Flabby media dodges another bullet

How can a manufacturer of soap powder, shampoo and skin creams be an agent for change in the Middle East's media industry? The answer, of course, is advertising spend. With newspapers, magazines, radio and (most) TV being distributed for free, media owners rely on advertising to generate revenue. Knowing this, the advertisers have the right to expect certain demands to be met. Chief among these is asking media owners to tell them how many people read/viewed/listened to their magazine/TV/radio station. In developed markets, the cheeky advertisers even ask media owners to prove their figures are correct. This information helps both sides work out how much an ad should cost. That is not the case in the Middle East. With very few exceptions media owners are allowed to pluck figures from the air; whether the advertiser believes these figures, it has to negotiate a fee it feels comfortable with. The system penalizes good media and keeps bad media in business.

Understandably, such a situation is not popular among advertisers. It wastes their money and makes them complicit in potentially fraudulent transaction. The biggest advertisers in the Middle East have been working for years to change this. So it will be off great relief to media owners that Jan Zijderveld, chairman of Unilever MENA and champion of the Advertising Business Group, is leaving to take up a new position in Singapore. Zijderveld has been a vocal advocate of change, and has worked hard to bring bring both sides together. But, not for the first time, media owners have played the long game and seen off an ambitious expat with designs on bringing the Middle East up to international standards. No doubt someone else will pick up Zijderveld's baton, but momentum will be lost. Expect more stalling tactics, and no visible uplift in the quality of media.

Arab business doesn't need driven women...it needs them to drive themselves

There has been plenty of jaw-jaw on how to get more Arab women into the work place, now there is chance hard cash will be thrown at the issue. The women's advisory panel of the Islamic Development Bank is meeting in Bahrain to discuss ways of spending a $10bn poverty-reduction fund. How they will spend this windfall is anyone's guess. There are a myriad of problems and the size of the task is daunting. According to UN data, in 2001, the participation of women in the global economy was estimated at 55.2 per cent, with only 29 per cent of economic activity in the Arab region, one of the lowest in the world. In 2002, the latest figures available, 44 million adult women (aged over 15 years and representing almost half of the female population of the Arab region) could not read or write.

In Saudi Arabia, where 58 per cent of University students are women, only around 9 percent of the women of the working age are available to work. As Arab News reports today, maybe the best to get women contributing to the economy is allowing them to drive. $10bn will buy a lot of Nissan Sunnys.

An oversupply of F1 tracks

Bernie Ecclestone, boss of Formula 1, must love coming to the Middle East. With Bahrain hosting race 3 of this year’s season and Abu Dhabi lined up for next year, everywhere he goes he must be met with smiles and positive energy. As he’s pressuring Australia and the UK to improve the staging of their F1 races, it must be nice for him to play off the enthusiastic management of new circuits against old customers.
The problem for the Gulf is that it will soon past its freshest. Dubai’s track is already up to F1 standards and Qatar
That will make four F1 tracks within half an hour’s flying time, all of which are 30 minutes drive from an international airport serviced by a buoyant international airline. You would expect canny Ecclestone to then play one off against the other.
If you’ve yet to visit the impressive facility in Bahrain, best to get there before F1 leaves town. has revealed it is upgrading its Losail International Circuit. “Yes, we are planning a massive upgrade of the Losail circuit to make it possible to host Formula One races when the time comes,” Qatar Motor and Motorcycling Federation president Nasser Khaifa al-Attiyah tells Gulf Times.

A crash felt around the world

Dubai has an unwritten marketing slogan: ‘the best place to live and work for one thousand miles in any direction’. No official will say it, and you won’t read it on any marketing material, but most expats will know the truth of it. Access to capital, entertainment, education, and an entrepreneurial outlook – combined with Dubai’s relatively relaxed live-and-let-live attitude – make it a better bet than, say, Cairo, Riyadh and Amman.
Even the driving is rated better than its neighbors (have you ever been to Cairo, or driven on Riyadh’s potholed highways?). That might not be the case anymore, at least to foreigners looking in.
The 300-car pile-up on the Dubai-Abu Dhabi road has made the news in Europe, Australia and India. TV viewers will have seen pictures more typical of a disaster movie than a car crash. They will be scratching their heads wondering how anyone can drive at 120kmph when visibility is down to 5 meters. With the stopping distance at this speed being around 200 meters, maybe, they’ll think, this is some new kind of Middle East suicide plot.
For all its big plans for big buildings and big planes, it is other big incidents that may shape Dubai’s international reputation.

