PR Agencies in Dubai

[Abbas]

Thought you guys might like this little article I posted at t-break about PR agencies in Dubai including ABM.

-a

[Magnus]

Thanks for sharing, Abbas.

We have and continue to have problems with review (seed) units of products from IMC ME. They say it's because Apple Europe sends a very limited number of units of each product for these purposes, and as a web site we fall at the bottom of the food chain, so to speak. But there can't be that many others that produce reviews of Apple products because I can hardly find any anywhere.

Anyway, just about a week ago we got the latest iPod for review (that's only about six months after it was released in the US).

[Magnus]

By the way, ABM's PR agency is Sahara. I'm not exactly sure what all they do for them, but I believe they manage seed units, press releases, and I guess what you would call "comepetitive intelligence" or something, I mean keeping track of what's in the media and stuff. But don't quote me on that, that's only the impression I've got from dealing with them.

[Magnus]

Slightly off-topic but interesting anyway, I think. From Emirates Today:

Public relations agencies are largely failing to provide their clients with value for money, according to the managing director of media analysts Mediastow.
Mohammad Elzubeir said UAE companies were wasting money on ineffective PR.

“Of course, there are good and bad PR agencies; some understand how to measure their effectiveness and some don’t,” said Elzubeir.

Mediastow surveyed 150 PR practitioners, 87 PR agencies and more than 200 in house PR managers. The study showed that 83 per cent of the respondents do not know how to measure their work, while only 12 per cent counted clippings and five per cent were able to calculate the equivalent advertising value.

“PR is a new industry. People don’t really understand what they are getting out of it. The attitude seems to be: ‘I know I need to spend money on PR, I don’t know why, but everybody’s doing it’. That is the general consensus,” said Elzubeir.

Mediastow, which has 36 offices across the Middle East and North Africa, searches through almost 1,000 media sources from the region, including newspapers, magazines and websites. This enables it to measure the performance of campaigns, based on coverage reach and size.

“The data is there; it just hasn’t been translated into information and that’s what we do. We help firms make more informed decisions,” Elzubeir added.