So I barely logged in to facebook the other day, when my jaw drops at this.

And the ad takes you to this landing page.

Guerrilla marketing just got a new meaning and being 007 was never easier.

Now honestly, things like these really make you think twice about your online activity and how your online information can be misused and how you can be hunted down and targeted with ads without even recognizing it.

So why hasn’t the Lebanese government blocked this website? Isn’t it a threat to national security?

When I was little, I would ask my parents to buy me a horse. In my opinion, ponies were not real horses, plus you would never see musketeers or Zorro on a pony, would you? So we never talked of ponies. One time, when I asked for a horse, my mom said, we had nowhere to keep the horse in our three room apartment in Minsk. I objected that we have the balcony. Then my mom said that the horse will need a lot of food and would feel very cold in the negative temperatures in the winter. So I made a compromise, and told them they could get me a camel, since a camel endures a long time without food or water and is more resistant to severe weather conditions.

Needless to say, the closest  I got to having a horse was a “mechanical horse carriage/bicycle”. It was the point of envy of all the kids around, and got stolen several times, but still me and the metallic white horse never connected.

When I saw these new version of mechanical ponies in Dunes Verdun my heart skipped a beat. I had a half a mind to rent out a mechanical pony for myself. Plus you should have seen how this adorable kid kissed the pony and bid her goodbye when his session was over.

So tell me, what kind of weird pets did you ask for as a child?

In Ramadan people start behaving irrationally and gluttonously, buying everything they find in their way, buying at excess… People start buying kilos of sweets everyday. However, buying sweets, especially in the first days if Ramadan, can sometimes be a battle. The below is a video taken by our office boy at Safsouf Sweets in Beirut when he was trying to buy sweets at 3;00 pm on the second day of Ramadan. It took him one hour to buy the sweets.According to my boss, who has ordered the sweets, though Safsouf is a very old and traditional store, with no pompous decor… people go to him for genuine taste. Still I can not imagine waiting to get sweets, in a sweets shop full of aromas, for an hour while I am fasting. Could you?

I have not seen such a stampede in a shop even when I was a little girl in the USSR and food was rationed and you needed to stand for hours in line to get anything.

Ramadan Sweets Shortages – Beirut (Safsouf Sweets) from Darine Sabbagh on Vimeo.

Google Middle East wanted to give a treat to its top  adwords clients for Ramadan. Since dates are the traditional Ramadan Treats, they have made a very cool Ramadan countdown calendar that has a date behind each day. And awesome transformation of the traditional Christmas countdown calendar which delves deeply into the roots of Middle Eastern Culture. Kudos Google!

(Click on the images to enlarge)

Thank you @njarrar for sharing these with me.

Does your company do anything as awesome? Please share it with me

Advertising and design companies around the Middle East have always worked on Ramadan greeting cards, which hold corporate messages and link back to the brands of their clients. Every year, the challenge gets even more interesting with a focus on creativity and visual impact that would surprise and inspire. But as globalization takes over the Arab world, interesting developments are easily noticed.

Starting with the design phase, all creative’s scout around for inspiration and ideas to create a card that is visually interesting, modern and creative. An essential part of “Islamic design” is the integration of old and modern Arabic calligraphy, the “star” of the visual, coupled with a layout design including interesting die cuts and new cardboard treatments and rendering the card an interesting design to display.

In the past few years, the display factor has become essential. With designers creating cards that would “stand alone” and display the message without necessarily being an actual physical card. Ideas range from regular cards to developed boxes that would hold two main messages: first, the company name, which would link the message to a specific brand and second, the actual message, which is a heartfelt wish and portrays the “humane” aspect of a caring company.

Recently, we can notice the introduction of Latin and Arabic texts at the same time, something never done in the past, a symbol of adaptation to the world and a way of sending a clear message and communicating the “Islamic life” to countries and people who do not necessarily understand the Arabic Calligraphy.

Similarly, the calligraphy, which is also a beautiful graphical element, is coupled with modern Arabic typefaces, an interesting thing to note. Calligraphy stays a visual link to the traditional Arabic past, a visual and historical story developing over time. In Ramadan, as people read and remember God’s word, they are reminded by its beauty and form (calligraphy is the Islamic expression of the beauty of Allah’s word).

I view this period as a form of advertising the Islamic world brand. All Arabs from around the Middle East unite in a similar manner (the everyday lifestyle adaptation to rituals). This unity creates a global brand forcing itself on the global audience. These greetings, given out to clients and businesses around the globe, are a simple form of communication. On one side, a certain company promotes itself (as noted above) on another side, it promotes the Islamic world, the religion, the people as one group, one complex identity, one brand.

