sometimes, I have seen planners getting so enamoured with their brief that theyinsist on a veryliteral rendition of the strategy - that can seriously limit the creativeporcess instead offocusing it. But it happens rarely. As a copywriter, I think a smart, intuitive planner with the mind of a client,the heart of acreative person and the instinct of a consumer can be a great asset for an adagency and awonderful support to the account handling as well as the creative team.

D: The world is becoming increasingly more frantic, more clutter, more distracting gadgets, less attention, all resulting in less processing time. Will copy heavy ads live on?

F: There is a myth that people don't read long copy. If that was so, youwouldn't be sending methese questions and I would not be writing their answers. If people werewatching more and readingless, we wouldn't have blogs and newspapers and magazines and Harry Potter andDa Vinci Code. 'Copy heavy' itself is a loaded phrase - the kind of stuff spoken by artdirectors who can't readand look at copy as black lines of text interfering with their design. The kindof art directorswho go weak in the knees when they have to design an actual layout rather than a full bleed ad. Well-written long copy is becoming harder to come by, but it is not becausepeople don't read.It's because many copywriters today don't know how to write copy that gets read,how to craft asales pitch, how to build a persuasive case for their product, service or causewith words. Thatis why when it comes to radio spots, where the copywriter can't hide behindphotos and layouts, wesee what is really wrong - the writing sucks. Long copy is alive and well - its experts are minting money for themselves andtheir clients inareas like direct marketing where creativity is judged by ad response not fancyawards. They arethe copywriters who know their art and craft well enough to make people read,get convinced andact, just with the power of words.

D: Many thanks Farrukh for being with us. For more from Farrukh have a look at his blog here.

The little things make the great cities

2006-10-30T16:40:00.000+04:00

Apologies for giving you guys nothing to rant on about for a while (Farrukh & Incognito my sincerest goes to you), truth is I am out of the country. For the last week I’ve been in one of those cities that is filled with charm, you know the little things. A café here and there, an engraved quote over a dirty public toilet, the restaurant with a story behind it, the witty kid who wants your money, the locals who are oh so similair yet heaps apart…you get the idea. Seeing and experiencing all these things over again made me spark up a discussion with a friend of mine. ‘You have 10 years and a green light on all your decisions, how would you inject the little things into Dubai’. We rambled on a bit about how the people make a city, then how the city makes the people, we spoke about history and time both concepts that can’t be forced, we spotted an old man on the streets and reflected on how young everyone in Dubai is…then after a good hour we were still left confused…So ladies and gentleman…your thoughts?

It's goanna change your life forever!

2006-10-18T22:31:00.000+04:00

Sitting in a meeting yesterday listening to a client say the same thing using the same words most clients use, I began to wonder to myself how utterly ungrounded we are in this industry. We really do over estimate the size of our roles in peoples lives. Hearing words like 'talk of the town' and 'win their hearts', you have to sit back and wonder to yourself 'have I ever talked or felt that way about a brand in my time on this earth?'. We read books like brand sense by martin Lindstrom who goes on to draw parallels from branding to religion. Almost every agency preaches its end benefit in unoriginal ways by using terms like 'Love' , 'Belief', 'Loyalty Beyond Reason'.
If we do indeed use such words in our daily interaction, taking a step back every now and then and gaining some perspective on the context might be a wise idea.

I believe it was John Grant who summed it up quite eloquently to a client once 'Mate its a f***ing biscuit'

Interview with Brenda Kassir in Campaign

2006-10-17T17:47:00.000+04:00

Our sources have just informed us that Saatchi strategist Brenda Kassir interviews with Campaign in the week after next. So be sure to check it out.

Thanks Richard!

Coffee with Memac Ogilvy's Sam Moutran; What it's like being the Bosses Son.

2006-10-15T22:14:00.000+04:00

D: Now you have two relationships with Eddie Moutran, one as your dad and the second as the boss of the agency you work at, Memac Ogilvy. Now many would say working at your dad’s agency is a walk in the park but we know personally it isn't the case for you. Could you tell us a little bit about the difficulties?

S: There are several ‘issues’. The one I found hardest to wrap my head around was the idea that most people think – he is only here because Daddy is the boss. The truth of the matter is that my brothers and I had to work twice as hard to earn genuine respect from our colleagues. But, I guess when you do it is all that more rewarding.

