It will be France from Frankfurt (that is my prediction for todays second match). Brazil in my opinion are a bit too overrated and quarter's is how far they would go this time.
So France goes to Munich...
Hope I spelt a Nostradamus on France. We will know it tonight
In my opinion it will be Portugal, even if they are without a couple of their stars. But I also like Sven-Goran Eriksson's England.
What to do? At the end of two 45's only one team can win and I think Portugal will go to Munich.
Italy is team number two in the semifinal lineup.
They made a short work of Ukraine, 3 – 0. Gianluca Zambrotta (6th minute) & Luca Toni (59th and 69th minute) scored for Italy.
But for excellent goalkeeping from Italy’s Gianluigi Buffon the match could have been close.
It will be Germany (Vs.) Italy on July 04, 2006 in Dortmund. Let’s see who goes to Berlin from there.
It is Germany. The German's become the first to qualify for the Semifinals beating Argentina on penalties, 1 – 1 (4 – 2).
Jans Lehmann the hero saving two spot kicks and Roberto Ayala & Esteban Cambiasso, the antiheros for the Argentinians.
All said, it was a hardly fought match, with both teams locked 1 – 1 in fulltime. Miroslav Klose of Germany equalized ( 80th-minute) Argentina’s opening goal from Roberto Ayala (49th-minute).
Seems like Jurgen Klinsmann’s decision to choose Jans Lehmann as his number one goalkeeper ahead of the experienced Oliver Kahn is vindicated.
Let’s now see how far the hosts go in this tournament.
While I don't understand the language I could relate to the action perfectly. I was reminded of my childhood days when I played tennis ball cricket in our streets.
Though I didn't have the luxury of calling out for the stars and getting them play with us like these kids do, I did most of the other things the kids here do, like...
1. Fighting with the opposing captain (kid) to select the team with the best of the resources available among us.
2. Fight for the boundaries and wickets, cry foul when you don't get what you wanted.
3. And most importantly... pull off, with your stumps, bat and ball when your mother calls you in, leaving the other players high and dry...
I love this commercial. Amazingly planned and superbly executed. Great work, I would have loved to do myself.
Impulse controls my reading habit more than anything else. Whenever I notice someone having / reading a book, if the title is enticing enough I keep note of the title. Whenever possible I don’t forget to try grab the book (physical or on the net) and take a look at contents page. I then move on to the back cover or the inlay to read about the author. After this exercise if the book still interests me I go on to the tried and tested http://www.amazon.com/ to take a sneak peak on to a couple of pages of the book before I order online.
This time I noticed a book in the hands of Greg Chappell, the Indian cricket coach. This book attracted my attention for two reasons. One, the name of the book and its cover design. It had a photograph of a very attractive man with magnetic eyes. Two, I wanted to see what made Mr Chappell read this book.
Cut to amazon, I did my initial two pages reading. I also got an additional information that a 15 CD audio book edition was available, as read by the legendary Ben Kingsley. This interested me further. While I have placed an order for both the book and the audio book, I surfed the net and found a place where the book was available for reading, free of cost. I have finished more than half of this great book in 2 days. I’m sure I would finish reading in the next couple of days.
The book I’m reading “Autobiography of a yogi” by Paramahamsa Yogananda. Believe me this book is not about religion or meditation. It is an experience reading this book. Here are a few excerpts from the book, some golden words we could apply/use in almost all contexts of life.
The first one reminded me of my school and college days…
"FAITH in God can produce any miracle except one—passing an examination without study."
"In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion. In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle."
"What a person imagines he hears, and what the speaker has really implied, may be poles apart,"
"Try to feel the thoughts behind the confusion of men's verbiage."
These are some lines from the book that made me sit up and think. This book is full of these. Overall it is a wonderful book to own and more importantly read.
I saw this movie Munnabhai MBBS again, in Hindi. This is probably the 20th time I’m watching this movie in any language. It was fantastic as usual. But this time I looked at it in a different perspective, as a creative product from an agency.