This brand is currently evolving, integrating itself on a global, massive scale (Arabic typeface development is a simple example). On another hand, the global audience is more open to the Arabic language (with so many interested in learning it, and so many learning how to draw Arabic calligraphy) there seems to be surprising developments awaiting us in the years to come.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Gabriel Ghali

Art Director, Blogger, Columnist, DJ

Blog: http://gghali.blogspot.com/

Twitter: @gabrielghali

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I want to thank Gaby for jump-starting this great collaboration and  his wonderful and insightful review of trends in Islamic art and the development of what is know as an “Islamic brand”, based on his many years of experience in branding and advertising in the middle east. Gaby has also provided the great gallery of cards, which we would like to contribute to as well. Just send your company’s corporate greeting card to contact [at] theidentitychef.com or add a link to it in the comment box.

Do not forget to subscribe to Gaby’s Blog and follow him on twitter for his amazing daily doses of positive vibes. While you are on Gaby’s blog download his Exotic Sensation’s Tracklist, which is simply divine.

Ramadan Moubarak My Dear Readers, I wish you Warmth, Empathy & Spiritual Uplift in this Holy Month.

So running on cockiness and adrenaline after @azzi told me that my tweet became a top tweet and @ambitionista pointed me at how to actually see that, here it is:

” Israel should publish a guidebook “How to start a war and blame others 101″ #lebanese “

And this summarizes my humble opinion on yesterday’s clash. As a final bout of  cockiness, I would like to add ” Top that Israeli Social Media Propaganda” and ” I will moderate your comments on this post, and block any twitter users that try to @ me convincing me of Israel’s innocence – so do not even bother!”

Now back to my normal self, this just shows that although we are not as organized as the enemy, we could resonate together with a unified message just as strongly. The tweet was just a spur of the moment thing that came to mind, for really sarcastic tweets on any situation follow @uxsoup, this man is a treasure trove.

I am a big fan (stalker) of Maya’s work as I think all of you are. And I am really happy that we will have a new item feeding that frenzy.

Would be happy to meet you all there.

To sum it up:

• Date: August 04, 2010

• Time: Starting 6:30PM

• Place: Art Lounge – Karantina – +961 3 99 76 76

• RSVP on Facebook EVENT PAGE: http://bit.ly/cU8vKx

I am so flattered to be picked as blog of the week on Lebanon Aggregator.

I also remembered that I forgot to tell you about the cool video Blog Aggregator did called “What got you into blogging?”, featuring many Lebanese bloggers. I am featured there too, but I am tooooo self conscious about how I look on video…

The lovely guys at Cineklik have offered to giveaway three pairs of tickets to the premiere 0f Letters to Juliet .

To Enter, just leave a comment below ( don’t forget to mention your email and twitter account) and 3 lucky winners will be chosen at random tomorrow.

My travel bug is growing worse and worse every day. My biological clock just knows that it is supposed to be somewhere half way across the world…

And passing by the above billboard by Beirut Duty Free Every day, evermore tingles my consumerism and desire to travel…

How do you deal with your travel bug?

Was tweaking through foursquare for businesses section when this stopped me in my feet. I felt so ecstatic with the idea I wanted to share with you what Flipside Beirut are doing, by pioneering location based marketing.

I will try to contact them to find out more, in the meantime let me know if you’ve tried the place before.

And Check:

- Their foursquare page

- Their twitter page

- Their Website

- Their Facebook page

It is obvious that the promotion is quite new, but let us keep watching to see where it gets.

So, do you know of any other businesses in Lebanon that have effective foursquare promotions? Or any ones in the Middle East per se.

SMEDS Ad Campaign for Car Giveaway

My Car has been giving me a very hard time lately, it has had it coming  since I graduated Uni and yet we have been concentrating on getting through with the wedding and then saving up for the house…

So even though I do not eat any type of processed cheese and don’t even like the car that SMEDS are giving away, those typical scenes from our daily commuting lives, just make me feel so understood. And I get that certain warm feeling towards SMEDS.

This is what every Campaign should be able to achieve, right?