I even found there were higher expectations from clients – when they found out. As if all of a sudden I can move mountains within the agency. Without quoting any of them it was along the lines of “look, if it isn’t going to happen why don’t you call your father and make it happen…”

The other difficulty I would say would be filling people’s shoes. I mean, my father has obviously worked so hard for so many years to build the reputation he has, and people almost expect you to automatically walk in on that level. Then there are the shoes of my two elder brothers. These guys are stars in the making, if not already. And even though people claim not to compare us to each other – there is always added pressure to ensure I live up to the standards they have set before me.

D: How limiting is it to be who you are? I mean would any other agency in the region hire you?

S: No. Well, as far as I am aware it would be a conflict of interests. However, to be honest I don’t see myself working anywhere else; I am far too passionate about the agency I am already working for. I have been Ogilvy my whole life, why would I change.

D: So a key motivator for employees is making it to the top, how do the employees at Memac Ogilvy feel when they know that the agency’s boss has 3 sons working in the very same agency?

S: It was made clear to us from day 1 that only the best will do. If we are not good enough to be promoted, then we won’t be. At the end of the day this is a business, and like any business man, Eddie Moutran expects the best from all his employees: neither him, nor we, are naïve enough to want to let the business be run by people who are not capable. Having said that, I think we are managing to keep up with the other stars around us, and maybe shine ourselves from time to time. So in answer to your question, I don’t think it is an issue for any of my colleagues.

D: Ok ok, enough about the negatives, lets talk about the positives a little. Come on Sam, despite all the s**t you put up with, being the bosses son must be pretty cool!

S: Answer: The truth – I am more fortunate than anyone can imagine. I get to have a casual chat, over a Sunday lunch, with a man who helped build the industry in this region, what better advice can a young professional dream of. Regardless of the inevitably hectic schedule he has, he always manages to give us a helping hand when we need it. And believe me there is no client, or situation or problem the likes of which he hasn’t seen before, and managed to handle. So yeah there are benefits on top of the ones mentioned, but when you compare them to some of the ‘issues’ mentioned, and some of the ones not – they pretty much weigh each other out.

D: Sam it was a pleasure, good luck to you at Memac Ogilvy!

Campaign for real beauty, distortion.

2006-10-15T10:17:00.000+04:00

Pretty powerful work on the campaign for real beauty. Have a look here.

'What's your all time best music video?'

2006-10-11T11:31:00.000+04:00

A couple of days ago we were having a conversation about all time best music videos, didn't take me a second to think up one of my favorites. An actual house track that gets me emotional... rare find.
A little old but still a great love song and love story, watch it here.

A tribute to one of the greatest copy writers that lived

2006-10-05T13:26:00.000+04:00

Neil French maybe have said some things recently that upset a couple of women but fact remains he will remain one of the greatest writers to have graced the industry. Check out all his work right here.

The power of the doodle...

2006-10-05T10:38:00.000+04:00

Coffee with French planner and founder of Oraganic Planning, Froggy

2006-09-28T12:27:00.000+04:00

D: So why do we need planners in this world?

F: Well I would say if we need planners in this world, this world doesn’t necessarily need planners! Sometimes, we are not as humble as we should be, advertising existed before the profession and some of the best ads of all times have been realized before planning. I remember reading this quote about Jean Baudrillard on Richard Huntington’s blog "he is one of the greatest philosophical thinkers of the late 20th century and you are just some idiot who works in advertsing". I think that it’s very true!
To answer the initial question, planners only have a place in this world if they can help the industry to be more innovative, weird, thoughtful, meaningful…

D: Your philosophy on organic planning has been the cause of much praise being sited on a number of blogs and industry magazines, could you tell us a little about it and its application? How it differs from conventional planning?

F: Thank you very much, but I hadn’t so many praises! Just enough to have a job! I have created the Organic Frog blog as an application blog. I’ve tried to use the viral techniques and sent it to 40 agencies (mainly digital) around London. I had some positive and negative reactions, some was thinking that it was annoying, shameless… but I had the chance to meet some world-class planners: John Grant, Saher… thanks to this application. As I had chosen to be subversive, I asked this question: “Every agency is speaking about creativity but where does all the rubbish ads come from?” It was quite interesting to observed the reactions of the different agencies… Read the whole story on my blog here and here.
To speak a bit about the Organic planning philosophy, it starts with being curious, making lateral and non-industrial leaps, being innovative, having fresh eyes, not being stuck on a briefing template all day long! I guess this thoughts are develop by many planners – especially the bloggers one – the aim was more to show what I didn’t want to do.

