dotone » UAE

SMB’s dragged Online with GoNabit

Saleh Esmaeili — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 06:58:26 +0000

Years and years digital agencies have been crying n’ whining about how hard it is to sell digital media & products in the Middle East. Ten years later, most of the brands are online, most of the governments have woken up but SMB’s are still out of the picture, having said that, SMB’s form the bigger number of the companies n’ businesses in the Middle East, specially in Dubai.

A month ago a new service floated on the MidEast Internet gulf–GoNabit. I really got interested about the project prior to its launch when @danstuart from Bayt.com announced that he’s goin’ to be workin’ on it full-time, ever since I’ve been registered with their Newsletter. So they launched, and I keep on receiving these interesting Nabit 50+% offers on goods/services that I might like.

The Value & Problems Solved

Looking at the big picture, GoNabit is one of the most creative approaches in filling the gap in the e-commerce & online media markets for the SMB’s. Now check this out.

E-commerce is nearly impossible to implement with little budgets in the ME if we don’t consider the very low quality payment gateways given and managed by banks & ISPs. Yea, brands and chain shops with huge marketing/sales budgets can go e-commerce but what about the little boys, for those with no big budgets? for those that do not work with ad-agencies? SMB’s are all those in Dubai. So what does GoNabit do? Sells the coupons! In a transparent way it’s not just informing you about the offer, but letting you Nabing it so it assures business & visits, but the value lies within the buzz and the awareness that comes with such sales–sales of coupons & special offers.

GoNabit buzzes around everywhere in the Online social space, starting from Twitter(@GoNabit) all the way to Facebook(GoNabit Page). With every Nabit there’s a good chance for the business behind the offer to be acknowledged and marketed with viral & user generated word of mouth. And that is a start to keep a good taste in SMB’s mouths to come back to online & the digital space again and again.

The idea is not coupons or the group buying as noted, the idea is Marketing + Leads packaged in coupons business. What businesses get from working with GoNabit is direct-mail-gone-social. Direct as in solicited direct, no spam. The only people who hear about or receive the e-mails about Nabits are those registered. So take a look at the media and digital channels used, only the best, the solicited ones. E-Mail & Social Meida. So no sperm-like-unsolicited-1-go-die-the-rest kindda’ approach to reach and buzz. Lovely!

Bayt.com: you do my job? okay! I’ll do yours

Saleh Esmaeili — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 13:36:30 +0000

After dubizzle got some traction n’ started appearing in conferences n’ started selling some real ad spaces, every one with a little online background n’ some development cash in hand went with classifieds. That’s understandable to me, as Mohd Al Abbar once said, in Dubai & the ME we have a business viral syndromes called “The Falafel Syndrome” where if one man opens a Flafel shop on a side road you’ll see that full side road becoming a complex of Flafel shops. True that!

Bayt.com needs no introduction. The biggest, oldest n’ a number of …est stuff in the Middle East. Respect!

After the boom in the classifieds business online, Arabian Business, AMEInfo, GulfNews, and you name’em they all started their own Jobs sections & some like Gulf News pulled their offline Classifieds and streamlined them online, which I believe is really great.

But! Bayt.com goes with Classifieds? That I don’t understand. Yes it’s a good market, but Bayt as a brand is known for Jobs, CVs, Employment Services. First were ads that appeared which didn’t make sense for a proud company like Bayt.com to serve really irrelevant ads on Job pages. Yes, you gotta’ make money, you already do with business subscriptions & cv searches along with cv services. So taxing the Job Seekers with ads?

Now, getting over the ads on Bayt.com. Classifieds? I mean really Classifieds? Bayt.com now has a full portal for Classifieds. And! Jobs is a category in their classifieds as well. Good for them. I’d just expect a lot more originality from Bayt. But hey, they’ve got user base and the opportunity right? so let’s screw our Jobs-only name?

Maktoob Yahoo! bandwagon effect?

Saleh Esmaeili — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 04:40:04 +0000

First things first, it was a great piece of News to receive after such a long time of flop n’ demeaning News on ME’s tech/Internet scene. Congratulation to Maktoob on the pay off for the 12 years of keeping things running. Is this deal gonna’ get the wheel rolling?

Having Google enrooting in the ME, Microsoft already there although the Live team hasn’t been of an active team here. And now, Yahoo! So what does that mean for the startups in the ME and the Arabia in particular? What would be the Formula for the Content value?

Investors confidence

The best effect of the buy out is the fact that now at least one example is out there to show. One story to showcase the value of Content and online innovation.

Developers motivation

I’ve heard this line countless times before “man it’s hard to sell the idea out here, I’m off to US man”. And those who had no hope for leaving the country they just end up doing their projects for fun and the sense of being a geek/nerd. And if it was very ambitious it’s about selling some ads n’ banners, that’s it.