Lebanese Ministry of Energy Promising 24/7 electricity

“Nothing more permanent than the temporary” – This is what my mother says after her lifetime of experience in moving houses and countries, and I think she got that proverb from her mother too, who being a military wife and having witnessed WWII had her share of moving. Every time we would settle in a new place, we would put off doing things and reforms, like painting a wall, adding an extra kitchen cabinet, or shelf, changing the hangers, updating the upholstery…,  until “better times” , but these seemed to not arrive … and then we moved again…

I have been hearing that the problems with electricity cuts will be resolved, and we will have 24/7 electricity, ever since I was 10But something always seemed to get in the way, be it a little war, a bombing of the Power Station, a revolution…

And over a decade and a half later, I came to accept the electricity cut outs, and think of them as the government’s way to educate us about resource scarcity, global warming and saving energy, while contemplating alternative energy sources. Come global warming or any natural catastrophe, I guarantee the Lebanese will have the highest survival rate.

Last month, I was at an international conference in the Riviera Hotel in Beirut, even the Kenyan representative, whose country also suffers from power cuts, was smirking with the power blackouts and the generators inability to handle the Air Conditioners. The Lebanese organizers really felt ashamed…

Can the Ministry of Energy really keep its promise this time? But it is great that they are approaching the subject with self irony, admitting that something is OFF with Lebanon now.

Funnily enough, the post that was featured was mainly a digest provided by the guys at SMEX of our meeting with Gaby Deek . Nevertheless, it makes me happy that the guys at Communicate have considered me authoritative enough to feature it. It feels good to know they are reading and listening…

Big Thank to Danielle from Thisisbeirut For letting me know about this and providing the  images (click on image to enlarge).

Bala Nom - Kaffi 3a Platinum.

While putting up this billboard costs a small fortune, Platinum, have not put much into the design and copy of this ad. And yet it is a cute example of Naive advertising, just as naive art is considered a great form of art. And as it is, I would not be surprised if the ad proved to be a money turner for the business.

The day started with great frustration as I read Liliane’s blog post regarding the turnaround of events at CNN.

I’m not going to get into the details of how a 140 character tweet spiraled madness and let the network to believe that Octavia’s Position was compromised…

The first thing we learn about corporate social media practices, is that the benefits of it far outweigh the risks. We are also taught that successful brand social media strategies must reflect a personal approach and sincerity in communicating to your audience and reflecting your true persona.

Big companies such as CNN have been happily leveraging Social Media through their wide network of brand champions, like Octavia, who have been dedicatedly tweeting their personal & professional experiences from tehir twitter accounts, as well as sharing on various social networks, reaching out people, interacting with them and building relationships feeding the ultimate brand persona.

It is that sincerity and openness that helped Octavia build relationships and trust with the digital natives in the Middle East, relationships with which she enriched her employer and the quality of work she has provided.

And in the digital world, we naturally understand, without disclaimers, that whatever is tweeted by Octavia, though under the CNN handle reflects by and large her personal opinions which may not match that of her employer.

So doesn’t CNN allow its employees to have personal opinions (whatever they may be)? Are CNN employees only allowed to express their opinions when it benefits CNN and is not controversial? ( I would really like to take a look at CNN’s social media guidelines)

I find it very disappointing that at the sight if a small back lash CNN was so reluctant to overlook all that Octavia has contributed to CNN, instead of standing up for her. It is not the right way to treat a brand champion will definitely reflect negatively and strain o other CNN staff in their social media presence.

CNN how do you expect your brand champions to stand by you, if you do not cover their backs and put full trust in them.

I would appreciate if you can leave your honest comment on Octavia’s Post here.

Other Lebanese Bloggers who have covered this issue:

- Independence 05

- Abzzyy

- Bahaafe

- Beirut Spring and his interview with BBC

-Plus 961

- Tarek Chemali

- Arabianism

- Beirut Beauty

- Pascal Assaf ( Arabic)

- Joeyy Hat

- Mind Soup and here

- Facebook page created by @youmny

- Brit In Beirut

- Eliane Badr ( Arabic)

( if you are a Lebanese blogger who has blogged on the subject, kindly let me know to link back to your post)

I also particularly loved Jillian C York’s post – Shame on American Media – stating even more examples of media double standards.

This is the perfect timing for the campaign as expats are returning to Lebanon for the summer and touring around it, sadly leaving more than just their footsteps in the sand.

The concept may be a bit Deja Vu and yet it does not miss the point, still instantaneously projecting the message and (hopefully) embedding it into your consciousness.