So I had a question for myself…
What would the brief have been for this creative product?
The answer I had
"There are human beings and there are doctors
And here we have, a humane doctor who is not qualified…"
(almost all of us think doctors (medicos) are somewhat superhuman, if not explicitly at least within ourselves, subconsciously)
Supporting this proposition (I cooked) is one dialogue in this movie, almost towards the end of it…
“You might not be a doctor, but you showed people how to live”
Most of us should be agreeing that the moral of any story (the proposition) comes towards the end (of any story / movie). I hope I am justified, let me know your views.
I was pleasantly surprised when this cabbie joined me and Francis discussing about Germany 2006. Francis was telling me about an article in one of the Indian portals. It carried a story about Vikash Dhorasoo, the man of Indian origin from Mauritius whose parents migrated to France long ago (It is a wee bit confusing!!). As the conversation moved on, I told Francis that I was feeling sad about the French drawing their game with Switzerland, I thought the French would easily win.
The cabbie quietly slipped into the conversation with one comment “Sir, Brazil will win this time too”. I considered it a regular smart ass comment about the football world cup. Ask anyone, they know about three teams for sure – Brazil, for whatever reasons. Germany, for they are the hosts. And Saudi Arabia, because they are our neighbors. But this man proved me wrong with his subsequent comments. He knows the game, in and out.
“Sir, this year it is either Brazil or Portugal. You know why?”.
Francis and me meekly nodded our head indicating we don’t.
“Because both have a Brazilian coach. And you know the man coaching Portugal has already won the cup with Brazil. I forgot his name…”
“It is Felipe Scolari” said Francis
“No I forgot the name but he is a good coach, even their captain is a good player. His name is…”
“Figo” said Francis
“Yes, he is a brilliant player and they have a couple of good forwards. The Brazilian coach, he is also good. He has a long name a passenger told me his name yesterday. I forgot that name it has 3 names, a very long one and difficult too”
“Carlos Alberto Parraira” Said me
“May be, I forgot. Today I wouldn’t drive in the evening, you know why?”
One dead nod of no from us
“Because Saudi is playing their first match. Against Senegal, it would be a good match because they are also a good team. But Saudi beat Australia 3-0 in the qualifiers to go to Germany. Did you see Australia winning 3-1? Then it is quite natural Saudi would also win comfortably. They have got some good players you know?”
Another nod signifying you have enlightened us buddy
“So I am going to park my cab in front of this shop there in Sheik Zayed, they have a big two side TV. You can watch it from both the sides, they show the match. All the big people watch from inside the shop. We sit outside and watch the match, it is good fun. I am not going to miss this match”
This is probably the first time I am seeing a cabbie so intelligent, committed to watching a game of football armed with abundance of game knowledge.
It was pleasure riding your cab buddy. God bless.
Ps: Saudi has just drawn their game with Tunisia. It is a 2 – 2 at fulltime, my cabbie friend would have been disappointed.
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I saw this in front of me in one of the taxi I traveled in Dubai (this faces the passenger seat). It is a small screen supported by a DVD full of spam. This has a volume control which would enable one to listen to the spam according to his / her decibel specifications but not so surprisingly this doesn't have a mechanism to have it switched off.
What you see are three parts of this spam. Two static spams on the sides and one dynamic DVD spam screen in the middle.
You could call it the 3-in-1 Spam effect.
It is 1 - 6, 6 - 1, 6 - 4, 7 - 6 (7 - 4) for Rafael Nadal in four sets. With this famous win, Nadal has extended his winning streak on clay to 60.
It was a wonderful game of tennis. Federer fought well to force Nadal into the fourth set tie-break, but couldn't hold on to the mini break he had in the tie-break.
I would have loved if my favorite Roger Federer had won the French Open this year. But I had to be content watching a fantastic tennis match, befitting a final.
Another memorable Roland Garros moment.
Am down with a viral flu. Pretty bad, having to sleep inside 2 thick blankets in this hot 40+° Dubai summer heat.
