io81

Man i knew that the South Koreans where gamer freaks but never thought that their national carrier would be one day branded by starcraft. They even have institutions for addicted gamers. The 747 was painted and is now flying, lets hope we see it one day.

After sitting in the noisy Paul cafe in marina mall and thinking about when the hell would pinkberry open there, i got the urge to use the WC. So when entering i was surprised to see an ad on the door of the bathroom. I always thought that these are some of the effective ads from a customer perspective. Bathroom to me means germs and am getting bombarded by Life buoyanti septic soap, thats targeted marketing. One more thing, it seems that life buoy are the only cleaning detergent brand that claims it kills 100% of the germs, Dettol does not.  I wonder why?

Lately my sms bill has been increasing, i truly believe in the sms service and i appreciate it because of its power. You can never deny not getting the information, but when i say i called you and you did not pick up well thats another case. So sms is really like a mini email, so i got a call from Zain. A very well mannered lady requested a few minutes of my time to explain a new sms savings offer. Most of the times i would ignore such calls or say i cant take the call now, but when she said (SMS) and savings i told my self lets listen. (and by the way now they are using 90 lines trying to make us feel better when accepting such calls, smart) so i  accepted the benefit and terms given by her and the sale took 5 minutes only. Why did such a sale go smoothly, because i wanted the service simple yes? not really  Zain must have some sort of CRM system to sort out customers showing a gradual usage of sms and surly would see the benefit of such a service, filter the numbers out and get your call center to call them and create sales. If such a simple  be implemented in many companies around Kuwait, we surly would have less wasted calls and less phone bills and more sales. I would only wish that Zain would think in such a smart way with there approach to the Kuwaiti Society. Now such an idea can be implemented in any form and in any business, you just need to listen closely.

Many have heard or used 6alabat.com, its a simple website where you log in, browse for a restaurant and order. Then 6alabat.com takes the rest, i wont talk about the miss hap that 6alabat has like making incorrect orders etc etc…but i will explain how he makes a profit for other to understand and may even compete. When you request an order from 6alabat.com the site admin receives an email with your order, name of restaurant, and your address, then he prints the papers and faxes it. If you notice most restaurants that are on the website have a fax machine for orders. Then 6alabat.com at each month collects a fee of 200fils per order. So if you do a simple calculation you can project how much they are making in sales and now plus the adds that have bombarded the website. (i loved how it looked before, but money is a strong motivator to change many beliefs) So now you know how is it is to create something like 6alabat.com, the thing to do is find something that 6alabat is doing wrong or find something that satisfies but in a different more effective method. Imagine a friend telling you the idea of 6alabat.com before it was established, would you have gone for it?! most probably not. Who would have thought that one day a couple would use the website together to order lunch, or sitting in a diwaniya and asking the guys who’s up for a certain restaurant?

I never thought of seeing the NBK logo on the new trend watching magazine issued by trendwatching.com. This website follows world wide trends and what are the new trend setters out there, like Snack culture and Primuimzation. So what gets me is how does NBK think issues like that are interesting to them. Such a large corporation is heading into the right direction and is surly spotting opportunities within the global market. For NBK to have there sights outwards is a smart move, thats one of the things that make it a bank that wants to become a leader and a major player in the market. BUT, but they still lack social responsibility and community work, and my guess is that this problem is from a Kuwaiti top management structure that still thinks what they studied in the university from 1970′s is important and nothing new has been added. Social responsibility and protecting the environment is the top leading agenda on many world wide corporation and NBK has an obligation to educate the Kuwaiti society about such issues, yet it still keeps its customers in the dark. ….”I just cant wait for the next walkathon to win the new model minicooper!!” one community event is pathetic for NBK’s size and influence towards its community.

I would like to apologize for not posting the couple of days due to food poisoning from Kababji that hospitalized me for 3 day, piece of advise: dont eat from Kababji, it was a miserable experience, any way been to the Redbull event, and was a nice thing to see in Kuwait. From the presence of the people you can see how we are hungry for such outdoor events, the only problem was the squeaking women shouting out the names of the teams, and not to forget that we stood for 2 hours, other than that an amazing effort from the teams and a funny one too:) offcource what i’m going to introduce as ideas for future events are surly far fledged due to the few outdoor event we have in this country, imagine Nokia made a glass tube booth that would be placed in the middle of such events where it can be wrapped with ads, the booths purpose is smart and simple, you just enter, close it after you and you got pure silence to use your phone in such a place where you are surrounded with speakers. But i have noticed one thing, that a bunch of kids have lost there parents and been roaming around crying looking for them, so what i have came up with is why not give away free balloons by RedBull or the event managers to put around the wrist of young toddles, so when they get lost between the crowds, the parents can locate them by looking for these specific balloons. One more interesting thing i saw there was the car cover sponsored by aljareeda news paper, i have discussed such a product in my blog and there it was on a couple of cars, which honestly looked great.

