Posted: November 5th, 2009 | Author: Saleh Esmaeili | Filed under: advertising | Tags: Branding, campaigns, events, online advertising, social media, UAE | Comments Off
Facebook group, check. Twitter account, check. Youtube channel, check.
Slapping badges from the above sites on the Website, check. Ads on Facebook, check. Ads on Youtube, check. Ads on other sites, check. Now what?
Engage!
Using all the social networks, bloging n’ microbloging is not meant to be for showing the face, but to have a sort of dialogue and conversation with people(you can’t take them as customers).
Observing some of the campaigns lately I was excited to see all sort of badges on one of the campaigns for an event. So out of my excitement I started following event’s Twitter account, became a Fan on their Facebook page, subscribed to their YouTube channel and waited for the fun to start. Ten days before the event I started seeing Ad Banners on various websites and mainly on Google Network. Okay, no fun. No updates. So I moved my expectations to the day of the event. I’m at the event, checking Tweets, none, oh they post a link to a press release. Facebook fan page full of fans’ questions and answered by other fans. Youtube channel showing videos of last year’s event.
The event was such a success. But was the campaign? Worth noting that the so-called “Social Media Campaign” was ran by what they call “an emerging top-notch Social Media House”. So it’s all about badges? And tossing some names n’ buzzwords?
Everyone knows it, but do we really engage? Or what is engagement really? (check @jassim’s some two years old article on it)
Yes, it’s all about experimenting with the new toys n’ mediums. Yes, outcomes do not come fast but fact is a brief sarcastic tweet of mine from yesterday: I noticed something of rather high value, whoever can spell “social media” is a field expert from day 1 of its existence. hah?
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Posted: August 23rd, 2009 | Author: Saleh Esmaeili | Filed under: UAE | Tags: awareness, dubai, education, online advertising, summits, UAE | 1 Comment »
Yes, it’s one percent of the whole ad spend in the Middle East. That’s the online media spend. How can we fix that? The repeated answers “By educating marketers. Google Adwords is the best solution. E-commerce ain’t working for this region because we like to shop.” I mean c’mon people! How many more places are you going to repeat the same things?
What has been done to improve?
Nothing. I’ll tell you why nothing. Keep reading.
Conferences & Summits
Is there anything but Sales info? Charts that are the same as the ones handed to your next sales man? Jargons n’ lots of showcases of your own work. Campaigns that hasn’t actually worked. Other than making the Marketers look dumb by saying hey use “this” it’s good for your kids health?
Impressions not Actions
You want to promote actions and acquisitions while all that is offered in the market is Impressions.
Microsites
Just a form? Or wait now they have Tweets n’Facebook connect. For real!
Articles
I mean come on. I often read articles from people with no background what so ever in the Online Ads or Web for that matter n’ you’ll find “Some Name, Some Company Name, thinks it is better to do something”. I mean that reporter wants to get some news off some e-mail? a tweet perhaps? What are the reporters for if they wanna’ find those people who are not in need to be found? Just because they’re in your face and they’re louder doesn’t mean they’ve got the right words or the right idea.
Social Media
Yea right! Just because Twitter is on paper everyday it doesn’t mean signing every company an account on Twitter n’ getting them a Facebook group means the social media use. That’s the step one out of another 99 steps to be taken. Engagement?
Communities
Yes, give that office space for some people to hangout n’ network n’ slap our logo on the door. That’s it. Community. For real?
The Biggest.
Best, biggest, taller, fatter, uglier, slimmer, miss world, and Kobe Bryant’s underwear portal/agency/company in the middle east, what? how many are out there anyways? Now stop that already. Focus.
Conclusion
The better you PR means the more you KNOW, apparently. So the louder your NOISE the more you can reach. People! We ain’t got to be loud to get the message out, and for ethical reasons, and just business morals, for once, try to educate the clients n’ not sell them stuff at one conference, you ain’t paying anything anyways! They are paying for the tickets!