You know that I am a big sucker for this type of social and environmental ads and I am loving that this is being done to preserve Lebanon. Luckily enough, I got lost on the road ( still getting used to the trek from new place so this is happening often) and saw this great ad on a unipole but could not snap it. Then, as the all knowing google did not have it in its digital reign, I emailed the Ministry of Environment and the UNDP and both responded and were very helpful. Big Thanks for that.

A special thanks to MS. Rola Khazen, Senior Marketing Advisor at UNDP for providing the images and giving me the below background stats regarding the campaign.

• The campaign was launched by the Minister of environment on June 4,2010, in the press syndicate. Ragheb Alameh was present because he is a goodwill ambassador. In addition to all the press.
• The campaign consisted of TV and radio spots, 5 bus wraps, Digital panels of Pikasso, magazines and dailies as well a unipole on the airport highway.
• The campaign will last as long as the media place it because  they are free of charge and it is up to the media to decide how much they put it depending on their availability.

NOW I am hoping for:

- more action driven campaigns in the future, from corporate entities.

- more exposure for such campaigns online ( as you can see above no online digital agencies were involved in the campaign)

- the ads will appear throughout Beirut and Lebanon, not just at the edge of the city

- Tweet me if you spot the add somewhere else, I only saw it that one time when I got lost on the old airport road, and today in Executive Magazine

Despite the stupendously negative reaction of the online community to the demeaning Mon Bijou Mon Droit Ads, I have spotted these once again on Big Banners all around town.

This time around it seems that Moukarzel have a brand champion in the form of some starlet, livid on capitalizing on the huge wedding wave in Lebanon.

This is what happens when brands do not study the return and feedback on previous campaigns and bastion themselves within the walls of their own ignorance – Sad but True.

Moukarzel’s Competitor’s take notes and rejoice while they are stuck in Marketing 1.0.

Some Links from Bloggers regarding the first wave of this Campaign:

- Cafe Thawra

- @Naloves on twitter and on her blog

- Beirut NTSC

- Maya’s Amalgam

(if you have written an opinion about this campaign, please let me know so I can link back to it)

Today I got a very pleasant surprise in my inbox, which I wanted to share with all of you out there looking for a job in Social Media Marketing & Online Community Building in Lebanon. It’s Time to celebrate!

Anyway below the job description for this job, and follow the link to apply:

+ Social Media Marketing Director

DUTIES/RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Manage the corporate division social media strategy and execution.
• Coordinate with internal team, to execute the strategy.
• Create, facilitate, and participate effectively and authentically in key conversations about the company on blogs and other online social media channels.
• Develop and execute a blogging communication strategy, including:
  • Become accessible to the blogging community
  • Manage responses to negative and positive feedback
  • Generate buzz and interest in various forms of digital media such as online videos, blog posts, news articles, images, and more
  • Monitor and analyze social media trends for company brand
  • Develop, execute and manage the online content to drive organic search engine ranking
  • Create and maintain visible Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg accounts and other social media profiles.
  • Report on the effectiveness of social site placement and conversations on the web.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Marketing experience in a direct-to-consumer organization
• Social media experience Deep familiarity with social media, viral and word of mouth online marketing practices.
• Excellent consulting, writing, editing, and communication skills, including an engaging written voice.
• Experienced builder and executer of online social media strategies.
• Experience moderating group discussions and managing community leaders.
• Bachelors degree in Communications, PR, English, Marketing or other related field.
• Excellent consulting, writing, editing, and communication skills, including an engaging written voice.

Image via Beirut Drive By Shooting

Ever wondered why men are always the ones kicked out of their houses, or know to have left “to buy a pack of cigarettes” to never return again?

TRUE STORY:

The last month has all been about packing our belongings into boxes, bags, suitcases, bubble wrap and newspapers… Since it is a tedious process that none of us wanted to do, we created the buddy system. The most enthusiastic person, or in our case the most responsible person, aka as hubby, would pack while the other person would monitor the packing process, hands the scotch tape & newspapers, labels the boxes…   eliminating the possibility of weaseling out.

I must say that we have only lived in this place for three years, and I myself was astounded by the amount of stuff we have, bringing a lot of guilt surges regarding our consumerism habits.

The salt & bread of it all is whenever we  opened a new closet the ratio of MY STUFF/ HUBBY’S STUFF was overwhelming, and he would always scream out something like ” I didn’t even know you own these” or “why don’t you ever use these” or “ Since you do not use these, let us give it away“. But my answer would always be ” YES, I NEED that“.