D: Someone roles up to you one day and claims to be heavens marketing director. For some odd reason, you believe him (possibly due to his business card being trailed by a halo) He goes on to elaborate on how people are losing faith in heaven and putting all their allegorical eggs in this life's basket. Any idea what your brief might look like?

F: Wahoo who could refuse such a prestigious client! Well I guess that if heaven isn’t as popular as they were it is probably because the marketing department was only communicate about spirituality, fantasy, the power of the brand image… very branding 1.0 isn’t it?
The only way to be back in the game is to embrace authenticity, why not a heaven blog: do a good deed every day, an angel avatar on Second Life, the heaven festival, and why not a more cynical tool: the Heaven/Amex card, Go to heaven thanks to the ordinary expenses…
But I am deeply convinced that a business like this one is more than communication, it’s like in political communication should just be the tool and not the content.

D: Your all time best campaign?

F: I will not be original on this one but I definitely think that the “Think small” or “It’s ugly but it get you there”advertising is one of the best of all time, the insight and the execution are obvious, they look like powerpoint slide, just brilliant!
I love also the insight behind the Évian advertising with the babies, the old persons… The fear of getting old is one of the hottest topic these days, but most of the brand are misunderstanding this trend, Renault Modus advertising was saying “growing what for”… So hats off to Évian who understood this trend with class!
All time worst campaign?
I just hated the Ferrero Rocher ambassador advertising, I mean the product is crap, you can buy the product in supermarket and they wanted to present it as a premium chocolate… The execution was cheesy as well…disgusting!
I have no idea of what the idea should have been; “let’s create a luxury environment people will think that we are a premium brand!”

D: If the sh*t hits the fan in London think you'd be willing to join us in Dubai?

F: As long as Dubai is tax free why not!!

D:Great, thanks so much for being with us and good luck with agency.com!

Blogging in Saudi

2006-09-27T16:14:00.000+04:00

I came accross this beautiful post on a Saudi girl's blog.

Letter from London

2006-09-26T09:53:00.000+04:00

This being my first ‘letter from London’ I’m feeling the pressure to keep you all engaged so forgive the following brain dump. So to correspond on the ad industry I firstly had to negotiate living in London before I was able to stick my head outside of my 8.40am – 7.45pm and absorb what is going on. That and I have to maintain my fashionable binge drinking going along with the tower of pizza boxes I have collecting near my bin, some of those are quite vintage now actually. E bay?

Apologies, I’m just feeling the strain of working on a BTL retail account (only for another 3 months I hasten to add as this is part of my graduate training). Why do I feel I have to say that as in justify it’s not really what I do? The arrogance that general ATL London agencies instil is undeniably infectious. My previous ATL account director refers to the department I’m in, over lunch one day, as ‘key rings and bar mats’. I laugh it off, he’s paying for the Dim Sum I’m cramming in my mouth and I have no idea when I’ll be able to afford to eat there again…in fact I don’t know if I’ll be able to afford eating again full stop. But yes, a trend is showing, many large London agencies have a plug and it’s at the top of the ladder and it looks like the guy who is too insecure to admit digital is coming in hard and fast, he shouts a lot and he likes to wear a suit jacket with a white T-shirt.

Enough! So Saatchi & Saatchi took their biggest win last week and would you believe it, it was head to head with Publicis. After BBH ditched Sony Ericsson over jealousy of a brand consultancy having a better idea Saatchi & Saatchi cleared up. Now, I’ve read some great things about the Saatchi network and then not so great things about the London office and when stood side by side Publicis does in fact tower. Could this be what I’ve been waiting for? For so long I’ve wanted Saatchi & Saatchi to be THE agency of London, after all, it did via controversial means make advertising attractive in the UK in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Furthermore Saatchi needs this win like a gasping fish needs a reservoir, they’ve lost consistent chunks of Toyota to CHI, they’ve just lost their global grip on Carlsberg which leads me to my next point, they lost it to Weiden and Kennedy (W&K).

