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 Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority sat down with its advertising partners recently, apparently to reassure them that everything would be alright, and to discuss how to get out of the current economic crapfest and other handy hints and tips.
Outdoor advertising, the mainstay of the RTA’s portfolio, was one of the worst-hit sectors following Dubai’s real estate crash at the end of last year, which more or less wiped out that happy group of advertisers willing to drop anything up to Dhs8 million on a Sheikh Zayed Road billboard.
We would imagine that outdoor ad companies’ deals with the RTA might also have caused some friction after the downturn hit, having been signed in rather better economic times. So we can understand the need for a bit of reassurance.
“This gathering has given our partners in the advertising market a good opportunity to meet each other, and provided us a wider platform to work as a broad team to review the difficulties facing the advertising market and how to overcome them. It looked into how to boost the mutual relations towards meeting our common objectives in the interest of both parties,” said Saeed Mohammed Al Marri, director of the contracts procurement department at the RTA, in a press release.
A whole host of RTA people were at the meeting at the Al Bustan Rotana Hotel, although strangely the press release doesn't manage to list any of the advertising partners. But still, we are reassured the meeting was useful.
“In particular they discussed how to benefit from RTA resources and its relationship with the public and private sector towards assisting advertising agencies to overcome some administrative difficulties encountered to deliver excellent services,” added Al Marri.
We assume this last bit is referring to the “propping up” of partners, which the press release refers to elsewhere. As to what this would mean in practice, we can only guess.
But of course, no one should need too much propping up – as everything is getting better.
“Indicators show that the local economy is recovering following the global credit crunch which took the world economy by storm at the end of last year and created negative repercussions on all world economies, but now the local financial transactions are showing corrective signs,” said Abdullah Al Madani, CEO of the RTA’s corporate technical support services sector, in one breathless press release sentence.
Great.
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