Tag: marketing

Dubai series: Hijack Advertising

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

The photo below is on the car of the guy I am staying with in Dubai. Have a look at the wheel cover on his 4 wheel drive, of which there are more than sedans on the road in said location.

wheel-cover

You’ll notice that it has a cover on it for ‘Danube’ which happens to be a building materials company. Funny this is ‘Michael – the car owner’ doesn’t work there. He told me one day he returned to his vehicle to find it placed on his spare wheel.  I asked him if it annoyed him, and he proceeded to tell me, it doesn’t worry him as it protects his wheel, and it is a bit of a hassle to remove. Yep, he hasn’t got around to removing it yet…

Subsequently I noticed these on many cars in Dubai. Seems the other owners of the hijacked cars haven’t bothered to remove theirs either.

It’s an interesting piece of advertising and media invention. It is giving an item of value to the hijacked, that is the wheel cover, but on the same token it’s very interruptive. If the cover get’s thrown away, it becomes a costly exercise for the advertiser. I’m not sure it would be tolerated in a western market, but it’s innovative non the less.

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Dubai Series: Business trip tips

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

We all know it’s very important to have a keep a diary during business travels. We’ve got to keep the tax man happy.

So here’s what I realized on my current overseas trip. I can keep all the records I need during my normal daily business procedures without keeping a separate diary.

skype-logo twitter-logo

wordpress-logo iphone

The logos above, I love. Simply because they create time stamped digital footprints of the work I have done on my overseas trip.

Skype: Who I had chats with from the rentoid team, for how long, when and what was discussed.
WordPress: My ‘Global Marketing’ (subject I teach) research diary for Melbourne University, with insights found and relevant articles written.
Twitter: Staying in touch with rentoid members, chatting and sharing twitpics of ideas with strong marketing implications.

Of course most of the above are done on my iphone with also has the digital time stamps the Tax office requires.

It’s never been a more awesome time to travel on business. It’s easy to share ideas, and with these tools our diary doesn’t have to be a a labourious tax afterwards, but can be an interactive digital tool which is part of the fun during the trip.

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Dubai Series: Hotel Sampling

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Once you pass through the customs area in the Dubai International Airport they have a very interesting area reserved for Hotels as can be seen below.

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The area has all of the 5 star hotels from the city represented. The general idea is that each hotel has a mini foyer with the exact styling and ambiance of the actual hotel. The mini foyer has Video footage of the hotel, details on menus and hotel services, samples of the haute couture fragrances in room and some even have masseurs for weary travelers to encourage / reward bookings. Concierge salespeople are there to explain the benefits and convert the sale. For those already booked they have a comfortable waiting location where they serve refreshments until the hotel driver arrives.

A simple idea, but one which makes sense for such a burgeoning metropolis and shows that even the oldest industries can innovate too.

Shifting advantage & contrarian actions

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Once upon a time savvy surfers would get down to the beach early. It was the way to get smooth, uncrowded waves. To step into the ocean at dawn and share the tranquil waters with a few other dedicated salty skin brethren.

This was such an advantage that more and more surfers adopted this method of soul (and sole) surfing. Until the point arrived when there were more people in the line up before there was any daylight. You could often arrive at your favourite surf break only to find the largest crowd of the day was between 5am and 8am. It got ridiculous, the crowd had caught on.  There is now zero advantage in getting up early to go surfing.

crowded-surf1

I got so annoyed with the crowds, that I decided to sleep in on surfing days regardless. Why get to the beach early and be greeted with the largest surfing population the day has to offer? It wasn’t worth the effort. So I started heading down the coast at either 10am or 2pm. I still avoided midday, but shifted my surfing times to mid morning and afternoon.

Next thing I found was that my ‘contrarian’ actions had resulted in a boon. Uncrowded waves and a sleep in! Turns out most people rarely surf for more than a couple of hours. So even the early morning laggards start to exit the water mid morning.  My current example, was two days ago: I went surfing in a very popular location near Torquay, in 37 degree c warm weather, had perfect waves and only one other person in the water at 2pm. No surfer would believe this is happening.

uncrowded-surfing

The point for entrepreneurs is; Like the waves, positioning advantage is constantly shifting. What is an advantage this year, will certainly change next year. But we will never know this if we always accept conventional wisdom of ‘where to be and when’.

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