Marketing and Mini-Skirts

So the World Cup is getting serious these days and the games are getting … hotter!! But this is not the only thing getting hotter in South Africa. Have you read the news about the Holland’s fans who have been sent off the stadium during the Holland Vs. Denmark match?

Before going into this, let’s define something in marketing, something called ‘Ambush Marketing.’ It is when a company attempts to advertise its product/brand in an event without being an official sponsor of that event. Put differently, it is advertising without paying a load of cash to the organizer to win a sponsorship deal. Such attempts usually take place around the event. Like for example, when a company sponsors a team that is playing in a tournament sponsored by its rival.

Now, let’s go back the World Cup. The beer sponsor of the tournament, and the one that is allowed to advertise inside the stadiums, is Budweiser, the American brand. A Dutch brewery named Bavaria NV tried to throw itself an ambush marketing campaign by giving money to about 36 ladies to wear orange mini-skirts and grab the attention of  photographers and TV cameras during the game; and attract they did! Although the girls’ dresses showed no brand on them, the what so called ‘Dutchy dress’ resembles the color of the Bavarian orange beer bottles (read here & here). Noting that the Dutch company refused the allegations (read here).

[picapp align=”center” wrap=”false” link=”term=holland+fans&iid=9116600″ src=”http://view1.picapp.com/pictures.photo/image/9116600/football-holland-denmark/football-holland-denmark.jpg?size=500&imageId=9116600″ width=”500″ height=”304″ /]

Anyway, I am writing about this incident for two reasons, or two lessons:

• Lesson 1: When advertising, catch the eyes of your audience. I am not saying bring beautiful women and let them wear mini-skirts (a lot of advertisers actually do!!). But try to stay away from typical ideas and visual executions. Sometimes a simple image with a meaning could deliver your brand message more elegantly.
• Lesson 2: When regulating sponsored events, be clear and act fast. That’s what FIFA did. Those girls were sent off the stadium by the second half of the game, and FIFA is contemplating legal actions against Bavaria. Now, take this to Saudi Arabia and especially the football league sponsorship deals. It is nothing but a mess between the three main players (the telecom companies). Sharp cuts between the different sponsorship deals are not clear and many ambush marketing campaigns are taking place under the nose of the organizers!

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Small Details Matter

I took this picture while waiting on a traffic light (you may want to click on it to have a better look). And that is what caught me eye in it:

• It is a branded car for the ‘Saudi Automatic Laundry’, let me emphasis on the word “Saudi”. Now the question is: what is the blond guy wearing the none traditional Saudi costume doing in a supposedly Saudi laundry!
• The print on the car is almost fading away and the car itself is not clean; but this is another story and may be another blog post.

It could be argued here that this is not a big deal; it is a laundry service for the God sake!And we all know that laundry services in Saudi do not give a damn about branding! And this is, unfortunately, true but it is not the point!

The point is just a reminder of how the logo, name, slogan, fonts, colors, and ad pictures of a particular business should all contribute to create a brand, or to be more accurate, to create a part of the brand personality (there are a lot of other things to do to build a brand!) Each and every one of these aspects create associations in the mind of the customer and those associations will determine how he/she would relate to the brand.

Great businesses, no matter small or big sized, take care of these small details when crafting their images and building their brands. That’s why Apple will never use an orange photo on its packages, Fedex will never use a turtle as a mascot, and you will never see an ad for Porsche without seeing it racing the winds!

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What were they thinking?

From my iPhone

This question is directed to the producers of the light snacks known as “Loozeen”. To the marketers of Western Bakeries Co. the subsidiary of the Saudi giant company “Almarai.” Seriously guys, what were you thinking choosing this image for your campaign? What is the brand message that you were trying to deliver?

The campaign has been launched a couple of days ago and it is meant to raise the awareness of the fact that “Loozeen” has added more stuffing into its products. You know, more cheese, more chocolate etc. The execution of the idea, assuming that there is an idea to begin with!, is one of the poorest campaign that I have ever seen in the Saudi market. And these are the reasons:

• There is no apparent relation between the campaign and the message they wanted to deliver. So you have more cheese in your snacks; how that is related to the homeless looking guy featured on your ads everywhere!!!
• Even if we forced ourselves to accept whatever message they were trying to deliver, the picture is poorly taken and has no appealing, no personality, no innovation, and no artistic touch.
• Now please explain this to me; this is a food related product, right? So why the picture is soooooooo disgusting? What kind of a mental association were they trying to leave on their customers’ minds? And how is that freaky looking homeless has been chosen to represent and carry a message of a food brand anyway?