Wish me well.
With today I complete an year in Dubai. It has been a good year overall, hope it continues to be.
It's time for a beer. Cheers!
It is 4 - 2 for Germany. But for the Costa Rican goalkeeper's splendid efforts it could have been half a dozen for Germany. A good beginning to what promises to be a great world cup.
This is how famous one could get. This is a friday night show with Jonathan Ross.
God bless Congo.
Second time lucky. But this time he is interviewed as Guy Goma in this GMTV breakfast show.
What a way to get famous!!
Meet Mr Guy Goma, he went to BBC for a job interview as a Data support cleanser. But was lucky ending up commenting on the Apple (Vs.) Apple case. It was a case of mistaken identity when this Guy was picked up for another guy, Guy Kewney, an IT expert.
While he wasn't too comfortable answering the questions asked, he managed. But this Guy managed really well to become an instant celebrity.
Check out... The BBC story
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My 8 month old son is getting savvy of facing the camera. While I am not a great fan of mobile phone cameras, I tried clicking a few pictures impromptu, yesterday night and this is how Mr Anirudhha had to react.
It is amazing seeing the kid grow. God bless.
Come 10th of this month I am completing an year in Dubai. I was chatting up with someone who has been here for the last 18 years. The discussion was about mobile telephony, this man was proud to say that UAE is one of the most evolved markets as far as mobile telephony goes. According to this friend, people here exploit the technology available to the fullest and they have a great deal of understanding about things.
Having had the opportunity to work with a couple of mobile telephony service provider brands back in India, I have my own opinion about this market. I thought it would be better if I had my opinion validated. So I started doing a dip-stick on this market, its expectations from the mobile service providers and more importantly the level of understanding the subscribers have about mobile telephony.
I have also tried checking some secondary data sources like a recent interview among people here about mobile phones (instruments) which appeared in a leading lifestyle magazine here and some reports I found on the net. I have also used some of my own understanding about this market.
Why this study / post now?
UAE is getting a second operator in the next couple of months. So I wanted to see how prepared this place is in welcoming a new operator, what do the people expect, what the operators have to offer now and what they must focus on for their better future.
All this said, there are still some people in the UAE who believe that we are moving from monopoly to Du-poly situation with the launch of the new operator Du. This is mainly due to the reason that Du also belongs to the government, Etisalat and Du have reached an agreement already – they wouldn’t compete on cost.
Do let me know your comments / feedbacks.
Special thanks due to Vinay M for helping me collate responses for the research.
The United Arab Emirates market
It is a monopoly as of now. Etisalat, the sole operator in town has been in business for 30 years now. It was established initially in 1976 (the Federal Act 1 of 1991 made this industry a monopoly). UAE is one of the first countries to introduce mobile telephony way back in 1982. Digital GSM service is operational since September 1994. People would be surprised to know that Etisalat is the second largest revenue generator for the government after the oil sector. Though Etisalat is a government owned company it is very active pitching for business in the neighboring countries including Saudi, Pakistan etc.
So here we are talking about a government controlled monolith, in monopoly.
Mobile penetration
The global standards say that the developed countries have about 34% mobile penetration and in the developing countries the penetration is about 5%.
In UAE the mobile penetration is at 79% compared to a 30% fixed line penetration. This figures would show us how dynamic the UAE market is and its wealth & its ever increasing expatriate population.
In Dubai the usage / penetration is at 90% and Abu Dhabi follows next with 62.5%. Both these centers combined contribute to 74% of the total penetration of the country.
Despite these very high penetration figures the market grows by a conservative 10% an year. This 10% could be mainly attributed to the SMS and MMS services. The market is also known for its frequency of changing handsets (that would be a good study by itself).
The offering
Etisalat offers both prepaid and postpaid services. With WASEL being its very popular prepaid offering. In my estimate (due to lack of support) the skew towards prepaid is about 8:2. This could be mainly attributed to the cost of the postpaid connection, you are supposed to pay a deposit of about $140.
