Saturday, February 16, 2008

UAE should stop using "Imported Campaigns" !

This article is basically about how the Ad industry in the UAE is lacking because of the use of "imported" advertising campaigns from other countries and just translating them for use here.
I seriously doubt that the culture in the U.S and the U.A.E are similar!
And we all know about the numerous implied rules in the Ad industry here!
Main Points:
  1. Whole Campaigns are being imported from other countries and translated into Arabic
  2. These campaigns fail because they aren't segmented to the UAE audience
  3. The Audience in the UAE are extremely diverse, that's why the imporated campaigns fail.
  4. Loss of Arab culture and westernization

2 comments:

Ilhem said...

I agree and I don't. There are good things done here and some are not. Look at the example of the MTV arabia that were presented in the AD club launch last November. Some of them are amazing, they respect the target audience, Young Arab adults, and even if they are in line with MTV positioning they get out of the clutter by a relevant message, single promise, entertaining, etc. The ZAin message as well, is a good example of an ad created for the local market. There are others where it's a pure adaptation and you're right, it's irrelevant. The globalization of the industry is making it harder to advertisers and agencies. Global companies facing diffucult times and budget restrictions do not have choice other than cutting on advertising budget. So they do call for a "universal" creative idea, created in headquareters of the original agency, and which is supposed to be implemented in international markets.
Though, the ad agencies can put some limitations at this and find a way to convince the advertiser that in some markets cultural characteristics are so different which means create differently for that market... there's also a contribution from citizens which is important by standing up and expressing their likes and dislikes. Expressing him/herselp is proof, right and obligation of every citizen.
In fall, the media reported a survey where 60% of citizens of the UAE said they don't like the ads, they don't talk to them, they don't feel the ads talk to them or appeal to them. This is another problem of media; this means also that there's no research; no reserach to know where to find the right audience and how to reach them but also no research to understand the consumers, to know the psychographics, etc.

Unknown said...

I doubt that the article meant that the UAE was only using imported campaigns, but a good amount of them are. In one of my previous posts, i found an article online that was related to whether or not the Audience in the UAE felt good about the brand or felt like the advertising campaigns were personalized to them and a good percentage didn't. This shows that there IS a problem. Then again, maybe other countries are doing the same thing. I'm sure that the larger companies are trying to make universal campaigns, like Tide i belive. I think Tide has to amend one of their ads for malaysia and make the women scarfed. Got to double check that though. Thanks for your comment and added info!