What is really striking is that “Loozeen” has a quite good position in the market already. I can even go further and claim that they do not have a serious competitor in this particular category of the market. Moreover, their earliest campaign with the tagline of ‘have a snack … have Loozeen’ was so successful to the point that you would hear people say it whenever the idea of having a snack comes across their minds! That’s definitely a huge and extraordinary brand positioning success. So why ruining all that with this poorly executed campaign?

Finally, my ‘free spirit statement,’ although I have a brother-in-law working in Western Bakeries, he had not influenced this post in anyway possible, and I really hope that he will not get mad at me if he ever read this post 🙂

What do you think? And you could start by stating the first thing that came to your mind when you saw the ad picture?

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Al Bilad Bank; Stating the Obvious

http://www.bankalbilad.com.sa

Smart organizations understand their environments. They know which buttons to press, which issues to tackle, and even which games to play!
And when it comes to Saudi, there is nothing better than the subject of religion to be hovering around. And this is exactly what Al Bilad Bank is doing with its new campaign ‘the service and the Sharia’ah (the Islamic law) are a whole thing that cannot be separated.’ ~ I have to admit that I do not totally get the meaning of this tag line!

Choosing to position itself as an Islamic bank is OK from the concept point of view. However, they should not be over thrilled by betting on it! I believe the Saudi banking sector has matured, for some extent at least, and passed the phase of competing solely on being Islamic; all Saudi banks are now providing some sort of Islamic banking for that matter. Customers satisfaction, competitive financial offerings, technological implementation, and the whole service experience have all been part of the modern Saudi banking picture. For that, It feels like Al Bilad is just positioning itself based on something obvious, something given; and this is not a very good marketing technique anyway.

I believe, among others, that if you want to be successful you have to be somehow unique and distinguishable. I am not saying Al Bilad should reinvent the banking industry (although there is no harm in that; if they could!) but they should be innovative in their approach to brand the bank.

Despite all of that, the execution of the marketing campaign itself lacks creativity and originality. Both TV and printed ads are typical, state nothing new, boring, and carry no message. Additionally, and this could be more of a personal taste, the guy featured in them is creepy!! I mean his face is consuming more than half the space on the streets billboards and, boy oh boy, is there something really scary about his eyes! and did I mention that he looks like a robot!!
Finally, I have to state that I do not know anyone working in Al Bilad, I do not have an account over there, and this post has not been influenced by a third party.

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Humor with a Message

Using humor in advertisements is not new but always controversial. For supporters, humor advertisements grab attention and foster brand recognition and loyalty. While those not in favor of the idea are always arguing that not all people have a sense of humor. Any unbalanced attempt to be funny could cost you a lot and simply back fire on your brand and products.

In the Saudi market, I am not sure I can recall an ad that was both funny and affective in delivering a certain message. I am even afraid that some local companies push it too far that you cannot even get the ‘joke’ or how it is related to the brand in any way.

Having said that, it is fair to say that Egyptian marketers have always been known for their own school of humor advertising. However, in a lot of cases, the focus on the joke itself outweighed the message they are trying to deliver. In other words, sometimes you can remember the joke but you are not sure what the ad was for exactly!!

In the following, I am bringing you number of brilliant ads that I believe their creators had successfully blended humor with effective branding messages. These ads are part of Intel ‘Sponsors of Tomorrow’ campaign. And of course when you think of Intel, technological advancements and geeky staff should be natural images descending to mind. Beside the elegant execution of the ads (e.g. the setups, the camera angles, etc…), Intel has been successful communicating through these ads that ‘we are different’, ‘we actually live in the world of tomorrow,’ and ‘although we are geeky enough to live in this tomorrow world, we are still human and doing human stuff!’

I find the last message to be very intriguing; Intel is known for manufacturing those powerful electronic processors making your computers alive. Let’s be honest, how are you going to emotionally engage with your customers featuring images of such product in ads?! Beside stating the obvious that their products are affecting your life in so many ways; they used a remarkable tactic to show you that the people bringing you this technology are like me and you; normal people. And guess what, they are happy doing whatever they are doing.