Now? This has to change. Your side project can become your life if you were a developer. Yes, you can put Google/MS/Yahoo! between your eyes when thinking and polishing your ideas, of course after the solution and identifying the needs.

It’s about patience

Jus’ like any other business n’ investment, patience and lots o’ luck n’ some more innovation. Yes. It pays of in the Internet business, this is highly the way it is going to be received.

Lot’s of mini-examples have been there in the market. Jeeran being one of the earliest mini porjects that were funded twice, other projects that had the same path there too. But! this one is the News that will buzz for a while, indicating the region’s readiness for being the next best thing.

It’s DOABLE

That quite said.

1% again, again, and again

Saleh Esmaeili — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 08:21:05 +0000

Yes, it’s one percent of the whole ad spend in the Middle East. That’s the online media spend. How can we fix that? The repeated answers “By educating marketers. Google Adwords is the best solution. E-commerce ain’t working for this region because we like to shop.” I mean c’mon people! How many more places are you going to repeat the same things?

What has been done to improve?

Nothing. I’ll tell you why nothing. Keep reading.

Conferences & Summits

Is there anything but Sales info? Charts that are the same as the ones handed to your next sales man? Jargons n’ lots of showcases of your own work. Campaigns that hasn’t actually worked. Other than making the Marketers look dumb by saying hey use “this” it’s good for your kids health?

Impressions not Actions

You want to promote actions and acquisitions while all that is offered in the market is Impressions.

Microsites

Just a form? Or wait now they have Tweets n’Facebook connect. For real!

Articles

I mean come on. I often read articles from people with no background what so ever in the Online Ads or Web for that matter n’ you’ll find “Some Name, Some Company Name, thinks it is better to do something”. I mean that reporter wants to get some news off some e-mail? a tweet perhaps? What are the reporters for if they wanna’ find those people who are not in need to be found? Just because they’re in your face and they’re louder doesn’t mean they’ve got the right words or the right idea.

Social Media

Yea right! Just because Twitter is on paper everyday it doesn’t mean signing every company an account on Twitter n’ getting them a Facebook group means the social media use. That’s the step one out of another 99 steps to be taken. Engagement?

Communities

Yes, give that office space for some people to hangout n’ network n’ slap our logo on the door. That’s it. Community. For real?

The Biggest.

Best, biggest, taller, fatter, uglier, slimmer, miss world, and Kobe Bryant’s underwear portal/agency/company in the middle east, what? how many are out there anyways? Now stop that already. Focus.

Conclusion

The better you PR means the more you KNOW, apparently. So the louder your NOISE the more you can reach. People! We ain’t got to be loud to get the message out, and for ethical reasons, and just business morals, for once, try to educate the clients n’ not sell them stuff at one conference, you ain’t paying anything anyways! They are paying for the tickets!

Match no more, get relevant people

Saleh Esmaeili — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 06:48:51 +0000

One day out of the blue I visited Bayt.com n’ got me an account, uploaded my resume n’ kept waiting for interviews, wait, when was that? Sometime between 2002-2003. Then I remember being hired using my own networking and contacts n’ in the first month of my job I started getting calls from Bayt.com offering me jobs.

Six years after that, I still get e-mails for saved searches. But the odd thing is I receive jobs that are completely irrelevant to my outdated resume, but perfectly matching my new roles & skills. Weird & Spooky. Then I calmed down, n’ figured the market for talent is really down in the low that the word “Match” ain’t the target anymore, the new match is “Relevant”. Another look at this n’ I was feeling my own pain seeking fit candidates for positions to fill in my team.

You could easily find Web Design positions filled by Graphic Designers, or Web UI designer filled by DB/Software-Programmers. Now this could indicate two very important facts about the UAE’s talent market. First, who’s screening? screeners are failing to understand Web and related jobs positions. Second, employers are hiring, desperate. But hey, the region doens’t lack talent, seek the right ones, n’ you shall get’em. But! can you compensate them? The reason you wouldn’t be able to attract the right talent is the fact that most of the employers had no idea of the right budget for the right candidates, led by wrong data you get wrong candidates. Fact.

The bigger the client the cheaper the process

Saleh Esmaeili — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:31:08 +0000

At d&l we’ve had 91% of business coming from references and the rest from only networking, directories, n’ search engines. So what I hear most of the time is hey bro, we ain’t as big as company X that referred you, so be gentle with invoices “you know what I mean”. It is not shocking anymore to me, but I keep on getting this assumption from prospects n’ clients that Agencies n’ Design Boutiques quote/invoice based on the size of their clients’ pockets n’ not the size of the job. But the Irony lies in the fact that it is cheaper to work with bigger clients.

You usually do less “unbilled” work for Bigger clients.

Bigger clients mean bigger personnel count and departments which also means lots o’ hands that could brief you and get you most of your needs and answers on a timely manner, thus saving your schedules from tangling up.

