Moustache - STALIN HAD ONE BUT THEN SO DID GANDHI.

This poster, seen in Saint Gallen, Switzerland, was the centre piece of a window display for the watch maker Maurice Lacroix.

The copy, a quote from Sir Bob Geldof, reads:

“I don’t want to live like you. I don’t want to talk like you. I’m going to be like me.”

Now I guess that Sir Bob, due to contractual obligations, wears a Maurice Lacroix watch. And I am equally sure that the manufacturers of Maurice Lacroix would like you to wear one as well.

Why else would they spend all that money to use his name?

Therefore isn’t the whole idea of wearing the same watch as Bob at cross purposes with his message?

The simplicity was overwhelming.

Candles, two musicians and a monologue.

The Bedouin delivering the ten minute narration asked us, in the words of John Lennon, to imagine.

Imagine Petra as it was 2,000 years ago.

Imagine the water flowing through viaducts, down the gorge and bubbling up through the nymphaeum in the Roman colonnade.

Imagine caravans, laden with gold, frankincense and myrrh, passing through this ancient city from the exotic east to the Mediterranean coast in the west.

Imagine the streets, palaces and tombs lit by 8,000 olive oil lamps.

And then finally, imagine what the people were like who could conceive and build this amazing place.

This was far more moving than the over produced, over scripted and contrived Son et Lumière that you’ll find at most tourist destinations.

 

This was the most common way I was greeted by the hawkers outside every tourist attraction, from Luxor to Aswan.

What happened after that, varied with every encounter.

They have all developed their individual ways of trying to separate you from your money.

Some are humorous and charming, while others are persistent and annoying.

A bit like being tied to a chair and forced to watch thirty minutes non stop of Harvey Norman ads.

What is also common to the hawkers, is the unwavering optimism they have, that they will make a sale and it will be from you.

This optimism turns from frustration to desperation as the backside of last tourist disappears up the steps of the tour bus.

I think we are all over the constant hassle but it’s easy forget that this is how they put falafel on the table.

And with tourism running at about 62% of what it was before the revolution, their desperation is understandable.

There is a belief in advertising to always try and make a positive claim about your product. That’s not a bad thing, if your claim has a consumer benefit like strongest, safest or most reliable.

However a number of brands, having achieved market leader status, rely on being ‘biggest’ for their claim.

They forgot what got them there and just reflected on their achievements, in the belief that this is important to the consumer.

The trouble with this strategy is that sooner or later their position at the top of the ‘biggest’ tree will be challenged by someone else.

Then they become second biggest and who wants to be in second place?

Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, boasts a lot of ‘biggest’ things.

The world’s biggest indoor ski slope.

The world’s biggest indoor aquarium with the world’s largest acrylic viewing window.

The world’s largest shopping mall. In fact Dubai will soon have five of the seven biggest shopping malls in the world.

And of course, they have the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building.

In marketing terms this strategy might doom them to a certain fall. But their ‘biggest’ positioning has also become their strategy.

When you build a city out of the desert, on an area that 60 years ago had little more than a few houses, camels and date palms you need to do something spectacular.

When oil was discovered in 1966 the then ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Rashid, used the money to start a development program that would eventually lead to modern day Dubai.

They needed a city that would attract attention and investment from all over the world.

Their way of creating a unique product was to go with a strategy of ‘big’

They didn’t become big and then fall back on that, they started off with the idea to be big.

The entire city is a work in progress, building bigger and bigger things. I wonder how long this race to collect the most Guinness world records can last?