For men

It seems the Dubai men's magazine market is about to explode - GQ and Esquire, anyone? But what's to say new titles - even if international brands - will do better in this market than any previous attempts? Will the ad spend ever be big enough to support new men's glossies?

Hands on services

Cracking piece in the Kipp Report today, questioning whether Gulf News has been running ads for massage parlours with benefits. Interesting to see German girls are charged at a premium; they must have particularly good hands.

Has anyone else noticed adverts like this in UAE publications?

For what it's worth, I think the Kipp Report is pretty good.

TV ads

By request from an anon commenter:

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TV advertising. first there was the Lacnor ad in which the young girl cuddles the juice carton like it was mammy and now there's one in which a mother struggling to comfort her baby finds the only way to do it is to put her KFC grease covered finger into the tot's mouth.

who approves this crap and is anyone else bothered by it?
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International media up the pressure

One reader has asked us to open up the debate on the upcoming UAE versions of the Financial Times and International Herald Tribune. This follows on from the local edition of The Times.

How do you think these titles will fare? Will local papers like Gulf News and the newly-launched The National suffer? Or, will it just mean that existing FT and IHT buyers have easier access to their paper of choice, and there will be very little effect on the local market? And, will this further highlight the lack of available talent at the upper end of the local business media market (with newswires and publications already struggling to fill their vacancies)?

Staying Alive, barely

A second delightful anonymous submission:

A certain government agency looking to establish a bigger and better corporate image here in Dubai has gone and opened a closed pitch with only three agencies requested to present.

It is not unusual in Dubai or the Middle East for companies or brands to choose and qualify agencies before sending out a brief and without informing the general marketing public. Nor is it unusual that because someone knows someone, then a second or third someone, can effectively find himself or herself meeting the first someone to pitch for something he or she did not anticipate. Effectively fooling themselves into the foolish thought that it was the quality of their creative genius and level of commitment that got the first someone to come knocking at their door on their own.

The cockiness with which that someone then proceeds beats this writer, however it must be said, the creative concepts with which two of these three agencies came up with have humbled this writer in a way entirely unknown to me before.

Our first someone honestly and with all their hearts - pause for effect - thought that presenting a creative concept for a campaign aimed at safe driving to the tune of the BG’s Staying Alive was entirely appropriate. Just because you got it right with the local Dubai airlines, doesn’t mean you’ll be lucky the second time around. Meanwhile someone else figured a play on words such as Rich Tourist Attractions was a sure fire way to create trustworthy and reliable brand positioning. Did you reward yourself with a chocolate after that one? And I’d like to see that painted across the Abras please.

All this someone has to say is, everything about all of this in Dubai has become mediocre to the point where the majority of those working in agencies have turned into completely irrelevant robots. One wonders if some of those lurking in the dark corners of creative departments in the agencies across Dubai actually dusted those creative brain cells before they attempted to come up with such pathetic communication strategy. They pay can't be that bad. For now the public eagerly awaits more insulting advertising.

Dubai TV's terrifying ad

A flash presentation of bloodshed, carnage and orgiastic violence would be less unsettling than this horror:




Does this make anyone want to turn on Dubai TV news? Or run for the hills/dunes?