Home › View all posts by Krikor › Page 41

Author: Krikor

Live Life Light

By Posted on Posted in ArabNet, E-commerce, Group Buying 1 Comment

Group buying was one of the interesting panels that took place at ArabNet Shift Digital Summit on 23rd of March, and it was moderated by Alexander McNabb.

The panelists where Sohrab Jahanbani from Gonabit, Sinan Khatib from BuyWithMe, Paul Kenny from Cobone, Brendan Ogilvy from Effective Measure, and an Egyptian guy from a group buying company located in Cairo, but i am really sorry for not remembering nor his name, neither his company name (help needed). Unfortunately the Groupon people did not show up at the summit, if someone knows the reason, please share it with us.

There was a rumor going around, that Groupon will show up at the ArabNet and announce their acquisition for a local group buying company, well, it seems that this will stay a rumor.

Alexander mentioned during the panel that there are around 25 group buying companies serving the region (Middle East and North Africa), and this number looked very BIG to me, after hearing many panels describing the e-commerce situation in this same region unless these group buying sites will start promoting their offers offline in order to attract potential future clients.

Alexander McNabb | Group Account Director, SpotOnPR
Alex has worked with IT, media and communications in the ME for over 24 years. He has developed marketing strategies and communications programs for leading global brands, done consulting work with Arab governments, and built strategies and managed national and regional communications campaigns.

It takes lots of time and efforts to find the appropriate services to satisfy the deal seekers, and sometimes it is very hard to convince the businesses to participate in such promotions.

Yesterday evening I was having a discussion with my wife and I mentioned to her about these group buying sites popping up everyday that she should check, maybe she might be interested in something, knowing that she is not an online buyer, actually she never bought anything online but I wanted to check on her reaction once she visits the sites. And just for the record, she said that Gonabit sounded the easiest name to remember.

Personally I am a heavy online buyer, but never from group buying sites, so this morning, I have decided to check these sites to see what offers they are running and the first 2 sites I visited were Gonabit.com and Cobone.com and I was shocked !!!

Last week, during ArabNet, I had a side discussion with a friend, who was and is monitoring the group buying business in the region, so he summed up his point of view about this phenomenon, saying: “this is not a profitable business”, of course he backed up his argument with some simple figures to defend his case.

And my morning surprise made me totally understand my friend’s point of view more after seeing the available offers on both sites and this, from a business perspective.

Cobone is offering a bike ride in Beirut for $1.66-, so let us say the deal is on, and they sell 10 deals, or 20 deals or even 100 deals, the total cash out of this operation is $166.00- and let us also say the split is 50/50 between the site and the shop, so each one gets $83.00- >IF< 100 deals are sold.
Same exercise for Gonabit who is offering an online live footbal game for $7.50-.
(By the time I was writing this post, around midnight, Cobone had 12 deals sold and Gonabit just 1).

From this simple calculation, I am trying to understand how these site will get profitable on the long run with their operational cost and how they will manage to cover these costs.

Is this the investors money that is getting burned?

Or maybe we are observing a new internet bubble like the one we had in 2000 and for those who don’t remember how things went bad in the US, few examples to refresh your memory, Boo.com spent $188 million in just 6 months in attempt to create a global fashion store. Pets.com raised $82.5 million in an IPO only to go bankrupt nine months later.

The biggest dot-com company that crashed and burned was WebVan. The company aimed to deliver groceries to homes and businesses. It raised $375 million in an IPO. WebVan forgot that it was actually in the grocery business, which has razor thin margins to begin with. In a mere 18 months the company had spent itself to bankruptcy.

If someone from the group buying industry is reading this blog post, I appreciate explaining your business model, so we can get it, again from business and profitability perspective, and hoping you are not sitting in HermanMiller Aeron Chairs.

By Posted on Posted in Awareness, Brands, Good Cause No Comments

Diet Coke and Heidi Klum joined forces on February 1 to raise awareness and funds for women’s heart health education and research. February is American Heart Month, and for the fourth consecutive year, Diet Coke is partnering with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to support The Heart Truth® campaign.

This year, Diet Coke has created a national game of “Capture the Flag,” inviting people to visit DietCoke.com/HeartTruth where they can capture flags with a click of the mouse to trigger a donation from Diet Coke to heart health programs.

“Capture the Flag is such a fun game, so when Diet Coke asked me to join the team, I was in!” said Klum. “It’s simple for anyone to participate: go online, capture a flag, and you’ve raised money. Capture more flags. Raise more money. It’s that easy.”

By Posted on Posted in ArabNet, Marketing, Social Media 2 Comments

The panel Case Studies in Social Media Marketing took place during the 3rd day of ArabNet.
The moderator was Ms. Alex Tohme and the panelists:
Mr. Patrick Atallah, CEO, 90:10 Group Middle East
Mr. Khalid Dalil, Research Manager MENA, NM Incite
Mr. Marc Dfouni, CEO & Managing Partner, Eastline Marketing
Mr. Vadi Efe, Founder and Partner, Dekatlon Buzz
Mr. Zafer Younis, CEO, The Online Project

Personally I have assisted to the first 20 minutes of the panel (then left to another panel which I thought can be more interesting) and I have heard many many times the words Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, which in my opinion are not the only tools someone should use to promote his brand/product/blog/site . Plus the audience was really eager to hear about real case studies in social media marketing and the filtered Twitter #ArabNetMe timeline got angry at one point because it did not happen, I am not sure if this happened after I left.