By December 2003 there was a reduction is the cost of international calls, notably to India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan and Yemen. Reduced tariffs have increased revenue, rather than reduced it, since consumers make more and longer calls.
The target audience
Mainly the expatriate population and not to forget the local population. This ranges from a construction laborer to a CEO of a multinational company. It is a very disparate crowd and therefore their expectations differ as per their usage.
Awareness among the users
Recently, in one of the leading publications I saw an article. They had spoken to a few people. All these people looked educated, having a decent job. The question posed was simple “What do you use your mobile phone for?”
And you would see below the kind of response from the people (in the order of importance)
1. Receive / Make calls
2. Send SMS
3. Set Alarm (Check out the BBC report on a Nokia commissioned survey)
4. Take pictures
5. Check time (Check out the BBC report on a Nokia commissioned survey)
6. Listen to Radio / MP3 (Check out the BBC report on a Nokia commissioned survey)
7. Send MMS
8. Connect to the web
Looking at this survey I decided to do a dipstick survey. I decided my survey would be from a service provider’s perspective and ask people about the mobile service usage based questions.
I contacted 15 young men & women with a questionnaire. Here’s what they had to say.
1. All of them have a mobile connection
2. All of them have a postpaid connection.
a. 7 said they have a Wasel (that is the name for the prepaid subscription plan).
b. 8 said they have a Etisalat connection
3. Next question asked was “What is GSM?”
a. 3 of them had said it was “Global System for Mobile communication”.
b. The other 12 had an interesting answer, GSM according to them is a type of mobile phone connection where you get a monthly bill and you pay it month on month. You also get a international roaming with this connection. Interesting!!
4. Three functions you use your mobile phone for frequently. (Services provided by Etisalat, in the order of importance)
a. Incoming
b. SMS
c. Outgoing
5. Do you know about anyother service provider in Dubai? (the reason being an impending launch of another service provider Du)
a. 3 said they knows Du is getting launched shortly
b. The others had no idea
6. What would make you switch to another operator from Etisalat? (in the order of importance)
a. Reduced call charges – International & local
b. Low rentals (the annual subscription)
c. Free international roaming
d. Good network
e. Good customer care
7. Are you okay with switching operators at the risk of loosing your existing phone number?
a. All 15 said yes they will
8. Have you switched numbers at least once? (have you changed your mobile connection ever?)
a. 8 said they have
b. 7 have not changed their numbers
Making sense of the numbers shown above.
UAE has an extremely high mobile penetration level. Mobile phones are more or less commodities here. Some people also have the tendency of changing numbers, the reason being getting a fancy number, a shift in jobs or just for the fun of it. You have an amazing skew towards prepaid connections. This is because of the high deposit / rental factor required for the postpaid connections. Postpaid is seen as a rich man’s connection.
The most important thing is the ignorance of people about their connection. A majority of them don’t seem to know what the prepaid offering of Etisalat is called – Wasel. Even this awareness doesn’t hold Etisalat in good ground as we move on to GSM.
The majority here seem to confuse technology with the offering. For many GSM is the postpaid offering from Etisalat. Even educated, high ranking men and women don’t know what GSM is in reality. Not that they should know the expansion for this acronym, but they should at least know that this a technology that enables you to speak. At least people back in India know this. Another thing to add here is Etisalat’s recent decision to enable full international roaming for its prepaid customers. People don’t seem to know this, they are all under the impression that roaming is available only for the GSM customers (that is the postpaid according to them).
On the usage part, we could clearly see that incoming calls are most preferred. This could be attributed to the high call costs and the amount of expatriate population living here in the UAE. SMS seems to be the next preference, but how many of the expat population are SMS savvy? Outgoing is for emergency situations because it is presumed a costly proposition.
