Dubai: Listings service Insydo launched its marketing campaign on Sunday by inviting journalists to sample some of its staff’s favourite venues and services.
The tech start-up aims to become Dubai residents’ go-to service for information on local companies, services, events and venues.
Its website is already operational, having had a soft launch last year. The marketing drive comes in advance of its launch as an app for iOS and Android in March.
Unusually, the focus of the campaign is on marketing manager Steve Worobec, an affable 30-year-old British expat who’s urging residents to help save his job by visiting the company website.
Though neither Worobec nor his boss, company founder and CEO Tanaz Dizadji, would be drawn in exactly what the criteria for saving Worobec’s job would be, they were both adamant that the campaign was perfectly genuine.
“As a start-up we’re really lucky to have a marketing manager at all,” Dizadji said. “Once the campaign is over, we have to look at whether we can continue to afford one. We’re a tech firm. I can’t afford to lose my CTO.”
The company provides curated reviews of thousands of organisations, from household services to entertainment venues. Each listing attempt to explain good points about its subject, bad points — more properly “things to be aware of”, Dizadji said — top tips for users and a guideline on price.
Dizadji was keen to stress that the reviews are impartial, and based on undercover testing by Insydo’s team of researchers over the last 18 months.
While the website is functional — and useful — Dizadji said the main event would be the launch of the Insydo apps.
The media were invited to have a back massage from Home Spa, try basic parkour techniques at Gravity Calisthenics Gym in Al Quoz and connoisseur coffees at the Cafe Rider motorbike and coffee shop near Mall of the Emirates, and were ferried between venues by the Careem chauffeur service and Flybike’s motorcycle taxis.