Herein lies the agency to watch. W&K have cleared DDB out with two major poaches. Remember that great Guardian ad in black and white with a skin head saving the day but from the initial point of view the ad made him look like a mugger? Well forget it anyway as that relationship since the 70s is over with W&K taking DDB’s strongest relationship, chewing it up and spitting it out. Then Lurpack is taken away from DDB the following day so it looks like a major part of DDB’s management will probably move to W&K….and rightfully so, in terms of London W&K is my mecca, with Nike, Honda, EA Games and never hiring anyone who isn’t seasoned it really is the agency where magic can still happen.

I’d love to go on but I have webstats and generic data capture forms to attend to, joy. Take care all and I’ll write again soon.

Love

London

Coffee with Starcom media strategist, Rayan Karaky

2006-09-21T18:50:00.000+04:00

D: A whole lot of people think media is about number punching. Could you tell us a little bit about planning in a media agency?

R: This misperception originated from the history of media agencies, from the times when the media department was a room flooded with print outs of excel sheets and when consumers had nothing to do but tune in to the 4 hours continuous advertising slot on Saudi TV! If media agencies are still about punching numbers then they would have dug their own grave… The first sign of dropping the out-dated numerical approach was the choice that the media agencies took to become a separate business with a totally new role in communication.
The boom that the media scene witnessed in the last ten years along with the lack of proper media research in the market that could measure the real impact of that boom changed the life of media planners for ever. The race to understand the evolved consumer mindset started & the competition to become the most innovative brand/agency was clearly reshaping the future of the media industry.
Today, in the era of DVR, podcasting, IPTV, & all the ingredients of "LIFE on demand", media planning is becoming obsolete! Program ratings, newspaper reach & radio listenership, bla bla bla... who cares!? for the love of god do you think the consumer with his ipod equipped car, navigation system, 3G mobile phone & his Digital video recorder that is creating his own TV channel at home as we speak, is actually waiting for your 30" spot or your quarter page vertical or horizontal, depending on how creative you wanna get? Some may argue that all this is too soon for the region, these are the same people who were arguing less than 10 years ago that the penetration of Digital Satellite TV will take ages before it becomes popular… Analog who?
Which brings me back to your question, The role of a media agency that cares about delivering true value to its consumer is to predict new trends and their possible impact on consumer behavior. Apply existing trends through a deep unearthing of consumer insights and psychographics, a true understanding of the business model that each brand operates in and a clear vision of the category and the marketplace. Finally measure the true value delivered to client in order to be able to build solid projections for future communication.
Media planners should become communication solution providers, solutions that are not necessarily found in a traditional advertising campaign, otherwise they will become what floppy disks are for today's IT managers...

D: So what type of traits do you look for when hiring media planners, strategists or communications planners?

R: Enough balls to say NO and enough brains to support it...

D: What are your thoughts on integration, mere industry jargon or industry practice?

R: Integration, integration, integration,.. please spare me.. I want every M.D, CEO for every discipline in the advertising world to look in the mirror every morning and say: What have I done!?
Integrated marketing mix is becoming the obsession of every marketer, and we all know that, but what is actually funny is; one, the client is now asking for integration. two, all he's asking is for us to say Hi to the media guys next time we see them in the elevator or throw in a smile next time we see the PR chicks hanging out at the cafeteria, or even to know the name of the account manager who I sit and have lunch with everyday without saying a word! what s our response? BIG EGOES! we all think we are the boss, my company is the spear head of my client's communication plans.. well here is an idea, you know who the real boss is? It's the consumer!!! yes, I am sorry if this will offended anyone or make his balls look a bit smaller than he thought they were but it is true! the consumer has made his share of mind so scarce that now you are actually forced to pick the brains of the PR dude who you just thought was responsible for clipping press releases and ask the media guys their opinion when you thought excel was their best friend.
All the different disciplines were one agency some few years back, but the hunger for more revenue made agencies forget their initial role of delivering marketing solutions for clients, and that is not possible without an integrated approach to client objectives.
Effective communication planning is a collective effort and if holding groups don't realize that soon enough, the clients are going to determine our fate not our CXOs!

D: Any advice you would give to traditional advertising practitioners about media, maybe something they tend to overlook?

