Displays
During my market visits, i come across lots of displays in the supermarkets and hypermarkets i visit, some i would like to share with you here.
Author: Krikor
Live Life Light
CY – 2 Sides For Nicosia
I was in Cyprus on Wednesday and as most of you know, Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus is the last divided capital in the world after the invasion of the Turkish forces for the island in 1974.
At the end of Ledra street in Nicosia, you could for many years, walk and get to the wall that turned into a landmark of the invasion history. In a peaceful step during April 2008, both Cypriot and Turkish authorities decided to break down the wall in order to give a push for their talks in order to unify the island again.
While strolling on Ledra on Wednesday with my Cypriot friend Marios, he proposed talking a walk to the Turkish side, funniest thing happened when at the Turkish police checkpoint, you have to issue a visa, which is a piece of paper, I got a visa valid for 10 days stay, while Marios had his visa for 90 days stay.
Having a Lebanese passport i would 100% understand my need for a “visa”, but how sarcastic it is for a Cypriot to need a visa just walk to the other side of his own country capital.
Will I Get Bored ?
And then came Facebook… and I am trying hard to remember when I first joined this social network after many insisting requests from my work colleagues and it happened, I had my profile with very limited gadgets and accessories when FB took the internet by storm and became the story to tell in every gathering of friends and family, even between strangers having coffee in the same shop.
I got so excited about it that I even registered 2 domain names, facebookist.com and facebookism.com and later on to be contacted by the law firm handling worldwide intellectual properties of FB asking me to handle in the 2 domains and after long email communications where we got to nowhere, I still have the 2 domains and shut down my FB profile for almost more than a year, for no specific reason, I just felt I can live without it and moved into more professional social networks.
Then one day re-activated my account again without any justification, but here came the status quo where I really did not care about it and started logging-in once a week and sometimes every 2 weeks, it did not mean much, while lots of freelancers and companies were developing new add-ons and applications to enhance your FB experience, from games, to places I have been, to pets to do you like me or not, and on and on and on… but all this did not really attract me. Also not long time ago FB re-engineered their total look which was also another dull thing to me.
To summarize the above, I got bored from Facebook.
Then earlier this year I found myself attracted back again to Twitter, for those who are not aware of what this is all about, Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages. People write short updates, often called “tweets” of 140 characters or fewer. These messages are posted to your profile or your blog, sent to your followers, and are searchable on Twitter search.
I first joined Twitter for more than 2 years now, my below twit is my first one, since then, the service did not change much, still have the same interface, no extra stuff added to the menu, even lots of people and companies are building amazing apps and sites around their API, but still the Twitter guys are keeping it simple, so far!
Nowadays I really enjoy twitting, from the office, while on the go, from bed, while driving, from anywhere, but for how long? I even got excited the same way I got for FB and registered 2 domains twtfight.com and twtwar.com with the idea of making a stupid site where people can twit and fight over a given subject, mainly it was about men vs women.
So will twitter keep me excited the same way it is doing now or I will get bored soon?
We will see and I will let you know if it ever happens.
EE – The Car & The Plate
Is this car owner, originally Lebanese but living in Estonia?
Fake, Heinz & Lehman Bros
Yesterday night I was digging in my feed reader when these Heinz ketchup ads popped in front of my eyes, bringing 2 things forward in my mind, an issue i blogged about earlier here.
It is about the Heinz canned tuna business, it was in 2006 that Heinz decided to sell its European seafood unit to the merchant banking arm of Lehman Bros. And I am sure most of you knows what happened earlier to Lehman.
Surely I need to dig further to see where this deal ended up.
Basically the issue I wanted to bring up is their canned tuna business mainly on the Egyptian market, where for more than 2 years now, their brand was copied in a very professional way, in my previous post I have mentioned this but I did not indicate who is doing this.
And i don’t mean about the producer who really don’t care the label they producing specially in Thailand, the main canned tuna source in the world, but I am mean the importer of this brand.
Believe it or not, it is the same company that was importing the Heinz canned tuna brand that made the second brand and what is funny that they did not even bother changing the background picture, just a small difference on the logo design, also keeping the same color trend.
