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 Today, yet another digital marketing conference opens in Dubai, one week on from the Arab Media Forum (which kept banging on about “nu media”) and one day ahead of a Financial Times summit in Qatar focusing on media and technology – yep, more internet-based hand-wringing and evangelising.
We’re clearly obsessed – so why are we still so bad at making online work?
I’m not talking here about the media online, which for the most part seems to be at least muddling through, so far as “build a website and put things on it” goes. No, my wrath is reserved for marketing efforts online.
Take, for example, du.
The UAE’s second telco made a big marketing splash when it launched in 2007, and has carried on pouring the ad dollars into the UAE market – for which its agencies, and many media outlets, are no doubt profoundly grateful.
As with anything, du’s brand has come in for sniping – its tag line “add life to life” has been criticised for being meaningless, its ads for being pointless, and so on and so forth. Ultimately, though, most of its traditional marketing has been no better or worse than other big regional brands – I would suggest it’s tended towards the better, rather than the worse.
The same is not true of its recent online marketing initiatives, however.
Last month, du got slapped around quite extensively in some social media circles here for its attempt at... er, viral marketing? We’re not sure. Smartpeople.ae
featured intelligence tests and similar gimmicks, purporting to be from the “Society of Smart People” – which eventually was revealed to be du.
Aside from the whole concept being rather naff, the main problem a lot of people had with it was the total lack of identifying information on the site at launch – nowhere did it say it was owned by du, and being run as a marketing operation.
People were swift to dig up the real identity of the site, though – at which point much vitriol got spilled: how dare du LIE to us? How DARE they?? And so on and so forth.
Fair enough, you might think – it’s a developing medium, sometimes things are pitched not quite right, mistakes happen.
Then du goes and does it again. Not a year later, not six months later – ONE MONTH LATER.
We now have beheard.ae, promoted via big billboards, this time purporting to give a voice to UAE residents about critical issues – through the medium of yes and no questions.
Again, no identifying information to say it’s du – but a dead giveaway for cannier (or sadder?) people who spot that the site is done in du’s signature typeface and colours. A whois search confirms it – the site is registered to EITC, aka du.
This one actually manages to be worse than Smart People – at least that had some kind of gimmick. Beheard.ae seems to just be a rather fatuous series of questions, which offer no real insight into anything.
But – and here’s the key – it looks pretty. It’s all nicely done out in flash, with tasteful colours and smooth graphics. It looks professional, it feels professional – it just doesn’t work as a marketing tool, or even as a du brand extension, thanks to its anonymity.
It also comes complete with a Twitter account
– two tweets, four followers, and that’s the lot. Social media engagement this isn’t.
I’m picking on du here, thanks to the swift repetition of a rather large mistake – but the truth is this could come from many, many regional brands.
In my view, du made two main mistakes with these sites. First, it abandoned common sense – it hid its identity on the sites, it failed to provide anything of real interest or value, and it seems to have thought “digital” and “social” marketing meant this wouldn’t matter.
Second, and far more importantly, it didn’t track the response sufficiently after the first attempt – @smartpeople
was on Twitter, with negative messages being sent to the account (the word “disgust” is not usually classed as positive), and yet...
What du really needed was a person with a big stick, standing behind the marketing team and ready to give them a gentle tap when they stopped making sense – which happens to us all.
The difference is that for (most) old media efforts, there will be someone ready to say “no, this won’t work – it’s stupid”. But in this wonderful world of digital online social paradigm synergies, it seems no-one has the confidence to assert common sense.
Hopefully these rash of conferences will start to get people’s minds working – but somehow I doubt it.
Feel free to chime in with your own examples of dreadful online marketing from the region, either in the comments below, or on email:
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