Department, not a one-man marketer. You get lots o’ input and more questions and the more you interact the clearer the goal and creative needs are.

Bigger clients usually have their branding done professionally.

That means you come to receive a proper Branding guidelines that help you understand the visual/feel of the brand. Print marketing collateral to give you insight of what has been working for the client offline. And, that could be a good platform to start understanding what the client has been approving and liking from the work done for them on traditional medium.

While with smaller ones, you gotta’ first find where the source of that Logo is or you might end up scanning and redrawing the logo not understanding a damn thing about the concept behind it, nor how it’s supposed to be used. And then comes content, smaller companies usually expect to receive copy writing for free, imagery, and the whole thing for free. While at bigger clients you have these mostly ready with little adjustments and tweaking to fit with the concept of the website, need you some more copy, they’re ready to pay.

Big sharks know how to take care of smaller fishes, they grow’em

Yes, irony, but that’s true. Bigger clients tend to be a little more with moralities regarding treating a bunch of young kids doing some artwork for their brand online. Because they usually know how important their opinions are and how effective they could be. While at smaller companies the stress is on squeezing the budget-spent and crunching those kids for some extra saving.

Sure at bigger organizations the amount of work might be a lot more and the expectations are higher as they hold a bigger stake in the market. And yes, the work is usually required faster and with really sharper presentations and prompt feedback, which translate in more resources to allocate to their projects, which means more cost. But from bottom up, it is cheaper to work with bigger clients thus more profiting than working with smaller ones, because:

Smaller clients expect you to do it all from A-Z as in even their part
Usually have no offline collateral and branding guidelines
Unbilled work means collaboration for them
Consultancy? You can’t bill that!
You keep on hearing can you let my daughter give you a design idea? She’s graduating this year
Website is a one time thing

The point, I don’t know how accounting goes right when pricing is different for bigger & smaller companies, I mean how would the product pricing be on the books? Crazy! You just don’t bill some stuff to smaller clients because they won’t understand it nor pay it but you do it just for the ethics of the business? Is that it?

Life without Ads

dotblack — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 03:53:06 +0000

This morning I was watching a channel that stretched a half an hour documentary to more than an hour. While I was fine with it having it watched on a Free channel and unplanned out of blue. Just thought of a crazy-wild idea. How would life be without Ads. Ads, as in Display Ads, Roller Ads, TVC, Radio, Newspapers, Outdoor, Google Ads, Web Banners, E-mail shots & Newsletters Ads. And not even SMS or Telemarketers. And those annoying brochures left under your apartment’s door or the slips left on your windshield. Clearly no Ads of any sort.

Radio

Imagine driving on a road like Sheikh Zayed Road on a jammed day, traffic ain’t moving. Dial a radio station and listen to your music without no cheesy brand name insert here and there, comes News break then you do not hear that “why stand inline when you can book online, Fly Emirates”, ah so you change to Virgin Radio(104.4) and get that so annoying 5 words weather update, “it’s going to be sunny” and then another insertion, “brought to you by Snickers Ice Cream, your favorite chill”.

Think about this, how much of programming is done to do all the insertions planning. Man! If all that was spent on getting better music and repeating less tracks, we’d have amazing Radio Stations.

Outdoor Banners

Then you get bored of the music played, so you turn on your iPod on your car n’ rock your own tracks. Window down, lite a cigarette take a look around, and you find a jungle of colors and lights. It always reminds me of my room back in the teen days with all the posters in no order. Look right and you see some Hyundai ad, now Hyundai being a luxury wannabe’, look ahead and it’s all about why you should buy cheaper stuff. Air Arabia teaches you that it’s okay to go aged and balled exactly as how you have to accept getting the cheaper Plane tickets. So Air Arabia is something one has to talorate, not something to accept, who got sold on account managers’ crap. So it’s all about the economy weather?

Just like teenager’s posters, you could know his/her music Genre from the posters, you could learn the market from the style of the ads.

Close your eyes for a second and get all that out of your mind, get back to your own music. You remember you’re still connected to the world, hah, got Twitter and Facebook in your car, on your mobile.

You fire up that Twitter client and you find weird @yournickname replies to things you never talked about or related to, snap, spam that is. Star those cool tweets to read up links later on your big screen.

Time to see what your pals are doing, get that Facebook up, oh, got 4 new messages in my inbox. Wow, I feel so popular today, first reads Live invites you to use the Live Messenger App more often. Second reads “Hi I sell iPhone 3G for AED2799, hurry up”, third, “Hey S send me your BB Pin”, forth, “Sponsored by ***** win dinner at… while you’re at it, you get an e-mail notification on your Blackberry, oh, you’d be excited to be receiving replies to some of your earlier sent e-mails. E-mail reads, Lands, Apartments direct from the owner, hurry up.

