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Advertising: here, there and here again
One must humour the masses without offending them to build brands but this can only be done with the advent of homegrown talent that understands local culture.
- By Mishaal Al Gergawi, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 23:29 July 11, 2009
- Image Credit: Illustration: Luis Vazquez/Gulf News
Three years ago, along with a group of alumni from the American University in Dubai, I organised a lecture series of which one was about advertising in the Middle East and why it may seem to be lagging behind Europe and North America. We invited Kamal Dimachkie, managing director of Leo Burnett UAE and Kuwait.
It was a nice evening and while there was consensus that the ads in the region could be a little more 'daring' or 'edgy', there was also general agreement that things would take time.
Until recently, the state of the UAE's real estate market was similar to the car market in the United States in the late 50s and early 60s: it was all about bigger, better and faster; they couldn't churn out cars fast enough to satisfy the demand and that's how the advertising went. That was then and since 2007 things have been changing, and the crisis came as an incremental catalyst to all this.
Human beings are similar around the world and advertising is widely considered as a representative of the development of society; this is specifically applicable to this region. What the industry needs is people who will continuously raise the bar; a case in point is Egypt. Five years ago, no one considered it an important market.
Once Cairo started to boom, the local offices started trying things out of the norm and now Egyptian advertising offices have outshone their head offices in Dubai so much that they are now major contenders in the IAA (International Advertising Association) awards. Pepsi Max, Coke Zero and Melody channel's ads are worth noting.
So why is Egypt beginning to break the mold? This can be mainly attributed to the fact that Egypt has a long history of self-deprecation through theatre and cinema on issues such as failed revolutions, stricken poverty and wide spread corruption. While Freej - the animated series - was an interesting production, it does not attempt to self-deprecate; it only reflects on the past and tries to re-contextualise it the contemporary. Just imagine poking fun at the abaya or the kandoora?!
Whether you would one day have Emiratis work in the advertising industry and begin to push the envelope of their own culture is another conversation, but even then I have my doubts on how those attempts would be received; but the UAE needs intellectual/content driven risk-takers who can redefine the parameters. That is the other reason for Egypt's advertising nuisance; the fact that Egyptians got into the industry ready to compete with expatriates.
But that brings us to another dilemma which is that the UAE is not a homogeneous culture, at least demographically, and so it is a difficult market and so marketing directors do prefer to push safer advertising like, for instance, promotions.
The ad campaign that really prompted me to hold that talk three years ago was the Master Card 'Priceless' campaign. I saw the discrepancy between the execution in Europe and the US on one hand and the ones in the Middle East on the other. European countries and the US are both homogeneous cultures in terms of communication. When applied here, it is potentially dangerous because the thought is envisioned in one language but with a tendency to be lost in translation during multilingual execution. But it shouldn't be this way.
This is because the scenarios are driven by demographics as opposed to psychographics. In a sense, sometimes your consumer is actually global rather than local; clearly the case with Master Card.
The main problem is that the consumer is underestimated by the client will ask: "will my consumer understand this?" Insinuation is the great Satan. But the consumer has come of age - conscious and aware of his worth.
If you look at the big FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) brands e.g. soap, chicken soup and diapers, they are focused on achieving specific targets such as promoting products and achieving some form of brand recognition. Yet when attempting to achieve brand loyalty, many shy away. Advertisers are mainly timid to push the message fearing that they would push the boundaries and be at the uncomfortable end of a backlash.
In the GCC, it is still the expatriates who create the ads and as much as they try to understand the culture they will not risk a witty ad that could backfire. But imagine if a creative Saudi or Kuwaiti started creating witty ads because they knew how to tread the line of daring without offending; the campaign would be more acceptable to the Khalijis as opposed to Tony from Beirut or Kurt from South Africa.
A lot of people are critical of the GCC but we haven't had the need to be creative yet due to soaring growth. Now things are different but with everyone still in panic mode and concerned with merely surviving, the focus remains on product promotion. In time, someone notable should begin to take some risks in an effort to build brand loyalty. It is inevitable; ultimately, creativity is almost always associated with risk.
Mishaal Al Gergawi is an Emirati commentator on socio-economic and cultural affairs in the UAE.
Your comments
I would like to pay special thanks to Hassan Abou Taam, Tariq Alami, Nicholas Chidiac, Kate Barry and Sawsan Ataya without whom I couldn't have written this piece.
Mishaal Al Gergawi
Dubai,UAE
Posted: July 12, 2009, 02:11
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