UAE govt acts to stop locals emigrating

The UAE is considering a plan to provide citizens of the Gulf state with discounts on 14 food items, gasoline and cooking fuel to help offset inflation, the head of a consumer protection body said. Under the proposal, the ministry of social affairs will provide nationals with cards they can use at 16 co-operative supermarkets in the country to be eligible for the discounts.
A masterstroke. The UAE economy, up 7.4 per cent last year, would no doubt collapse without the hard work and innovation of UAE nationals, who make up around 10 per cent of the country’s working population. Any initiative that keeps talent in the UAE, and discourages locals from emigrating to, say, France or South Africa, should be applauded.

Ugly fight for slice of the beautiful game

It’s hard to make sense of Dubai International Capital’s lengthy wrestle for control of Liverpool Football Club. The latest reports – and things seem to change on a daily, if not hourly basis – is that Tom Hicks, the club’s co-owner, has terminated all talks with DIC. Last week it looked as though DIC would settle for a 49 per cent share, leaving majority control with Hicks. Hicks was then angered after reading DIC only agreed to 49 per cent as a means to an eventual takeover.
So now you have one co-owner who is happy to sell, another who isn’t – and may struggle to have a working relationship with DIC. For its part, DIC, which thought it had a deal in place to fully acquire the club in February 2007, has now agreed to pay nearly the same amount for half as much. In gambling terms, they seem to have shown their hand.
There seems little sense in Dubai paying over the odds if they can’t have some control over policy. Hicks has nixed the idea of ‘rule by committee’, saying it is unworkable. Hicks must think he can make money out of the club. It’s just hard to see him making any better, and quicker, profit than simply taking Dubai’s cash.
It is a mess.

YouTube as crap media-buster

Newspapers that write feel-good pap, TV stations that don’t touch domestic stories, radio stations that read the news off the BBC. It would be easy to live a year in the Middle East and barely know what was happening on your doorstep.
Much is made of the lack of press freedom in the region, but maybe it is more to do with the lack of journalistic creativity. Perhaps it’s best to leave news reporting to the amateurs?
Wajiha Huwaidar, a Saudi activist, marked this year's International Women's Day by defying a ban on women driving in the ultra-conservative kingdom and posted a video of her act on YouTube. The video doesn’t show much, just Wajiha pootling around some quiet country roads and talking to camera. It doesn’t need Hollywood production values to get the story across.
Hats off to Wajiha and let’s hope it encourages more amateur story tellers. They could do better than the pros – compare ABC News’ tiresome ‘Dubai’s Dirty Little Secret’ with Paxploitation’s Do Buy! three parter). Or Kipp’s vote for the most original piece of film to come out of Dubai, Go Around Twice if You’re Happy.

Lessons from Watergate for currency speculators

Will they, won’t they? It seems the world and his wife has an opinion on the dropping dollar and whether Gulf currencies will depeg or devalue. If you don’t like today’s verdict, wait half an hour and there will be anew one along.
Emirates Business today reports that Middle East banks are reducing their exposure to the US dollar ahead of an anticipated US rate cut later this month. “You will see an increase in investments in commodities and long-term bonds,” says R Seetharaman, Chief Executive of Qatar’s Doha Bank.
If you want to know what will happen with the dirham, maybe the best advice is to act like Bernstein and Woodward, the Washington Post reporters who brought down President Nixon: “Follow the money.”

