"Bilady, Bilady, Bilaaa-dy"

Hats off to the designers of google today! For those of you who haven't checked out google today, the google icon features Sayed Darwish, the renowned singer and composer - considered the father of Egyptian popular music.

Born on March 17th, 1892, google pays tribute today; the same day marking his birth. The icon illustrates Darwish, with sample lyrics of the Egyptian national anthem "Bilady, Bilady, Bilady". Darwish put the music to this song; the words of which were adapted from a famous speech by Mustafa Kamil. The song later became Egypt's national anthem in 1979.



Google surely never fails to amaze us :)

Stolen Car! Plate Number: "Jan. 25th"...

So the revolution aftermath keeps on being witnessed in Egyptian streets everyday.

Egyptian people, being creative by nature, like to seize every opportunity to create a 'commercial' occasion out of it. Prior to the revolution, this was most apparent when you'd simply 'pause' with your car for a split second, and be suddenly bombarded with people attempting to sell you things through your car window. Products aren't just randomly picked, no, no, no - but are rather specifically tailored to every occasion. In Ramadan, they'd sell you "fawanees", before football matches, Egyptian flags, in Valentine's, red hearts...and the list goes on and on.

The revolution of course came along with its own waves of creativity. From Egyptian flags, to flag colored head bandits, to small car danglers saying "Egyptian and Proud", you name it - all are being sold, and quite heavily too. Honestly, although I've always been against such products, I haven't been against them this time, because I believe they do help boost people's feelings of loyalty (and mine too) everytime you see more of Egypt's flags where ever you go.

Now that's all ok, nothing wrong with that at all...

I was fine with all this until I saw a recent line of creativity: the all new "Jan. 25th Car Plate Stickers!". Quite creative, yes, but result is that you can now find them stuck on almost everyone's car back! Not only are they repetitive and lost their charm (now being everywhere) but are now confusing to anyone who is trying to quickly trace or take note of car number. We keep on calling for increased security control everyday, yet this isn't helping at all. If you catch an escaping car that either grabbed your bag and ran, or harmed you in whichever way, you may very well pause and be confused for a second as to which car number you should take note of - with both original car numbers and "Jan. 25th" now being stuck almost next to each other on all cars. Even worse, some people have decided to stick such fake plates onto their original plates! Here's an example of a picture taken by a friend of mine for a cab sticking such car plate.



There's nothing wrong with following recent trends and fashions. It only becomes wrong when we don't think what sort of consequence will such trend have on us personally first and then on the rest of the people around us. So the next time you're offered with a new line of creativity, just stop and think, just once, before you're drifted - like everyone else - into buying them.

The More Ghee, the Merrier!

With the revolution taking place, most companies have been exercising major cost reductions.

One of the controversial areas that is usually subject to internal arguments among marketing teams, are advertising budgets. Amidst crisis, one opinion would say that this is the time to advertise more than any time before. Money will be spent, but it'll create the needed awareness and brand recall levels among customers that would later translate into increased revenues.

Another opposing opinion would say, cut advertising budgets. Put all advertising prospects on hold for now. The market is instable, and no one knows what the future holds. Investing in advertising now is not gauranteed to generate any revenue, but is likely to translate into major losses. So let's just wait.

The latter scenario is exactly what happened the last couple of weeks in Egypt. TV ads reached minimim numbers, to the extent that TV series and programs were not as frequently interrupted with breaks for TV commercials as they used to prior to the revolution.

And so the companies waited. And waited. And suddenly some companies decided to come back with TV ads again. Having noticed this come back this past week, I decided to make a record of which sectors were being advertised for most. And guess who emerged as the number one product category most excessively advertised for last week...butter ghee!

Butter ghee, or "samna" as we call it in Egyptian, has been by far the star of TV ads last week. If we refer to an official record that captures the exact number of ads showed everyday, I might very well be wrong about ghee being the most advertised for category - percentage wise. But as an average viewer, to me, the number of times I switched on the TV and found a TV ad featuring an Egyptian brand of butter ghee all at different random times, were quite alot!

Now the conclusion I brought out of this very observation, is that the marketing people in each of the different ghee companies, must've thought this through very well before deciding to spend on so much advertising. Given that thought, I sort of visualized the kind of discussions that the different teams might've been having during their meeting, to invest or not invest in advertising. Again, I might be very wrong about all these thoughts that I imagined, but it sure was fun just picturing how they probably came about with such decision :)

Ok we're in a meeting room and the marketing teams start their brainstorming session by saying..."So Egyptians have their minds set on the revolution at the moment. But what comes to their minds right after that? Food! Egyptians love food! They find their joy in food, and percieve food as the cure for every single problem they may have. Feeling sad or unwell? Eat more and you'll feel better. Feeling happy? Celebrate and express your happiness through more food! What about the calories? Nah, they don't mind the calories at all! In fact the 'heavier' the food, the more fit you'll be! Calories, calories, calories...aha! Where more calories can you find than in our beloved, favorite and inseperable companion to all our food, butter ghee! Now is the time to make the Egyptian people happier than before. They're in a middle of a crisis. A revolution. They need us now than ever. And we've never fooled them, and have always been there at hard times. Now is the time to tell them that we're there in solidarity with them! Sign our new butter ghee campaign budget from our Finance team, and let's get this show started!"

Aaaw, I just love us Egyptians! :)

Warning Note!

This isn't going to be a long post, but just a simple thought that came to my mind while I was watching TV today.

Amidst recent events, media has been for the most part covering Egypt's revolution and post revolution images and videos. Now my problem isn't with the fact that these images and videos are being displayed - for media transparency and strength are certainly one of the most prominant blessings of our era.

My problem however is with the fact that some of these images are quite disturbing, yet are randomly displayed at any time during the day, without any pre-notice or warning before them whatsoever! Whatever happened to warning notes that used to say "Warning: The following images may disturb some viewers"? In this case, children or viewers sensitive to graphic images would have the liberty and choice of simply switching the channel.

Even when such warning notes were not always made, I recall a number of years ago, that such material would only be displayed towards later times in the day. No, but now, there are no more boundaries...all in the name of 'complete transparency'. A 7 year old child could now be innocently watching the TV on her own at 2pm in the afternoon on a random Friday, and then suddenly, a disturbing video would be displayed showing injured civilians, bombed cars and streets on fire. This child is then expected to continue watching the cartoon series she was watching on the other channel, as if no sort of emotional and psychological disturbance has affected her.

Please, a call for warning notes prior to viewing such images and videos. Media transparency is appreciated, but control and organization is important too.