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! 

A small book written to explain when our sources of funds start to change and move away, in simple terms: Once there where to mice, and always folloed the same path to find the cheese source, but one day the cheese source got depleted and both mice where shocked. One mouse figured that the cheese will come back the other set to find a new source of cheese. The searching mouse found a new source and kept living on it and the other well, overdosed:p This books is very simple but has a greater meaning, we do not have to set rules to our self’s and business and never reconsider to adjust them. I totaly understand that any change in anything makes people frustrated but some times for the good. A simple example is when using the telephone system in banks, i for instance memorize that by dialing 805805( gulfbank call center) then as soon as the IVR systems picks up, i dial 1,2,1,3,0 then i would listen to my account balance directly, now such number has totaly changed and gulfbank thinks the new method they introduced is better and more efficient for the customer. We all dislike change but most of the time its for our benefit. Who can ever guess that McDonald in Kuwait starts a delivery service, then followed by second cup and subway. Most of these chains have no delivery services within there countries of origin but they do here. We may one day see starbucks does the same. Change  is inevitable and we should accept it or just face the music alone like the overdosed mouse:P 

Most technologies around the world in the same category get introduced at the same time, like the large and small VHS tapes, the the MINI disk, before 3 year ago it was the battle of the digital flash disks. Today its between HD and Blue ray, many factors play into such a winner; some are the customers acceptance of the product itself or it may be the technology maker pushing its technology on to us by means of marketing channels and making the product more readily available. In Kuwait as an example you may have seen only the HD products but nothing about Blue ray. Now the race is clearly showing that HD is winning and many other movie producing companies are going for HD and dropping Blue ray. The same with the PS2, its platform is very is to work with claimed by the gaming industry, thats why it spread out like crazy. So now you can guess many new introductions that take up the market and create there own platform to build such on line softwares like the Itune and products that support it like the Ipod. Zune which is battling for market share in such an industry and has lost the battle from the begging. Let me explain something before you start jumping with idea’s. We all are different in some way yes, think of us all in the original statistical bell diagram, which most of the population are in the middle and a little percentage are on the left and another small percentage on the right. People on the extreme left are the first testers and price would never effect them, meaning you would by buy the newest gadget on the market what ever price it is or what technology it may support such are the early testers and i got a few friends who are such. Then the middle part of the bell are the consumers that only buy the product after the market hype went down and the price too. Then the extreme right are people who are scared of such purchases but need to because of certain uses;these are the lazy buyers. Personally with technology and gadgets, i place my self in the middle, where do you place your self? this concept apply’s to many other industries too.

Wataniya telecommunication released a new service called Hush! after watching the ad in the movies, for a second i thought it was a smart service but then who needs such a secretive service. Let me explain and please comment if you think i’m over analysing the service: So Kuwait a small and fierce competitive market, which means its hardly a place for niche services, and mostly teenagers as the targeted segment. Wataniya introduces a service where you can encrypt sms messages? who in Kuwait may need such a service in such a demand and introducing such a service with a large marketing budget which gives you the feeling its being introduced to the masses. okay lets say about 500 stock market traders may use such a service, ba3ad? Kuwaiti special service:P i cannot think of other use in such a young and secretive market than Kuwait, its looks like a service that can be used to cheat on your wife or use it to cheat on a test. both segments are the largest in Kuwait and are the money makers, so Wataniya looks like its cashing on Kuwaiti social problems and transferring them into service’s. I truly wish i’m wrong and that this service gets used for a better purpose!

What i have learned from many business in Kuwait and abroad, that they lie there asses off to sell! Many companies create products knowing they can never cover the after sale demand but hey what the heck, targets are achieved and promotions are closing in. My advise is, always accept services that are 100% related to the institution itself, when they start branching out to new idea’s or income streams(thats what we call them) we become the guinea pigs of such products! an example would be when banks issuing travel insurance, or insurance companies making investment packages. What made me post this issue is that Aquafina bottled water which is owned by PEPSI and selling tap!! water in bottle, this claim comes not from myself but from CNN. When i go into any market and look for bottled water i always pick Aquafina and forget about the local or GCC companies, trusting PEPSI and there years of knowledge. but now after knowing that i fell for the marketing trap again, i had to tell people that PEPSI uses its strong distribution channel to make Aquanifa available every where and giving you the feeling that its comes from a good source. Aquafina should claim on there bottles that this is tap water and not from a natural source like Routhtain. Always be skeptical about large corporations? they tend to bend many business rules just to sell more! 

We all have noticed how we are daily bombarded with ads of Blackberry, its in the streets, on cable (MBC channels), its on yahoo.com its all over. There is a small secret with technology, if your product or service is wide spread enough that everybody is using it becomes the norm or the medium. An example would be Microsoft Explorer, not long ago Netscape use to be the most used browser and free, but Explorer was installed with each PC getting sold from Dell, and Dell was at that time the number one PC seller in the states, as a result every new comer came into the market only knew how to use Explorer and slowly killed Netscape. Same idea with the Ipod frenzy, if some of you have noticed a battle between Blue Ray and HD, and it seems that HD is winning. It depends on how the technology is being marketed and how strong backing its getting from its developer. Old user of digital cameras can remember the weird looking memory sticks from sony (the one with a hole in it), these are disappearing because they are loosing what is called the protocol battle, now its the small squared looking memory stick. Each company comes up with a certain technology and then launches it into the market, sometimes the consumer chooses the technology and sometimes we accept it by force. Then you got the OEM companies, that wait until the technology introduced takes base, then they come in making these low cost OEM products and sell to the world like the USB sticks. Same with the game console industry, if some of you can remember how fast 3DO died, game gear, Philips CD-I and many more. Obviously the PS won the battle there and may loose it to Wii. So is it really our choice to accept the Black berry?

 

Hatching is more like it, some weired guerrilla tactics that have shown over in the states, but how effective can these eggs really be? So the next time your going to by the groceries and getting the eggs, you discovers that it has been rented for ads space. Honestly from my point of view they may reach a large number of customers due to their method of grabbing attention but for how long? I have shown a friend of mine the picture and then he made up a Kuwaiti version of the egg. As you can see MTC are every where:p  we should be throwing these eggs at them! (pic below from ubmag.com)