measured PR

The Middle East Media Guide book compiled by Ben Smalley lists 100 PR shops based in the UAE alone for 2009! This ofcourse excludes a few advertising agencies who are more and more intruding into the PR business!

There are more "bad people" in PR than good and they are hindering the progress of the profession and diffusing its power.

Sadly, this makes the sailing really rocky to raise the bar of the PR industry in the region and it harms all efforts made in this aspect.

The question that arises here is how many of these agencies are practicing an effective PR exercise as an integral discipline to other marketing communications vehicles?

Also, another key point here, I think advertising agencies should admit it that they can’t deliver PR as a minor activity in their marketing campaigns.

I don't recommend marketing budgets which horrifyingly buy all sorts of bells and whistles. Our major marketing successes as PR agencies should merely come from engaging public relations to drive desired business outcomes.

Agencies should shape up or ship out. The key success factors to lead in the PR industry are transparency, credibility, responsibility, measurability and most significantly quality and professionalism. While there is a huge demand for strategic corporate communications counsel, the majority of the PR agencies are still offering shallow PR tactics.

Emirates NBD tops the list of the most talked about financial institute in the UAE dailies for the period Feb 23-Mar 22, 2010, but what does it really mean? When we look at the prominence of those mentions (prominence index), we see a different story:

• 0.354: Emirates NBD
• 0.408: National Bank of Abu Dhabi
• 0.136: HSBC
• 0.281: Standard Chartered

From this, we can see that mentions of NBAD are more prominent but their media exposure is still significantly lower than that of Emirates NBD's. What this tells us is that whenever you see NBAD news, they are most likely originating from NBAD's PR people, which is in sharp contrast with that of HSBC or Standard Chartered.

Data supplied is a summary of the period 23 Feb to 22 Mar 2010. Figures include positive, neutral and negative mentions in the UAE Arabic and English morning daily newspapers. Companies are counted only once if its name is used on more than one occasion in a single article. Indices and stock prices are not counted. The margin of error is +/-5%. Impressions are based on the number of mentions multiplied by the claimed circulation.

It is also interesting that winning awards topped the topics covered on Emirates NBD and NBAD. In fact, they both seem to have won 'Best Local Bank' awards in the UAE. Emirates NBD Private Banking won the 2010 Euromoney Private Banking Survey, whereas NBAD won the 'Best Local Bank' award from emeafinance magazine. You can see how it's easy to confuse the Emirates NBD bank and the Emirates NBD Private Banking.. Judging from the coverage received, Emirates NBD's PR activities were substantially more successful in leveraging this in PR coverage, compared with NBAD.

When it comes to retail banking, the share of ink matters. Dare we suggest that NBAD's PR people pick up the slack if they were to compete with Emirates NBD.

Eric Schmidt's now infamous quote during a CNBC interview sums up how companies offering social networking services think about privacy, "If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place." Or does it? Facebook has been stumbling with privacy policy changes and now plans to share user data with external sites automatically. That is scary. Very scary.

Is Facebook betting that it has reached such a large size (400 million active users) that users will not retaliate by leaving en masse? Or is it that they are confident that the alternatives are just as bad? Rather, we would like to ask, does this represent an opportunity for someone to compete with Facebook or is this the only way they can achieve the revenue they would like to see?

When I first got my G1 (aka Google Phone) and later N1 (Nexus One) a friend argued that he would never buy such a product as it does not respect his privacy. I paused for a second and wondered, just how much I cared about my own privacy. An American might feel very protective of his/her personal information whereas someone whose constantly searched a little 'extra' and 'randomly' selected for more thorough screening at airports may have a completely different take on it.

I was privileged to be invited to the unveiling of the results of the Second Annual Asda'a Buson-Marsteller Arab Youth Survey on March 7, 2010 at The Address Hotel. The survey looked into attitudes to the financial crisis, technology, media consumption, social media networking, travel attitudes, spending habits, brand perceptions, education and future expectations.

I will not go into the details of the survey findings, but would rather focus on some of the surprising elements. It is, however, worth noting that a rather distinguished panel was present to discuss the findings:

• HE Ms Najla Al Awadi (UAE FNC Member, Deputy CEO of DMI)
• Abdul Rahman Al Rashed (General Manager, Al Arabiya Television)
• Mustafa Abdel-Wadood (Managing Director, Abraaj Capital)
• Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi (Chariman of Young Arab Leaders, UAE Chapter and Media Columnist)
• Lubna Qassim (Lawyer and Legal Reform Specialist)
• Ali Mostafa (Independent Film Maker)

Everyone seemed upbeat. Everyone put on a brave face and lauded how great it was to have the Arab Youth so optimistic about the future. There were even those who believed that Arab youths had every right to be optimistic, giving an example of the oil wealth the GCC has.

Facebook Patent: Facebook awarded major patent by US Patent and Trademark Office

Facebook filed a patent claim on August 11, 2006 for what is now called the newsfeed patent, which was awarded on February 23, 2010. Commentators are calling this the single-most significant patent since the Six Degrees patent, which had its fair share of drama. So, what is so significant in this patent? It is vastly broad and open to interpretation. Twitter's future comes to mind and according to Nick O'Neill Facebook are claiming that this does not apply to status updates, instead it is about implicit actions and stories that a user is engaged in. Implicit actions?

The results are in: etsisalat takes the lead as the most talked about brand in the telecoms segment in UAE dailies, followed by Zain and du.

Data supplied is a summary of the period 9 Feb to 22 Feb 2010. Figures include positive, neutral and negative mentions in the UAE Arabic and English morning daily newspapers. Companies are counted only once if its name is used on more than one occasion in a single article. Indices and stock prices are not counted. The margin of error is +/-5%. Impressions are based on the number of mentions multiplied by the claimed circulation.

I have watched tweets and blogs about Tweetups and then GeekFests and I ignored them. I ignored them because I thought they were cheesy. By the third one (or what is dubbed 3.14 and incorrectly called geek to the power 3.14) I decided that it was time to check what it was all about. Admittedly, part of the turn off was the location. Al Quoz. I'm not particularly fond of driving in areas I'm not familiar as I am notoriously known for my lack of internal GPS :) But.. still. Al QUOZ?!

A few days ago, Socialize and YouGov Siraj issued a press release about the influence social media has on consumer decisions. The headline read: Most UAE residents use social media for purchase decisions. I had to pause for a minute. Really? Are you saying that UAE residents are the most tech savvy?

Oh, wait.. the survey conducted by YouGov Siraj is conducted online. So, we can rephrase this by saying, most residents who are online use social media to make purchasing decisions. Admittedly, this does not make for an attractive, attention grabbing headline. I'm not a journalist, so I'm sure someone can do a better job at that.

You talk to anyone in the PR industry about the blatant lies that come out of their agencies on behalf of their clients and they will vehemently defend themselves with words like "integrity" and "credibility". The truth of the matter is, PRs lie. Some stretch the truth, some bend it and most outright break it.

Although not unique to our region, but we do have a rather unhealthy obsession with being the 'first' and 'only'. I will not pretend, we love being the first and we try to always be ahead of everyone else. The problem is when you are so focused on that and you forget to check if you are indeed the first or not!

Indeed it's not just a question of lying about just being first or only.. it also goes back to throwing out figures that have no basis in reality. And oh how we love to give out dollar amounts! The general justification a PR will have is that journalists love numbers and so we need them even if we have to make them up!

The UAE press during the period of January 26, 2010 to February 8, 2010 on the Automotive industry shows no surprises. Toyota coverage skyrocketed with the constant flow of bad news and recalls.