However, there is only one thing that I did not like about the ads; how they finish? The voice those people are trying to do is really noisy and just feels out of the place!!

Now watch the ads and tell me what came to your mind while watching them?

 

 

 

 

 

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No One to Vaccinate

On the 26^th of last October, while talking about H1N1, its vaccination rumors, and how our ministry of health (MoH) was handling the subject, I posted the following concern:

‘Just imaging the situation when the vaccine becomes available and nobody is there to take it!’

[picapp align=”right” wrap=”true” link=”term=h1n1+vaccine&iid=6915375″ src=”b/4/a/1/Swine_Flu_Vaccinations_75a2.jpg?adImageId=8508625&imageId=6915375″ width=”234″ height=”341″ /]You do not have to imagine anymore because it is a fact by now; there is nobody taking the vaccine. According to Arab News (in English) and Al Watan (in Arabic), the vaccination campaign against H1N1 that started last Saturday is recording nothing but huge failure. In Jeddah, 300 students out of 300,000 accepted to be vaccinated. And for those of you with good mathematical skills, you’ve already figured out that the percentage is only 0.1%. Honestly, I did not see that coming; it is a really horrible percentage.

Think about it this way; imagine that you have had endured huge expenses to bring some kind of a product to the market but reality decided to slap you on the face saying ‘guess what? Customers do not want your product.’ Yes, the analogy isn’t that accurate; but the concept is still the same.

It is fair to say that MoH officials are trying, but it seems that they are not trying hard enough. All the signs of failure have been there since the beginning but they chose to ignore them.

They certainly need more work now than before. Number of solutions that they might follow could be:

• Be Transparent: in my opinion, this is the most critical part of all. People are worried because they feel that MoH officials are not transparent enough. No one of them is directly addressing rumors and scientifically going through the controversies they are creating.  Be open about the possible consequences of vaccination, if there is any!
• Understand your Customers: what are their fears? Why they do not want their children to be vaccinated? Are they willing to have it themselves?
• Reach your Customers: Go to schools, hospitals, or invite selected individuals who could influence others (e.g. Mosque Immams, company owners, TV or Radio hosts, University professors, etc …) and talk to them about how safe the vaccine is.
• Launch an Endorsement Campaign: engage with a celebrity or a prominent society figure to speak to the public about the safety of the vaccination process.

Let’s wait and see how things will turn out to be!!

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The Pink Glove Dance

At the beginning of the last month I wrote a post called ‘What do you mean no to cancer?’ about a Saudi campaign promoting cancer awareness. My main point was that campaign slogan was lame and not only that; it was a bit offensive.

Now, I want you to compare that campaign with the one carried out by the staff of the Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland, Oregon, USA. The breast cancer awareness programs usually encourage participants to wear those little pink ribbons so whoever sees them will be reminded of the cause. However, those staff decided to change the rules of the game and go out and dance … literally!

The video showing more than 200 of the hospital staff dancing made a surprising success. It was posted online around the beginning of Nov. and it is passing 2,000,000 hits by now on Youtube. Although the success of the video was beyond the hospital staff expectations, the surprising success goes even further to include the cancer patients themselves. The simplicity, fun, heartwarming feelings surrounding the video made it appealing to patients to relate to the video, to feel it. Reportedly, many patients celebrated the video, and sometimes with tears, and found it so passionate in delivering the message about their disease. Now watch the video:

 

 

It worth mentioning here that the idea was originally created by the company that actually produced those pink gloves to remind people of the cause whenever they see them. Of course that before the hospital took it a bit further by their dancing video. Now the company is donating part of its pink gloves profits to support women who cannot afford mammograms checks payments.

So we have three goals scored by one ball; a company advertised its product, a hospital contributed to a noble awareness campaign, and … can you guess the third goal?

Let me put this way, don’t you just want to go there and shake hands with those hospital staff? Carrying out that dance throughout the hospital own rooms and being happy and acting ‘goofy’ on the same time gave the impression that this is a happy place to be around. Yes, it is a hospital, we know, it is usually associated with pain and sickness, but this place! It seems everybody is having fun so there is a huge chance that I might find a good treatment over there! Let me end with the comment from one of the cancer patients after seeing the video: ‘laughter is the ultimate medicine’ …

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What do you mean ‘No to Cancer’??

It has been three days now since I start noticing some kind of ads on street billboards with few words on them and bunch of logos stating ‘Yes to life … No to cancer.’ Now, I do not know if it is only me … or these few words are bit offensive!