Competing financial markets are good for business

An open market, with free and fair competition, should produce keener prices, better products and less wastage. That concept seems easy enough to grasp when applied to, say, a fruit market (‘don’t buy those apples, these are fresher and cheaper’), it also works for financial markets.
Changes to new the UAE’s Companies Law, allowing family businesses to go to IPO floating just 30-50 per cent of shares, are expected shortly. The idea is to encourage more family business to market and provide more investment opportunities for the excess cash sloshing around the region. It is fair to say the changes wouldn’t have come about without some form of competition between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Both markets want the business, both want to push through product innovation to tempt more people in.
As IPO activity in the US and Europe slows down there is a temptation to think the cash-rich Gulf can pootle along at its own pace. Not so. Now is the time to push on. So it is good to hear these changes are imminent, and that Abu Dhabi Securities Market has entered into MoUs with Karachi and Lahore stock exchanges and others to allow cross-listing and share trading, helping foreign companies to raise capital.
Far from competing for business, rival stock markets can increase the size of the total market, says Tom Healy, director-general of ADSM. He says a secondary market or a separate counter for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) or companies with little paid-up capital, where they could raise capital to meet their expansion requirements, is also needed.
“One stock market would be a bad idea, as it would eliminate the competition, which is the essence of every business.”

UAE needs free media, not big media

‘Creating a pool of media is the only way to survive in the coming years as competition between all types of media tools hots up.” The words of Ahmad Al Hammadi, Executive General Manager of Arab Media Group, speaking at the First Gulf Investment Forum, and quoted in one of his papers, Emirates Business. Hammadi has three newspapers, nine radio stations and sales rights to a couple of TV stations.
There is some old media sense in what he says – a diverse range of media, touching the consumer at different points during the day, providing a versatile platform for advertisers. But it suggests small and innovative media have no place in a modern media environment. This is nonsense.
What the media industry needs, what any industry needs, is free and fair competition. An innovative, outspoken freesheet should be allowed to distribute to homes in Dubai, instead of being banned by government-supported companies. It should be easier for publishers to get the license to print new titles. Talent should be able to move between employers and not face the threat of being banned.
There is nothing wrong with building empires, but it is not healthy for such a youthful market (bear in mind Gulf News just celebrated its 30^th birthday) to already be thinking about domination. Encouraging new media, new forms of information delivery, should be to the fore.

Why should low-cost carriers have all the Sales fun?

Low-cost carriers have been around for years, and if there’s one sure-fire way for them to drum up a little publicity, to remind travelers they really do offer low-low fares, it’s the ‘all seats for sale from one dollar/pound/euro/dirham’ offer. It works as well in Luton as it does in Kuwait.
Jazeera Airways, fresh from announcing new routes and new planes, is currently on Sale, promising fares from as little as one dirham. Not all fares are one dirham, you understand, and the price doesn’t include taxes and booking charges, and your return flight will cost a lot more than one dirham, but you get the picture: it’s cheap. Though not as cheap as you first think.
Harmless enough. Low-cost airlines are among the best data-crunchers around; they know route load factors, price sensitivity and annual holiday patterns. It is no coincidence the Jazeera Sale falls outside the Ramadan, school and business holidays.
The question is: why don’t more sectors copy this type of sale? When low-cost airlines go on Sale the customer is at least allowed to dream there are bargains to be had; when mall retailers go on Sale it usually says to the customer ‘here’s the stuff we couldn’t sell last week at full price’.
Sales do clear unsold stock, but they can also be a time to reengage with consumers, to remind them what’s good about the business. Would it be such a disaster if coffee, cinema tickets or haircuts were slashed to one dirham for one day?

Labor camps: a tool of segregation

Giddy excitement in Qatar as a new project to house 50,000 workers is announced. Once complete (in 2010), the $1 billion project will include mosques, playgrounds, a fitness centre, cinemas, malls, a motel, a medical centre, a petrol station, used car showrooms, and an auction place. Workers will sleep six to a room and each will have 4.25sqm of living space, says a breathless report in the Gulf Times, which is more than internationally accepted standards.
While better facilities are a step in the right direction, it is worth remembering such camps entrench the view that laborers are a resource that is to be used, controlled and, when finished with, shipped out. A fresh batch can then fill the accommodation.
Such camps, however well equipped, cement the view that laborers are not expats – they have no place in mainstream society, they can’t be expected to live among the community, they can’t rent accommodation on the open market. This camp ensures the two need never mix, and is that really the sign of a healthy and confident society?