D: Well, The list is endless, but let's focus on the future… Today, it's typical of media agencies to wait till the technology is out then they wait for it to become popular, commercial enough to trigger client interest, and finally wait for the client to come and ask about it for them to go research and learn of possible ways to use it to serve their objectives, by then a new technology is already out… Look at Tivo for example, advertisers worldwide are still struggling to find ways to maneuver around the DVR feature while Microsoft and Apple have already put most of their efforts into changing what home entertainment is today… by the time the first issue is resolved, Tivo will be dead!!
In this region we are blessed, we know about the technology most of the time before it hits our market! what we need to do is build, based on consumer insights and our understanding of the market, ways to launch these technologies in the market with our clients and benefit from the hype that will surround this technology. Most of the time when the innovation is launched the cost of advertising on it is very effective, but once it becomes very popular, the cost becomes high, sometimes as high as traditional media that clients in that case will see as a much safer investment. Industry practitioners need to understand that clients, in most of the cases, are not risk takers; if we see an opportunity that we truly believe in we need to push hard, even if it costs us some clients eventually one will do it and the rest will want to be followers. If you are a leading agency you want leading clients, the kind of clients who create trends instead of waiting to react.

D: Finally, should media agency's have creative departments?

R: The norm with the advertising world today is that media planners/buyers are too "raw", creatives meanwhile have their heads in the clouds. Media agencies needn't have a creative department, they just need creative Thinkers! after all we are all collectively responsible for the interface between the client and the consumer and how we feature the brand in any piece of communication; a Media planner needs to be able to visualize this interface, regardless of who is executing this vision. This takes us back to integration, it is all about setting a common goal, visualizing the plan, once all that a clear execution becomes the result of flawless planning.
Media planners need to be versatile, they need to be cable to put themselves in the clients', the creatives' & the consumers' shoes at the same time, if they manage to do that then they will become the true consultants they should be.

D: Many thank for being with us Rayan and good luck at Starcom.

Lowe's house Ad: Guest, Man Abutaleb

2006-09-20T11:21:00.000+04:00

(I just love this ad and asked Lowe's Arabic creative Man Abutaleb to write a little synosis of it)

"Long before we got the brief to do a house ad, a few of us ‘Lowe lives’ were contemplating this opportunity over many pints of beer.
And we all came to the conclusion that we should do a long copy ad that is relevant to the region. Long copy, because it allows us more space to construct an argument; it’s being used less and less around the world; and because no one has done it here before –that’s adman
ego+beer. And related to the region because we are from the region,
talking to the region. We’re constantly preaching to clients the benefits of insightful advertising, so how dare we not practice what we preach?

We knew that if we looked deep enough we would find something we can turn into an ad. And what did we find? One of the greatest ads ever made. Not only that, it was over 1300 years old. It was the greatest proof of what we strongly believe in: Creativity was never foreign to this region, and that no matter where you are, Creativity Pays."

Letter from London

2006-09-19T11:20:00.000+04:00

As of tomorrow Diablog is kicking off what is dubbed 'Letter from London' which basically means that Anton Reyniers (see post on 'the most controversial grad applicant' )will be guest blogging from Publicis London every so often.
Let just call him Diablog's London correspondent with an opinion.

Coffee with Promoseven's strategist, Talal El Kateb

2006-09-14T11:44:00.000+04:00

D: Every planner gets the same first kick off question, is planning undervalued in the region or does the region lack value in planning?

T: Chicken? Egg? Huh? In my modest opinion there seems to be two tiers of planning in the Middle East. Firstly… planning for marketing savvy clients (usually the sexiest brands out there) and secondly… planning for the clueless sales guy who just landed an undeserved promotion.

For the first grouping, the region lacks real planning talent. It lacks those strategists who love getting their hands dirty. The ones who know their “consumers” so well, they can tell you what brand chewing gum they use, who they chew it with, why they chew it, what they believe the chewing process says about them, how chewing alleviates a certain deep-seeded psychological urge for oral stimulation and what ‘hip’ chewing styles are in at the moment. On a personal note, this is what I aspire to become but I’m nowhere near that level of omnipotence regarding my targets!

The second grouping is where I feel more at home, but unfortunately it is also where “Planners” get professionally abused. At this tier of planning, we act as marketing consultants. And although, the job satisfaction of building your clients’ strategies from scratch and seeing the fruition of your efforts is ecstatic… it’s also not what you’re paid to do. When you have more clients like these, who look to you for every aspect of their marketing strategies and plans, you start losing your edge with the first, more focused job description of a planner – “The Voice of the Consumer”.

