Media
Are brands at risk from the UAE’s new cyber-crime law?
Taking many media watchers by surprise, the United Arab Emirates President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan has approved a new cyber-crime law for the UAE, Federal Legal Decree No. 5, this week. The online law was duly announced by the Emirates official news agency WAM yesterday evening (you can find the contents […]
Honest statistics
As any politician, publicist or PR person knows, one can prove absolutely anything with statistics! And in a region, such as ours, where reliable statistics for many things are so hard to come by, people certainly try! As veteran journalist and long-term UAE resident Peter Hellyer rightly says in Tuesday’s National newspaper, scarcely a week […]
#StopTimeOutDubai rings alarm bells
It’s today’s marketer’s nightmare. You’re alerted to an outburst of negative sentiment towards your brand on social networks. Worse, it has some legitimacy. You don’t know how big it’s going to get, you don’t know how long it’s going to continue and it’s impossible to forecast the impact on your business. Yesterday’s UAE Twitter campaign targeting […]
Facebook Arabic triumphs after Arab Spring
Middle East & North Africa users of Facebook’s Arabic interface reach 15.6 million, accounting for 39% of all users in the region. It doesn’t seem long ago that marketers considered Facebook a minority interest and lacking in reach outside of a few select English speaking audiences in the Middle East and North Africa*. The social […]
It’s Social Media Forum time again!
The Social Media Forum is to take place in Dubai next week and it’s already sold out. This is interesting news for those in the Middle East who thought we really didn’t want to listen to another word about social media and don’t ‘need another talking shop’. I must admit, we’ve been avoiding the term […]
Facebook down – thousands of brand pages inaccessible
Facebook may have been inaccessible for millions of Internet users across Europe, the Middle East and Africa for a couple of hours or so on Wednesday. Although the site itself appeared to be working, users across EMEA found that they couldn’t access the site at all. #Facebookdown became a global trending topic on Twitter in […]
Online advertising in the Middle East
Wednesday’s Dubai Eye radio’s #Unwired weekly digital programme featured a special segment on online advertising in the Middle East & North Africa featuring Spot On PR’s own Alexander McNabb; Professor John Grainger Pro-Vice Chancellor and Executive Vice President Academic Services of Murdoch University in Dubai; Kamal Dimachkie, Executive Regional Managing Director of Leo Burnett; Google […]
Alexander at MediaME Forum 2011
Spot On PR Director Alexander McNabb spoke at the MediaME Forum 2011 in Amman, Jordan earlier this week about digital public relations and reputation management. The annual event organised by Middle East advertising and marketing portal MediaME was attended by some 300-400 advertising, marketing, public relations and digital professionals from Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and around […]
Facebook Arabic Rising
User of Facebook’s Arabic language interface now account for more than a third of all Facebook users in the Arab world with Facebook Arabic growing at 175% per annum.
Who’s Afraid Of A Regulated Web?
French president Nicolas Sarkozy has come out and said he wants a regulated web – “You need to hear our limits, our red lines” he told an audience at the two-day ‘e-G8’ conference. The AP report is linked here. His is not the first whiff of regulatory sulphur, of course – only the other day […]
