Chris Saul's Blog

Monday January 08, 2007

Never name your business what it's trying to be

One of the restaurants in the hotel I'm in tonight is describing itself in an advert as 'young, modern and trendy'.

I haven't done any formal marketing training, but surely one of the primary rules is not to use advertising to describe directly either your product, your business or your project as what you want people to perceive it as being.

As soon as a product calls itself 'the best', 'cool', 'trendy' or suchlike, consumers (or this consumer at least) instantly assume it is anything but.

Eff off Frej/s

Dubai seems to have been afflicted by its first graffiti artist, at least in the time since I've been here.

Fres, or Frej, or whatever he's called, has signed his name all over the place in four foot high, badly drawn, blue 'bubble' letters. In London I wouldn't bat an eyelid, but in squeaky clean graffiti free Dubai it stands out clearly as what this kind of thing is - pointless, ugly, moronic, vandalism.

I have no problem with 'urban artists' transforming a derelict factory wall into a work of art, even if what they're doing may not be fully sanctioned from a legal point of view. I have no time for the tedious scribblers who go around doing the equivalent with pens and spray paint to what a dog does on street corners and lamp posts.

The worst thing to afflict the UK in recent years has been vandalism of the glass on bus shelters, buses, tube trains and increasingly shop windows by buffoons who think scratching their name with a glass cutter is cool. Thank God that hasn't reached here yet.

I wouldn't want to be Fres/j when he gets caught, as he probably will do, very soon. The sooner the better, though.