Definitely this is not real ethical business move, specially that we have similar issue in our company where our canned tuna is also copied in 2 different ways, the first was 100% same label, same brand, the second was same label with a small one letter brand difference, from Siblou to Sibloun. (I will post the fake labels next week)
On the other hand, for those who are interested in supply of quality branded canned tuna or under their private label, please visit our factory website at www.abad-cfood.com and feel free to email us any quotation request.
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How Retailers Kill Brands
Yes retailers do kill brands, and don’t be surprised because I have seen it today and it is happening everyday in supermarkets or hypermarkets around the globe, I was a buyer previously and buyers are known to be arrogant people and pushing brands to fight between each other in order for them to grab the best deals out of this inter-brands competition to gain shelf space in any given category.
Brand owners want to have the best visible space for their products, in order to push consumers helping them rotating their stocks, and sometimes such spaces can cost a fortune that some multinational are willing to pay, which I believe they are getting back from the consumers’ pocket, just to have their product at the “eye level”.
But if you pay all this money and your product is not really showing well on the shelf ?
Today, while I was having my market visit with our distributor in Estonia, I was really shocked to see what I am sharing with you below (sorry for the bad quality, the security guy had big muscles, could not jeopardize).
How a brand or product shall sell if the consumer can barely see it? How the companies will help consumers build their brand awareness if he is not able to see the brand while strolling between the shelves?
Definitely a retailer can kill a brand if their shelves are not well organized, knowing that some of them say they are reflecting category management on their spaces, which if also is not maintained the right way, can also kill a brand.
Having said the above & seen the below, now I say: Bye Bye $$$$ we pay for listing !
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Why Blackberry Will Fail In Lebanon
For the last one year or maybe more, Lebanese tech gadget geeks waited for the Blackberry to land in their country, and at last the service was announced by MTC Touch, one of the 2 local mobile service providers, these state owned companies that are monopolizing the lebanese market are operated by foreign companies.
But the dream was soon demolished when MTC Touch announced its plan price which was way illogical in a country where Lebanese thought they are by far leading the technology knowledge in this part of the world.
The subscription cost is US$45/month including 20 MB of consumption (for local usage only). Extra usage is charged US$1/MB.
Compared to the service offered by Etisalat in the UAE (United Arab Emirates), you would pay in Dubai AED185 (US$50) for local unlimited data and AED295 (US$80) for unlimited local and international usage which compared to the lebanese plan, would let the consumer say, DUH am i screwed in my own country? Just for a real life example, I have a French friend living in Lebanon, he is simply using the Blackberry service from the UAE, and I am sure lots of other people are doing the same.
I have never been a Blackberry user, but I think that all Blackberry phones are not wifi enabled, which forces you to stay within the boundaries of the 20MB data you have per month, which is not really sufficient for a heavy user, even on just a simple work email account, in case we drop net browsing. (i read somewhere that Blackberry will be launching a wifi enabled phone in 2009)
On the other hand, I am an MTC Touch client and I use their GPRS service which cost me US$20/month for 30MB of data, which I believe is fair and enough if used properly, larger packages are also available.
It is more convenient using such plan on a smart phone because it gives you more flexibility specially if you need to push more than 1 email address, I guess on Blackberry you are limited to only 1 email address, please correct me if I am wrong.
Lebanon was considered for many years before the civil war that started in 1975 and ended in 1990, as Switzerland of the Middle East, but I am not sure if this myth is still living specially that technologically we were left behind for quite a long time. Lately Lebanese consumers had a slight hope when the government lowered the mobile calling rates, for the first time since cell phones services were launched around 1995, consumers paid one of the highest cost in the world, the same price of US$0.13 (excl. VAT) per minute and for sms, is now US$0.11-(excl. VAT) and US$0.09-(excl. VAT) respectively.
Without mentioning the bad service on cell phones for the last few months, because as it seems the network when first installed had a certain capacity and the 2 companies are still issuing more sim cards serviced on the same network which is causing lots of technical interference when making calls.
Consumers still believe that these new low rates are expensive compared to other neighboring countries, they are looking for a new hope as rumors have been for long time talking about the privatization of the telecom sector in Lebanon and the arrival of a 3rd company that will push the competition harder.
Until this moment, all these are pure rumors and Lebanese consumers are still paying the highest rate for the lowest service no only in the region, but in the whole world.