I cant understand how we as consumer in this country still suffer, i have visited the Darwaza Printing Press at Shuwaikh for some printing needs that i will show in a later post, but the problem is that as much as there are many printing presses around, they never care about customer service. Why cant they have a website, where we as customers do not have to go the crowded Shuwaikh area. Upload your image, submit your requirements, get a call from the printing press rep, and then in two days you get your order delivered. When i went to the printing press i had to go around the whole place just to explain to the designers there what i need, then after a couple of day, i still went around to pick my order. At that time i can see all Darwazah orders and what these customers have requested for there upcoming marketing events. What happened to privacy and timing to introduce a product in the market. The printing press cares nothing about such important factors, they only thing i guess in the managers head is that money is coming in. One day when international investors can own business in Kuwait, things will change fast and the one that cannot cope with change will surly suffer. The more the competition the better, i honestly cant wait for a third telecommunication company to start operation in Kuwait, just to crush the big player that have milked the Kuwaiti consumer for years till they woke up and become a professional company.

You can notice going around Kuwait how creative people living here are, but when we get blocked by rules that have no meaning nor sense we tend to become uncreative. Its becoming our culture to be uncreative, to understand what i’m saying is: notice how anything within the private sector is innovative, new, daring and to the point. Simply because within corporate private law we are not governed totally by the Ministry of Commerce and Kuwait Municipality. Many have noticed how marina mall uses marketing space every where, and how the banks use their branches as advertising tools. When designing a car wrapper you have to consider the Kuwait Municipality and Ministry of Interior laws, both do not have an explanation on why the whole car should not be wrapped, only the back doors of any delivery car is possible. I once heard that the Ministry of Interior thinks its easier for a getaway car to out run the police if it looks different, or they must know who changed the cars look within all of Kuwait. Any ways passing by Shari3 el ma6a3em i noticed an new shop called Steek, the cars wrapper was nice and very different than the other similar business, most probably the owner will get fined for such a nice design or the rules have changes and i’m b$%*6!& for nothing:P

  

Surly everybody has something to say about the total change in MTC to Zain, i’m not a graphic designer nor a marketeer but i do have some insight into Zain. When going international with a name or a logo, i guess you should be searching for the meaning of Zain in every language yes, like Zain in hebrew for example. Second the black color in the logo made so much problems in Kuwait with the advertising folks, like printing and billboards. Third the colors used in the logo cannot be integrated with any shop signage well nor the Zain branch itself, visited the hawali branch couple days ago and it looked realy bad from inside, the colors used in the logo are hard to integrate with furniture like desks and couches and last but least the ramadan ad that has nothing to do with any form of communication, the ad is nice yes but what does it have to do with communication? The only smart thing out of all this is the fast action taken by the marketing department to change all old signage into the the new one in a very short time.

From a business perspective, some figure out that educating your customer is insulting and should not be used in any marketing material. But some disagree and i personally think it works great in such places like Kuwait and the GCC region. Let me explain: when parking your car in marina mall, its pretty hard to loose track of where you have parked your car but in the avenues mall thats different. the mall is huge and you can never find your car. So a smart move from the avenues management that introduced some kind of written text on the walls of the parking area telling you to remember your cars location by using the colors and letters painted all over the place. If you have travelled to the states, most malls would already have such colors and even picture to help you remember your parking space. Now due to the avenues sheer size, they are introducing such prints but at the same time explaining why these are there in the first place. If you think about it,you can find other places in Kuwait that follow the same idea. Kabab el hijah; follows the same method of educating your customer, if you have visted kabab il hijah in Bnaid el gar and go in for an order, you will notice many signs placed to educate the customer. Some saying that certain orders have to be placed before hand, others what are the best type of meat to be eaten, and how they remove certain parts of the meat out. What does it really mean, and the intention behind educating your customer? does this translate back to profits? i think it paints an image of good intentions within your subconscoius mind, meaning without explaining it you figure that the places your visiting cares about his customers and wants them to clear any doubts within entering such a place, dont you think? makes the sales decision much smoother!