Having spent half of this year working in the Middle East, including some time witnessing the “Arab Spring” firsthand, I feel fortunate to have learned a lot from an area of the world I had never previously visited. Though I was based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia I also spent time in Dubai, Bahrain, Istanbul and Cairo. A colleague and I actually dropped into Cairo only a few days after President Mubarak stepped down from power, so the scenes from Tahrir Square are imprinted in my memory for life. One such scene was captured by my colleague here, where the soldier’s sign says “No Photos Allowed.” We only learned this translation later from our guffawing, Arabic speaking friends back in Riyadh.
Soldier's Sign "No Photos Allowed" by CZ
Even though my travel adventures make for intriguing stories, I’ll focus here on some of my observations from a marketing point of view:
- Marketing is Everything – Even in developing markets, “marketing is everything” as Regis McKenna once spelled out brilliantly in the Harvard Business Review. Though distribution is often the primary challenge in emerging markets, there is plenty of competition for most products and services in the major cities so advertising and promotion are just as prevalent in these markets as in many developed markets. From my own work (on an early stage airline), I know first hand how important it is to get the word out through traditional media, PR, channel support and digital media in order to drive awareness and purchase. Whether marketing existing services or launching routes to new cities like Karachi, Pakistan, our team operated much the same as marketing teams anywhere else. Further, suppliers are plentiful in many disciplines, though digital agencies are far less developed and force one to shop in Dubai or Beirut for the deeper talent pool in some cases.
Travel Agency and Store - Open for Business on Tahrir Square
- Consumers are Online, Social and Mobile – The youth market in particular is just as glued to their phones and smart phones as they are in the US and Europe. Further, social media use is growing rapidly. Its use has been heavily documented since it has played a big role in enabling organizers of the protests to, well, organize. Now that the “genie is out of the bottle” regarding social media, so to speak, more and more people are using it and mobile technologies for communications and commerce. For instance, it is very common to see women, in particular, walking heads down in their full abayas side-by-side, each pecking away on their iPhone or Blackberry (a picture of this would have been great, but also culturally inappropriate).
- Location-aware technologies are beginning to take root – Throughout the cities I visited I found that people were “checking in” at restaurants, offices, public building, hotels and more. Interestingly, I learned that Gowalla has an early lead on foursquare in Riyadh, which I never would have guessed. Though consumers are checking in, brands are slightly behind the US in offering specials for checkins. There were a few doing so, to be fair, and this form of marketing is brand new to marketers even in the US where the applications took root.
- American Brands are Everywhere, But Local Versions and Knock Off Brands are Rising – For every KFC there is an ALBAIK. Giving credit where it is due, one will notice on ALBAIK’s website that it is an original brand protecting its IP from trademark infringement even on their home turf (Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Est. 1986). A warning appears on their website for those that may be duped by an illegal franchisor of their trademark – so the brand thieves don’t just focus on stealing Western brands. Though ALBAIK is obviously not a copy of KFC, there are plenty of brands and stores in the region that just flat out use the brand name they want to copy in all it’s “glory,” though somehow they always seem to do so in way that leaves little doubt they are not the real thing.
One thing is for sure, the market and marketing, are changing rapidly in the Middle East, at least in the major urban areas. Seeing the market from the perch of a low cost, regional airline carrier taught me another important lesson – air travel in the Middle East is booming, and not just regionally. The geographic advantage of the Middle East, combined with low cost fuel, is enabling the bigger players in the region to win market share from carriers in Europe, for example, for long haul traffic between Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. These brands (Emirates, Etihad and Qatar foremost among them) are second to none in terms of quality service. Brands like these have lessons to teach the established brands of the Western world, so don’t be fooled… it is easy to underestimate emerging market brands and their marketing talent.