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Posted: August 19th, 2009 | Author: Saleh Esmaeili | Filed under: Business, UAE | Tags: interactive, jobs, middle east, online, recruitment, UAE | Comments Off
One day out of the blue I visited Bayt.com n’ got me an account, uploaded my resume n’ kept waiting for interviews, wait, when was that? Sometime between 2002-2003. Then I remember being hired using my own networking and contacts n’ in the first month of my job I started getting calls from Bayt.com offering me jobs.
Six years after that, I still get e-mails for saved searches. But the odd thing is I receive jobs that are completely irrelevant to my outdated resume, but perfectly matching my new roles & skills. Weird & Spooky. Then I calmed down, n’ figured the market for talent is really down in the low that the word “Match” ain’t the target anymore, the new match is “Relevant”. Another look at this n’ I was feeling my own pain seeking fit candidates for positions to fill in my team.
You could easily find Web Design positions filled by Graphic Designers, or Web UI designer filled by DB/Software-Programmers. Now this could indicate two very important facts about the UAE’s talent market. First, who’s screening? screeners are failing to understand Web and related jobs positions. Second, employers are hiring, desperate. But hey, the region doens’t lack talent, seek the right ones, n’ you shall get’em. But! can you compensate them? The reason you wouldn’t be able to attract the right talent is the fact that most of the employers had no idea of the right budget for the right candidates, led by wrong data you get wrong candidates. Fact.
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Posted: August 17th, 2009 | Author: Saleh Esmaeili | Filed under: Business, UAE, Web-Design | Tags: advertising, business model, client servicing, pricing, UAE | Comments Off
At d&l we’ve had 91% of business coming from references and the rest from only networking, directories, n’ search engines. So what I hear most of the time is hey bro, we ain’t as big as company X that referred you, so be gentle with invoices “you know what I mean”. It is not shocking anymore to me, but I keep on getting this assumption from prospects n’ clients that Agencies n’ Design Boutiques quote/invoice based on the size of their clients’ pockets n’ not the size of the job. But the Irony lies in the fact that it is cheaper to work with bigger clients.
You usually do less “unbilled” work for Bigger clients.
Bigger clients mean bigger personnel count and departments which also means lots o’ hands that could brief you and get you most of your needs and answers on a timely manner, thus saving your schedules from tangling up.
Department, not a one-man marketer. You get lots o’ input and more questions and the more you interact the clearer the goal and creative needs are.
Bigger clients usually have their branding done professionally.
That means you come to receive a proper Branding guidelines that help you understand the visual/feel of the brand. Print marketing collateral to give you insight of what has been working for the client offline. And, that could be a good platform to start understanding what the client has been approving and liking from the work done for them on traditional medium.
While with smaller ones, you gotta’ first find where the source of that Logo is or you might end up scanning and redrawing the logo not understanding a damn thing about the concept behind it, nor how it’s supposed to be used. And then comes content, smaller companies usually expect to receive copy writing for free, imagery, and the whole thing for free. While at bigger clients you have these mostly ready with little adjustments and tweaking to fit with the concept of the website, need you some more copy, they’re ready to pay.
Big sharks know how to take care of smaller fishes, they grow’em
Yes, irony, but that’s true. Bigger clients tend to be a little more with moralities regarding treating a bunch of young kids doing some artwork for their brand online. Because they usually know how important their opinions are and how effective they could be. While at smaller companies the stress is on squeezing the budget-spent and crunching those kids for some extra saving.
Sure at bigger organizations the amount of work might be a lot more and the expectations are higher as they hold a bigger stake in the market. And yes, the work is usually required faster and with really sharper presentations and prompt feedback, which translate in more resources to allocate to their projects, which means more cost. But from bottom up, it is cheaper to work with bigger clients thus more profiting than working with smaller ones, because:
- Smaller clients expect you to do it all from A-Z as in even their part
- Usually have no offline collateral and branding guidelines
- Unbilled work means collaboration for them
- Consultancy? You can’t bill that!
