Your favourite advertising magazine is now a blog June 26, 2006
Posted by Farrukh Naeem at copywriterjournalist.com in : Advertising , 7 commentsWhy wait for a month for your advertising industry gossip and scoops? Why wait a week? Why wait a couple of days even? The handful of advertising and marketing bloggers now have company. Our favourite industry titles are exploring blogosphere – and it’s a good thing for all of us I think.
Campaign Middle East staff is posting stuff on the Campaign blog. And with two Tim’s and Richard keeping the blog active, this one’s surely going to be fun. I await the posts by ‘The Spin’, that’s the part I never miss in the print edition, nasty me. Tim Burrowes had posted prompt Cannes snippets the past few days, experimenting with Cannes puns – and officially announced the Campaign blog in the yesterday’s Campaign. Your truly had already spotted the action before the announcement as you can see in my previous post. Good stuff.
Communicate has been blogging for some time now. The first entry I see in Communicate’s blog dates back to April, so they’ve been the ones to catch on early. But, the last entry was made on June 8. It’d be nice to see Mr (or Ms?) CommunicateModerator posting more frequently. C’mon, my friends at Communicate, your print edition is good – let’s see that happening in the blog too!
The Strategiy.com team is aggregating RSS feeds of advertising blogs which is a good idea to keep the Strategiy blog active. Also, there are six contributors on this blog and three guest contributors, which includes me, thanks to Ashwin Salian of Strategiy.com. My blog has a partial RSS feed on Strategiy. I am still exploring how effective RSS is for bloggers.
Now there’s ADvocate of the IAA which brings in news from the advertising industry – are they going to have a blog? Or do they already have one? Gotta find out.
All this reminds me of a really punny (eek!) line I saw one of these days. It said “Who let the blogs out?” I wish I had written that, even though puns usually give me the creeps – but due credit to the person who wrote this – let’s make a song out of it, an ad jingle if you may 
It’s a blog crazy world out here in the UAE. Join in.
Wunderman ME Dubai strikes Gold in Cannes Lions Direct June 22, 2006
Posted by Farrukh Naeem at copywriterjournalist.com in : Advertising , 1 comment so farCreative Directors here in the UAE are usually surprised when I tell them I am more interested in DM than in press or TV, as a creative advertising copywriter. The ‘response’ bit of DM fascinates me, since I saw sacks of ad coupons arriving at Wunderman Delhi after one of our successful DM campaigns. I have probably read Claude Hopkins too devoutly and thus believe that advertising is nothing without measurable response.
So it’s great feeling when I see creatives doing well in DM – like winning a Gold for the region at Cannes.
Friends from Wunderman’s (ME) Dubai office – Kerry Platts, Pooja Chandani and Richa Khan – have struck Gold at Cannes Lions in the Direct category with their direct mail entry for Microsoft. Mayura Sandeep of Ikon, another good friend, had buzzed me on this and then I found the news on Tim Burrowes’ blog entry in the Campaign blog. Tim is posting bits on the winners there, he filled me in with more info.
It’s a good idea I think, the Microsoft one. The task was to get people to understand the risks of using pirated software, and buy licensed software. So, prospects were mailed handwritten envelopes with CDs like the ones friends pass around with pirated software. When the CD was loaded, the computer crashed, to the utter shock of the recipient. Moments later, the offer of the mailer – a discount on Windows Genuine Software – flashed on the user’s screen.
The response rate? Close to 10%. Which is amazing!
Great going, guys – you’ve done great – for the region, and for the DM world.
The Wunderman ME Dubai team for the Cannes’ winning entry:
Kerry Platts, Creative Director
Richa Khan, Head of Copy
Pooja Chandani, Creative Group Head
Sara Hughes, Client Services Director
Eiad Rayyis, Interactive Director
There’s more good news for the UAE at Cannes. Have you heard it?