It turned out that these ads are part of the Saudi ministry of health (MoH) cancer awareness campaign. And it seems that a similar campaign with a similar tagline had taken place last year as well. This is something we should all be thankful for and MoH should be credited for their efforts in providing the public with basic information about how to prevent cancer by cutting out bad habits like smoking or considering preliminary medical care to minimize breast cancer. But with this tagline … pleeeeeeease!!!

Cancer is not something that can be easily prevented by covering your mouth while sneezing or running out of a room when someone lights a cigarette. So what about those who already have cancer and happen to see these ads; why should we tell them that they have a disease that is against life. In other words, why should we shout at them that cancer means death (we know that this is not true in all cases)!! I can hardly  imagine how emotionally and psychologically affecting such a message is for those who have cancer or those who lost someone because of it?

The bottom line is that this tagline gives you the impression that you should be blamed if you got cancer. And if you got it, you are an outcast (No to cancer!!). This sense of guilt and responsibility is not the right message that should be communicated in an awareness campaign, or any campaign for that matter. People tend to show resistance to any blames and that usually lead them to take a defensive position and miss the whole point of such ads.

Am I exaggerating; could be! What do you think?

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LBC; Recovery Plan Failure

Picture from http://www.lbcgroup.tv

The ‘Saudi sex bragger’ case is back to surface after sentencing a Saudi female journalist to 60 lashes for her participation in the infamous episode that allegedly shocked the Saudi community and has been produced by LBC TV (Lebanese Broadcasting Corp.).

What interests me in this post is the behavior of LBC management toward this case since its outbreak few months ago.

First of all, it should be highlighted that the channel strategy was built upon targeting the Saudi market in a very direct way by producing programs that are entirely designed to address Saudi local issues. News, cultural, commentary, and sports shows have been aired presenting and hosting Saudi figures to discuss Saudi matters. The reason is obvious, the huge Saudi advertisement market. Increase our Saudi audience, so Saudi advertisers would keep coming. This strategy proved to be successful and they kept a fair share of the Saudi advertisement market.

After the disruption broke out because of that episode, the Saudi authorities closed the channel offices in both Riyadh and Jeddah; they asked all the local media related agencies to stop working with LBC, and many companies decided to stop advertising on the channel.

From a business perspective, this is a disaster. I can understand that the case is debatable in so many ways; free speech rights, ethicality, the LBC own values, and its audience cultural backgrounds are all mixed up in a very complicated way. However, given all this, the management reaction which was ‘almost nothing’, is still unexplainable to me.

In such incidents, a management recovery plan should be geared up to ensure the minimum possible losses. I am not taking the side of any possible point of view to suggest a particular course of action, but I am supporting taking an action at the first place. Now, the lack of reaction is costing the corporation a lot of its brand value. People are explaining its ‘nothing reaction’ as an ignorance sign to the whole Saudi culture. Consequently, the confidence and credibility of the channel is spiraling downward, and this is something not a single TV channel would like to go through!

The lesson here is straight forward, when you have a disaster, act fast … act now!

(Just for calrification, after this post by one day, the Saudi female reporter mentioned above has been pardoned by King Abduallah)

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Okaz Creative Advertising Awards; Building Hope

Picture from http://www.okaz-caa.com

 

Yesterday was a good day for the advertisement business in Saudi. The first awards of its kind have been distributed under the name of Okaz Creative Advertising Awards.

I believe such awards come to give some credits and recognition to a long time forgotten business sector in the kingdom; a sector that has been, and still, dominated by non-Saudis. According to the Saudi Gazette coverage, about 96% of workers in this industry are non-Saudis. But this is not the main point; I am usually a supporter of mixed culture working environments and I am, surely, not discriminating against non-Saudis. But here comes the shock; most of these workers have no specialized degree! For me that means they are only acting as facilitators helping foreign agencies to get contracts out of the Saudi market. And please keep in mind that it is estimated that the Saudi business expenditure on advertisement reached about 22.5 billion SAR (6 billion $) in 2008.

I really hope that such initiatives would open the Saudi businessmen eyes and ears on a profitable sector that has always been overlooked. I know that building a long term competitive advantage in a fiercely competitive sector is not an easy job. But given the chance to Saudi young talents in this creative business may turn out to be a whole country competitive strength.

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