- You keep on hearing can you let my daughter give you a design idea? She’s graduating this year
- Website is a one time thing
The point, I don’t know how accounting goes right when pricing is different for bigger & smaller companies, I mean how would the product pricing be on the books? Crazy! You just don’t bill some stuff to smaller clients because they won’t understand it nor pay it but you do it just for the ethics of the business? Is that it?
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Posted: November 4th, 2008 | Author: dotblack | Filed under: Branding, UAE | Tags: advertising, creative, dubai, jobs, recruitment, UAE | Comments Off
Every Sunday, the appointments section of Khaleej Times gets Orange with daring Whites in words. As simple as these words are to be put are as creative Laazi’s ads are.
Our hardworking great friends at Laazi.com think it might be easier to upload your CV to their portal than punching your Boss!
Refresh your bitching, complaint about a new Job
Weekend was so good? Job’s gonna’ take that buzz away? You need a new Job!
The above ads aren’t just a creative copy well-written, but an image of a team well reflected in Type!
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Posted: October 3rd, 2008 | Author: dotblack | Filed under: Tech, UAE | Tags: advertising, dubai, e-mail, marketing, nakheel, online advertising, real estate, spam, UAE | Comments Off
A couple of days ago I posted about Nakheel’s Spam showing the three times that I was spammed. Two more shots added to that.
Oct 3rd Shot:
Oct 4th Shot:
Now the difference, the above shots were not signed by Dubai Moon, and the tracking has been shifted to Double Click.
Five shots to the same e-mail address, the same message, and unsolicited. Stops over here, Evast is reported as spam, the fun is over for me, I wanted to see how far it goes, it seems that it won’t stop until cityscape reaches. Such a Media Plan right there!
And the campaign is now directed to Nakheel’s City Scape Page
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Posted: April 4th, 2008 | Author: dotblack | Filed under: Tech, UAE | Tags: .ae, domain names, UAE | Comments Off
In the last 13 months, we had the chance to work on 18 “.ae” domains, in which we registered six of them. At dots & lines, we sometimes take the liberty of deciding domain names, and 90% of the time we’re the hosting mediators too. So that involves us in selecting the best suiting hosting and sometimes the e-mail plans for our clients. With 18 domain names, only 3 domain names out of the 12 worked seamlessly when DNS records needed to change and those were the ones for large corporates who had an Etisalat account-manager in their disposal.
The Experience
While reviewing our work from last year, the “.ae” records kept us skeptical on going with the UAE choice over and over again since “.ae” domains can not be modified by third-parties who are not associated with the person/company who registered the domains.
This is a typical drill, a client has a domain name registered by either a direct domain name registration or a domain name that came free of charge while purchasing a Business-One service from Etisalat. Client needs a website, so we get involved, next, we need to host their website thus, need to update some DNS records which can only be changed by the client or a person who registered it. By either e-mail or fax, and only from the same addresses filled in the registration fields. Our roll has always been preparing the letters sending to clients, and then letting them know who to send the letters to, and god forbid something goes wrong, it has to happen again, that is two more days of delay and that’s if the request was taken care of immediately.
Unlike .com/.net/.org that could be all modified in an online app, “.ae” DNS, A-Records should be changed by either sending e-mails or faxes to UAE-NIC in which lately had been a 10 days work.
Changes that affected UAE NIC
I can’t recall having any issues with “.ae” domains before du was formed and before the formation of TRA which took UAE NIC away from Etisalat’s control and made it into an independent body, causing UAE NIC slowness caused by maybe understaffed team or just a restructuring procedure that is complicating the communications with UAE NIC.
My findings are, NIC is really understaffed, and to be honest, while the NIC clients work from 9 to 6, I can’t understand how NIC gets to wrok from 8 to 3? Hoping for a quick change, soon, “.ae” has finally become popular for UAE businesses and it’s not the right time for a huge mess-up, hope someone would hear us out.
The coming soon story
While seeing the coming soon banners on UAENIC homepage for online-services gives us hope every time we search or check for a domain name availablility it is getting a little out of hand as how clients demand do not match the quality of UAENIC time frames and services.
Please share if you’ve been in our shoes too, it’s important, we can make a change, let us hear you out.
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