So what’s up with the “hurry up” is everything on sale and for sale nowadays. Gets darker outside, turn your headlights on, the car ahead has stickers all around it with. Apple’s logo, some Air Intake brand(usually K&N) and when you get tired take a look at your left, there is that ugly public transport bus with AMEInfo all over it, I mean isn’t it enough that we have our inboxes full of AMEInfo already?

By the time you reach your destination you think parking, after a long search you spot a slot and you park. Waiting for the elevator, a screen between every two elevators showing a promotion on ACs? Winter y’all! Yo go in, reach your destination, wait to meet your host, you get coffee in a “Nescafe” mug, cheap bastards. On the waiting table, it’s all classifieds and promotional brochures, people don’t read magazines anymore? Or there’s no more space?

Down the building, reaching to your car, ah, man, another fine for what? Some bastard put up a promotional Brochure on your windshield covering your parking token! Fines remind you of more bills waiting for you, you race to your Post Office, you open up the box and you can’t take anything out, it’s all jammed, because Jutton had to send you a big-huge-brochure that is thick enough to cover up your inbox.

No moral, just a crazy thinking. You see, you can be frustrated about Ads, but can we live without’em? That was a way too negative way of thinking about Ads. I was about to edit some, but hell, that’s some reality.

It’s Orange, it’s White, it’s Laazi ads

dotblack — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:25:57 +0000

Every Sunday, the appointments section of Khaleej Times gets Orange with daring Whites in words. As simple as these words are to be put are as creative Laazi’s ads are.

Our hardworking great friends at Laazi.com think it might be easier to upload your CV to their portal than punching your Boss!

Refresh your bitching, complaint about a new Job

Weekend was so good? Job’s gonna’ take that buzz away? You need a new Job!

The above ads aren’t just a creative copy well-written, but an image of a team well reflected in Type!

Nakheel’s Spam II

dotblack — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 21:20:49 +0000

A couple of days ago I posted about Nakheel’s Spam showing the three times that I was spammed. Two more shots added to that.

Oct 3^rd Shot:

Oct 4^th Shot:

Now the difference, the above shots were not signed by Dubai Moon, and the tracking has been shifted to Double Click.

Five shots to the same e-mail address, the same message, and unsolicited. Stops over here, Evast is reported as spam, the fun is over for me, I wanted to see how far it goes, it seems that it won’t stop until cityscape reaches. Such a Media Plan right there!

And the campaign is now directed to Nakheel’s City Scape Page

Nakheel’s Spam

dotblack — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 21:59:20 +0000

How often does a company get e-mails on info@domain.com? When a prospect has no hold of a contact in a company that he/she is contacting. To inquire about more information, the kind of information that wouldn’t be there online.

When we first offered e-mail campaigns at dots & lines, the first question we were asked was, where do you get your database from. We’d often use other portals’ databases with demography details. Not the ones compiled by a bot from websites. Human managed database of people who won’t receive e-mails from us, nor from our clients, but from the portal that registered its users, and that’s the users who’ve agreed on receiving ads, and sponsored messages.

There’s no one day that we don’t get offered to buy a collection of 100,000 potential databases sent to our “info” e-mail. Now think about it, if a database seller is spamming, and calling that e-mail marketing, then what’s left for the rest of the spammers? Unfortunately that market has falsely grown. It’s very obvious, analyze your “info” e-mail list and you’ll be shocked with how many local spams we have daily.

Now to what’s bugged me for the last three days. Nakheel’s Spam. Nakheel is not the next door furniture shop or the next electronic shop that is trying to sell some knock-off goods to you. It’s the builder of the 8th wonder of the world, the palms.

You’d skip the spam first, you’d delete it the the second time, you might add it to your spam filter the third time, and that’s because it’s from Nakheel, otherwise it’s sent to junk from the first shot. Nakheel’s spam has been sent to us three times, the same message, the same details, to the same e-mail address. So, from my point of view, all they care about is someone actually clicking the links in the spam and/or adding the counts of loading the message splash-image. And that’s where the campaigns get into false numbers, and only numbers, because with such media plan, it’s nothing but spam shots, and the numbers could never ever ever result in any kind of true ROI.

Here’s the web version of the spam shot:
http://www.dubaimoon.com/newsletter/Dubaimoon.html

The funny part is, it is sent form an e-mail address from a company called evast.ae. But the e-mail message is hosted at Dubai Moon.

Another funny point is, the e-mail is signed by Dubai Moon. Here are some of the screenshots.

September 30^th Shot:

October 1^st Shot:

October 2^nd Shot:

We never use “info” to send any e-mails, it’s rather a list that we receive e-mails from. Thus, no one of us at dots & lines would ever use it as our e-mail address while registering anywhere! And no, we’re not registered with Dubai Moon, nor Evast, and not even Nakheel on any portal of theirs. So? That’s spam!