Nobody knows that another operator is coming to town, Du is being launched shortly. But when prompted about this, almost all of the people interviewed say they would want to shift. The reasons that would prompt this decision of theirs is call costs, annual rental and the network (Thursday’s and Friday’s are the most congested days when there is a mad rush of international outgoing calls)
Some learning for the mobile service providers in UAE
1. When your customers crib about costs, it is not necessary that you need to reduce costs. You can create a feeling of reduction by making them feel that you offer more value for their money. Services like Cricket Scores through SMS, Football WC results and score updates, Dial-a-cab, Dial-a-flower, Dial-your-water services make a huge difference. These are some services for which the operator ties up with someone, makes money from this person and offer the services free of charge to the customer
2. There is a reduction in call charges past 10p everyday and on Fridays, but how many people know this? Communicate, may be an SMS to the people on Fridays at least only to those who seem to cough-up monies on making expensive international calls would do wonders.
3. Educate people about your offering. Let people know what your prepaid and postpaid offerings are and what the difference is. Let people know that your company works on a GSM plank and everyone is a GSM user. This should do wonders in a market like this where everyone has a misconception that GSM is postpaid, it would make a definite difference and create a sense of belonging when these guys know they also have a GSM connection. At least for starters.
4. Create more of Emotional loyalty and not the Behavioral loyalty (that’s what you have now). This comes out clearly from our interviews, people are sticking with Etisalat because it is the only player in the market. They would move the moment they have another option. But this option can’t be yet another Etisalat with a different brand name and identity. It has to differentiate itself by the product they offer, the Value Added Services, the packaging and more importantly in pricing (at least visibly)
5. Use the wealth of data you have to increase usage. You know who makes long ISD calls and who is an SMS freak. Offer them some add-ons, make them feel important and this would increase usage.
6. Remember visibility shouldn’t be limited to eyes, you need to take that to heart.
7. This is a service industry, beef your customers service centers up. Get people who understand the problems of your subscribers (at least the common complaints). Make sure all the complaints are addressed promptly.
8. Communicate about your offering clearly. When a person buys a prepaid card or a postpaid connection give him a welcome pack. This should explain him whatever he wanted to know about the connection, facilities and tariff etc.
9. For heavens sake make them use their mobiles for more than setting alarms, checking time and receiving an odd incoming call and make a call or send an SMS once in a blue moon. For a mobile phone’s primary use is not setting alarms and checking time, these need to stop with being value added services from the equipment.
10. As we could see, today a mobile is not just a phone. It is a watch, alarm clock, music player, camera and many more dimensions. It would be adding value if we provide the customer with services that supplement this kind of usage like a music server (like an iTune or a mobile radio station), simple software like the ones used for managing daily expenses etc.
The existing operator here doesn’t seem to have time. They have to react fast, otherwise the watch, clock, MP3 manufacturers are going to suffer a lot. More than that, the existing operators ARPU is going to take a nosedive soon with lots of people leaving out of the network and low usage among those remaining.
I was checking one of my daily favorites, the agencyfaqs website (Indian advertsing, media & marketing). I found yet another SMART advertising professional. This person is reported to be moving from one BIG agency to another, from being an Account Director to becoming a Director – Client Services.
I was intrigued by the way this person has answered a simple question. The challenges and the headway this person made working on a particular account (a well known brand) in one of this person's previous assignments.
The answer was funny. This made me wonder about this person's wisdom, the abilities of this particular persons handling clients, problem solving capabilities and even this persons understanding of the basics of advertising and branding.
Now over to that intersting answer “Here the challenge was to up the image of “The client” in India and differentiate the brand from the other brands in the market. This was achieved by roping in “A big superstar actor” as the brand ambassador.”
Can somebody try explain me how a brand image is “upped” just by using a celebrity? While one can attempt to try and explain this with some difficulty, the differentiation bit baffles me. May be this person was referring to the exclusivity clause they had as part of the contract with this celebrity and that is the only BIG differentiation I could think of.
This person is badly in need of a good lecture / sermon / coaching on “Brand” first and then on “Brand Image”, “Positioning” and “Differentiation”. This would stand to save the agency this person has joined or is going to join and more than anything save a client and his/her brand(s).
Till then god save this agency and their clients…
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