Either way, planning is becoming a cornerstone that no agency can afford to overlook, and despite the vagueness of our responsibilities, there’s always two things I love to remember… 1. I’m always learning something new. 2. My colleagues from our international headquarters are always flabbergasted at the kind of work we do here, and who doesn’t like showing up the big bosses?

D: So Talal Promoseven are known to have the most comprehensive planning department in the region, could you tell us a little bit about it and how its built into the communication process.

T: It’s true that Promoseven has one of the largest and most experienced planning networks in the region and I think the biggest strength of that is internal. It’s always stressful when you have to fight within an agency to prove your worth, but when planning is so deeply embedded in an agency’s corporate culture, it’s a walk in the park (Hyde not Safa). What’s even more impressive at Promoseven is that everyone values your opinion as a planner, from client servicing to media, and … wait for it… yes, low and behold, even the creatives value our input!!! We’re always the starting point for any major brief and we get to live through the entire communication process.

But what’s even better than enjoying these bare necessities that should automatically come with the title?

Freedom!

Of course we have our own proprietary tools, processes… blah blah blah, but what my favourite trait about planning at FP7 is that any planner has the means to pursue any new idea he or she may have and is fully supported, both laterally and vertically. If you’re sick of writing a brief, you can act one out! If you’re tired of coffee U & A research, you can go camp out in a Starbuck’s! If you’re bored out of your mind with bland PowerPoint, you can edit your presentation movie! When an agency is so comfortable with its planning philosophy it can afford to push past the conventional and experiment with new ways to get creative juices flowing (that always sounded so sick to me).

D: So what's Talal the planner's brand Philosophy, One word equity, Brand idea, brand connection, brand appeal, brand essence (or whatever the up to date jargon is) ?

T: What defines me and my working methods is: attention-span. I can only be productive and truly generate good work if a project has and keeps my attention, otherwise I just ‘get the job done’ for the sake of closure. Attention-span doesn’t only apply to me and what keeps me interested, it also applies to my audiences. My communication strategies are crafted in the hope that they are so unruly they will keep target audiences interested. My client presentations are injected with moments of lunacy to keep meeting attendees awake. My creative briefs are written in pseudo-creative speak (meaning I use a lot of profanity) so that they’re not crumpled up and thrown back in my face. Attention is everything!

D: We have been discussing the possibility of having some sort of a quasi APG for the region, some think that an APG is the result of good planning others argue that it's the means to elevating planning. What are your thoughts on the matter?

T: Honestly, I think your blog is the first step in setting up something like that. I couldn’t care less whether or not an APG-esque is set up for the Middle East. Who needs them? As long as we have an outlet to share thoughts amongst ourselves, just like this one, we will be feed off each other and subsequently better our intellectual products.

D: Lets face it planners are somewhat expected to carry a crystal ball in their pockets, so what do you see in your ball when asked the question 'what is goanna be the job description of a planner in the year 2016?'

T: “Um”… “hmmm”… … “Can I pass?”
Great question, particularly after having poured my heart out about the obscurity of planning in the first question! At the moment I believe there to be a “back-to-basics” global movement amongst planners. We’ve become researchers and consultants rather than “Consumers”.

But 2016, huh? How about this…

There will be a clear demarcation of territory between the marketing side of planning and the consumer side. We’ll have marketing planners and consumer planners! The marriage of the two would culminate in true Brand Planning. Wow, they should really call me in on the Middle East peace talks… what an epiphany! Honestly though, our workload by then will be too unbearable for one mind to fathom, so we’ll probably have to rethink the current planning division of labour. I don’t want to regurgitate what I’ve mentioned previously but as planning becomes more and more vital for successful brands in the region, it will envelope a lot more responsibility. We will be looked upon to share some of our clients’ duties on a purely marketing level and their research agencies’ on a consumer level. I, personally, can’t wait!

In conclusion… thanks for giving me an opportunity to vent my professional frustrations to the world and pass on my few words of wisdom (if you didn’t catch them, they’re the opening statements in Q5). I’d also like to apologise for the disproportionate length of my answers… as you can see my attention wandered as I neared the end – not your fault, the questions were grrrr-eat J

D: No worries Talal I can assure you it has been one of the most interesting coffee sessions so far. Thanks and good luck.