The reason behind this blog post are, 1st to talk about the importance of analytics in social media marketing from brand to client perspective, 2nd about a Lebanese startup who is good at this.

In my opinion (and i am not a social media strategist or whatever other titles comes to this position), the number of clicks are not important anymore, we all remember the early counters that used to be displayed with great proud at the bottom of sites in 1995.
Actually it is more about how your visitors behave on your site, why they are here, how long they are staying and what they are looking for, once you can analyze these parameters along with some others, you will be able to engage better with your site visitors/clients. And for me this is the real marketing.

It is not about the nice Facebook page you have designed nor the Twitter timeline you filled with info that are useless to most of your clients neither the video you have on YouTube that you believe is going viral and is not. You need to understand what your visitors want and give it to them in order to bring them back to you, otherwise you will see a very high bounce rate.

Facebook and Twitter will definitely assist you in any marketing campaign, but they should not be considered as the main tools for success. People blame the social media platforms for the failure of anything they are trying to shout about to a larger crowd, and they are totally forgetting about content, which is King and that they should listen to their customers and engage continuously with them.

Amazon was founded in Web 1.0 era, there were no social media, no YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, and they succeeded because they understood what their customers want. And some other brands succeeded with the help of social media because they exactly knew how to integrate with the right social media channels that suits the product/service they are trying to promote and its value. Check the Dunkin Donuts Coolatta campaign and the Dell Social Media Listening Command Center


The web analytics service I would like to recommend is Woopra, a Lebanese startup co-founded by Elie Khoury. I use it on this blog and it is cool!
Woopra delivers a complete suite of enterprise grade analytics in one easy to use live interface. You can monitor multiple Websites simultaneously in a tabbed window and switch quickly between them.
Woopra also lets you watch visitors LIVE as they navigate your site, interact with them via Chat, set up real time notifications, track campaigns, set up funnels, and much, much more!

By Posted on Posted in Brands, Packaging No Comments

Heineken France unveiled yesterday (24 March 2011) the new design of its bottles and cans in supermarkets: a leaner line, with an ellipsis in the neck and logo embossed on the back for the bottle, a more tactile feel for cans with a new printing technology. This lift is part of the group’s growth strategy (1.62 billion euros in sales in supermarkets in 2010) which, while it is already the leader in value in large and medium food stores in France, also Heineken intends to become the leader in volume during the coming 3 years.

By Posted on Posted in Ads, Advertising, China No Comments

The Beijing Administration for Industry and Commerce has now given companies until April 15, 2011 to remove words such as “luxury”, “royal”, “supreme” and “high class” from billboards, or face a 30,000 yuan ($4,500) fine.

China’s wealth gap is a serious threat to the country, according to the government, which recorded last year that the average income in a Chinese city is now three times that of a person living in the countryside

By Posted on Posted in Brands, FMCG, Lebanon 1 Comment

The Product of the Year is a prestigious award that rewards innovation in the FMCG sector through an independent consumer survey.
Participating products featuring unique innovations will be recognized as such and will be able to take advantage of a wide-ranging number of benefits offered to the Product of the Year award winners.

Products that successfully pass jury review will be subjected to a consumer survey: a study that indicates consumers’ patterns and preferences.

Products that are recommended by consumers are ultimately the winners of the awards in the various competition categories.

By Posted on Posted in Estonia, Lebanon 1 Comment

I would like to apologize from Estonia as a state, Estonians in general and my friends specifically, Kait, Martin, Meelis, Alger, Andre, Heigo, Jaanika, Kairit, Kris, Maiu, Mart, Mikk, Piret, Rainer, Sigrid.
For those who are wondering why, it is because the fate of seven Estonian nationals kidnapped in the Bekaa Valley remains unknown. (DailyStar Article1, Article2).

I have no idea who did this and why he did it, but this is stupid, so stupid.

Why Estonians, why anyone, why now, why anytime, millions of why… is this our culture of 6000 years of Lebanon? is this the Lebanon Blues we want out visitors to have after they visit us and go back home?

I have been to Estonia many times, have lots of good friends there and every time I was in Tallinn, I did not stop talking about Lebanon and that they should come and visit the place and some of them had plan to come next month (April 2011) but today I feel so ashamed about this kidnap story that I am not sure what to say to my Estonians friends, who will ask if they should come or not.

Estonians are wonderful people, peaceful, nonviolent, they know how to make business and they know how to have fun, as Meelis said to me once.

I can’t stop telling people about my trip(s) to Estonia, specially the one on 08.08.08 and the fun and good times I had. (check old posts on my blog), you can also check some photos here (set1, set2).

Until the Lebanese authorities end up finding the missing persons very soon and bring them back safely to their families and beloved ones, my apologies one more time.