After a few of such episodes my dear had an AHA moment:

” NOW I know why it is always the women kicking her husband out by throwing his suitcase out of the window or leaving it on the porch! WOMEN root themselves deeply into the house with all their belongings so he can never accomplish gathering all her stuff and getting rid of her! It will be much easier for him to run away!”

Could it be that consumerism is uprooted in women’s DNA for survival purposes?

And now, we are faced with the challenge of UNPACKING!!!

The visual is AMAZING and spot on. So far this is the only visual I have been able to find related to this specific campaign, below is an image from an earlier campaign they did. What I would LOVE to see in the future is how would they tackle the issue of Arguileh second hand smoke, an issue not covered so far in any campaign, although it is a very serious issue in Lebanon.

These visuals are part of a campaign lauched by the Lebanese Public Health Ministry in collaboration with al Azem Wal Saade association. So far I have only seen these in a magazine, although the tobacco control website said the campaign will be across all media channels starting June, but we’re not here to talk about that.

Let me know what you think, and read other posts I have written about the smoking ban.

Lesson #1: Your audience is ever more demanding!

TRUE STORY:

While watching the first football game of the World Cup:

- my father in Law: Damn this transmission has degraded, before they used to show the name of the player who has the ball and info about him, zoom into the player’s faces more when they replay, replay the goals better…

- my brother in law: Dad, this is on Playstation 2, not in ‘the real’  Fifa

Yes, we are getting more spoiled with new multimedia technologies, traditional media have to provide more information rich data, better interactivity options and more sharing opportunities. In short we want to be better informed and more involved and we expect you to do something about it!

Lesson #2: The Stakeholders Expect You to React FAST!

A day into world cup and everyone is complaining about these darn Vuvuzela’s. Three days into the world Cup and Germany filters out Vuvuzela noises to spare the fans. A couple days more Britain Joins and people start petitioning for banning the Vuvuzela( with over 300,000 fans on facebook and counting) . Add a couple of days and an app that adds vuvuzela noises to sites that filter them is created following the de-vuvuzelaing applets!

Needless to say, your clients will expect the same response rates from you!

Lesson #3: Do not forget about unexploited niches

For instant, women  have to suffer while their prince charming enjoys row after row of football matches day in day out for a whooole month.   So while everyone is gold mining the idea of the big flat screens to display the World Cup, why don’t you capitalize on the opposite – making your place a haven for football haters?

This Le Mall ad may be an attempt at just what I’m talking about, but I hate the fact that it belittles women. As a woman  I would not identify with it and will consider it an attempt to trick me into going to Le Mall and being stuck watching football, rather than showing me a clear exit path  – The “learn about football so people do not make fun of you” message VERSUS  the ” while he is watching football break loose and shop” message I would like to hear.

So you see, there is a real propitious niche there, that your competitors are not exploring. And let us not forget about children, where do people with children leave kids to go watch the games? You say grandparents, I say create a replacement product…There are a millions of ideas and campaigns buried in unrealized consumer demand in your market too-  Be creative, we’re expecting no less!

My personal favorites in this regard is the above Macy Gray video clip and this great post by Maya Zankoul.

Lesson #4: Shamelessly exploit trends?

I am not even gonna go into the myriad of brilliant and so and so ads, campaigns and offers linked to the world cup. Yes it is a good tactic. Yes, it will help you not stay behind, but if you truely wanna innovate, go back to point 3.

Lesson #5: We are watching You, and we have everything ON RECORD!

One of the first big time fxxx-ups in this world cup was the British Goalkeeper giving a slip to the ball, right after catching it. Man, it was a media circus at my in-law’s house. With the whole family lividly replaying his walk of shame and lively commenting how his career is over. And all of this replicated across millions of households in reaction to a slip of a man who by default can not catch all the balls shot at him. So Imagine what your Stakeholders will do if YOU slip up!

Have you learned any new marketing lessons from the world cup, let me know!?

The Lebanese Centre of Human Rights (CLDH) in collaboration with other NGO’s, is organizing a HUMAN CHAIN in front of the Parliament building (Place de l’Etoile) in Downtown on 25/6/10 from 10:00hrs onwards to pay its respects to those who have endured the unimaginable” and raise public awareness on these human rights abuses.

All are welcome to join to make the voices stronger!

Stand together for a world free from violence and torture!

For more info about June 26 campaign:

You can join the World Without Torture Facebook Group

or you can check IRCT website

If you are a Blogger you can consider joining  the International Day in Support of Torture Victims network on Bloggers Unite

Hasn’t taken them that long, has it?

Link to me on Linked In