Advertisers take Metro to beat crowded market - Emirates Business 24|7

<span style="font-style:italic;">Advertisers take Metro to beat crowded market - Emirates Business 24|7



Metro's growing reach is increasing its advertising horizon and it is evident from a massive launch campaign of Dubai-based Iconic brand – a retail outlet just being launched in Deira City Centre.



The Dubai Metro has been offering various advertising options in and around the stations and metro bogeys through Kasab advertising, but Iconic retail store has utilised this relatively new medium with substantial part of its advertising and marketing budget.



"Metro in the region may have been a new concept, but all over the world they are very popular and work wonderfully for communicating with commuters. Keeping that in view we stretched our imagination and included this platform in our launch campaign for the launch of Iconic concept store," said Raza Beg, CEO of Iconic.



"We wanted to touch all points of communication and in an overcrowded market such as Dubai, the Metro offers a creative relief to communicate with our probable clients.



"Our customers are everywhere, inside and outside the Metro and with repetitive reinstatements of our message, the Metro offers a very good return on investment."



Since its launch on September 9, 2009, the Dubai Metro has transported 13.68 million commuters from 10 stations. Seven more stations are scheduled to open on April 30 and three more by May 15, according to the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) of Dubai.



"Metro was always to be a strong means to communicate and that was evident from the response to our tender for the purpose that was won by Kasab advertising," said Peyman Younes Parham, Director of Marketing and Corporate Communication at RTA.



Elaborating on the effective reach of Metro, Parham said: "With more than 80,000 commuters a day, Metro is a very effective canvas for advertising. Most of our commuters are regular and include aspiring professionals of all nationalities, including nationals.



"Considering the wide variety of nationalities and professional background, Metro works out to be a very cost- effective means to advertise and communicate with a specified target audience," said Parham.



Many other brands such as Sony Ericson have been utilising Metro as a platform to advertise, but Iconic launch campaign has taken the brand communication on Metro to another level.



"Some of the most important stations that are waiting to be opened are bound to add to the marketing potential of Metro," said Parham.



The opening of Burj Khalifa station added another 10,000 commuters to Metro on daily basis and with the opening of other important stations such as the Dubai World Trade Centre and Karama station, the number will increase," said Parham emphasising on the growing reach of Metro and its effectiveness as an communication brand. With the launch of 10 additional stations, RTA expects the total number of commuters of Dubai Metro to increase up to 35 million people by the end of 2010. This increase in the number of commuters will add to the marketing potential of the Metro.



Extending his faith on the Metro as an advertising platform, Beg said: "Every brand has to be in touch with the common man and our brand also intends to achieve the same. We devised a very elaborate media mix with radio, print and outdoors. But for outdoors, we decided to use Metro that has been growing with increased number of commuters since its launch."

Stranded! Social media to the rescue!

http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2010/04/19/nr.social.net.helps.stranded.cnn.html

Watch this video!

Travellers in Europe who are stranded due to the recent volcanic eruption have been turning to Twitter and other social media for help! and are also giving help through those mediums!

WATCH THE VIDEEEOOOO i promise its not boring, its quite cool

5 reasons Spot On PR use twitter

Spot On is a PR agency in the U.A.E , who have a very interesting blog. I don't think I should rewrite their stuff so if your interested in the title then here's the link!
http://www.spotonpr.com/5-reasons-we-use-twitter/

Twitter and Barasti

Twitter: I've just started my very first twitter account! So i'm very excited and TRYING to learn more about it (apparently its more popular than I thought it was) but no worries! In due time i'll be an expert tweeter. hehe



Barasti:Is an outdoor beach pub/dance venue in DXB UAE. Very popular among expats and in the past few months, Barasti has been trying very hard to repromote themselves as a fun outdoorsie beach place that bring in entertainers like HedKandi.





The Link: A link to Arabian Business that talks about a huge online social media mishap on behalf of Barasti (or their reps)

http://www.arabianbusiness.com/584992-barasti-bar-scraps-concert-after-twitter-outrage





What was happening in the UAE: Sheikh Ahmed bin Zayed Al Nahyan had passed away recently from a very tragic accident, the UAE was in mourning from the Tuesday all the way to Saturday. That's about 4 days.



What Barasti had been planning: They had planned to bring Vanilla Ice to do a little show for everyone (you can't exactly call it a concert in my opinion)



The Issue: Barasti Bar sent an early-afternoon text message saying: “NORMAL OPERATION. WE ARE NOT DRY! NICE, NICE BABY! 5PM-3AM C U ON THE SAND”.



Why this is an Issue:



1: UAE was mourning the Sheikh's Passing (Allah Yerhamoh)

This means that alcohol shouldn't be served as a sign of respect



2: The message shows a certain lack of respect. It also implies that expats also don't seem to care.



3: Prominent Emirati social commentator Mishaal Gergawi said on his twitter account that he was "disgusted by Barasti's SMS that they r not dry tonight!! RT [retweet] & don't stop until someone shuts it down tonight!!”



Dubai-born musician DJ Bliss said: “the question is: what do we want Barasti to do now? Apologise or cancel the show?”



Another user described the text message as “tasteless and disgusting”.





Also look at: http://fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com/2010/04/inevitable-blog-post.html

http://www.arabianbusiness.com/585079-barasti-apologises-for-insensitive-concert-texts

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/expat/annabelkantaria/10138457/how-twitter-blocked-vanilla-ice/

Twitter ,IPO ,and Du

The 140-character message frenzy beamed by Twitter is moving closer to financial viability with the unveiling of plans for a new advertising programme. This, industry observers expect, will translate into a self-sustaining business and could be a prelude to its Initial Public Offering (IPO).

Corporates and potential advertisers in the region have reacted very positively to the move and are looking forward to enhancing their presence through Twitter's advertising platform.

Known as "Promoted Tweets", the ad programme represents a much-anticipated move to address concerns about the revenue-generating potential of Twitter and marks a key milestone on the road to an IPO, analysts said.

"Over the years, we've resisted introducing a traditional web advertising model because we wanted to optimise value before profit," wrote Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone in a post on the company's blog.

Du, the Dubai-based telecommunications service provider, has been successfully using this platform to interact with its users and has received positive response to the move.

I love the Auto Microsites in the uae

If there's one thing the UAE Media industry is good at.... it's auto micro sites!

For all you supposed readers out there....

JUST in case you didn't know, i thought I'd inform you that for most of my posts you should be able to find the original article by clicking on the title of the post =)