JEDDAH, 1 April 2004 — If the “Arab World” were a product not a concept, most of the world wouldn’t buy it. It’s not the product that sells products; it’s the packaging. It is time to look very carefully at the packaging of the brand “Arab World” from the point of view of the target market, the rest of the world.
Applying the marketing principles of, for example, packaged milk, to the selling of “Arab World,” consumers have only a few seconds to decide what to buy. In that time, decisions are made and evaluated, albeit unconsciously and then the purchase is made. Most of those decisions are made, according to marketing experts, on the basis of previous experience with the product and a series of symbols they are familiar with. Sometimes it is color and other times, logos.
Consider the milk carton; the color most cultures associate with clean fresh milk is white. Globalization has reinforced this and the convention of using milk in a white or mostly white carton is worldwide. What success then would there be with a black carton?
The “brand essence” is what appears on the front of the package — what the brand owner feels is the attribute of the brand he is tying to convince consumers to buy. Clear uncluttered images, maximum four according to marketing principles — aimed at the segment of the market you want to sell to.
What is the “brand essence” of the Arab world? Are the messages it sends clear and uncluttered? Are the messages expressed in terms that the Western consumer will relate to? Are they the messages the Arab world wants to send?
In the early days of mass media, romantic noble sheikhs in flowing robes on white horses were a sure-fire brand-image to make money in the cinema. That has changed — but has it disappeared completely?
The modern Arab world has many of the “bolt-ons” bought with oil money — technology, roads, and television — but has that changed the “brand essence” of the Arab world in the West very much? Has anyone checked? Does the current advertising on satellite and Internet, which relies heavily on images of deserts, tents and tradition actually drive change away from this early brand essence? Look at any Arab television channel and count the images of deserts, camels and nomadic life.
I am not suggesting for one moment that tradition be forgotten; far from it. A culture without sound knowledge of its past has little chance of addressing the future. But it’s the Arab’s culture. Is the West really interested in it or nurturing a wholly inaccurate but comfortable image of a world that has little relation to the modern Middle East?
The recent and ongoing furor over the Walt Disney film “Hidalgo” is a perfect example of what happens to a brand owner — in this case, Saudi Arabia — when the historical image of the tough “long-rider” who won hundreds of long-distance horse races, is hijacked, manipulated and pedaled as truth. Allegedly according to the US Remount Service Journal of 1936, Frank T. Hopkins competed in and won over 400 long-distance races, including a legendary 3,000-mile endurance ride across the Arabian Desert in 1890 on his mustang stallion, Hidalgo.
“I certainly can’t think of any bigger hoax!” Dr. Donald Worcester, a respected researcher of the history of America’s west, has denounced the Walt Disney studios for promoting the movie Hidalgo as “being based on a true story.”
“If the Walt Disney studio does not admit that the movie ‘Hidalgo’ is fiction, then years from now people will be misled into believing that it is a true story,” the historian said firmly. It seems that extensive research by 77 academics from five countries have unanimously denounced Frank Hopkins as the world’s greatest equestrian liar.
But why mess up a good story with factual accuracy — or as one Disney executive, Nina Heyn, put it in an apparent moment of unguarded honesty last year, “No one here really cares about the historical aspects” — a line the company has been careful not to repeat since.
What other images of the current Arab world has the West been fed recently? Reruns of 9/11, wicked dictators, conspiratorial criminals, contentious oil states at conferences, suicide bombers and, probably most unfairly of all, Muslims as terrorists.
It’s an inescapable fact that all these things contain an element of truth, however hard that may be for the Arab world to accept. And now, the world’s biggest fantasy factory markets the blatantly untrue story of a three thousand mile horse race — won of course by the all-American hero/fraudster who is clearly a better horseman and desert survivor than the locals — as fact. Pah! Humbug!
The real problem is that most of their consumers don’t care if it’s true or not. They suspend disbelief and swallow it. Who is going to check the facts anyway? The danger is that the story ends up as being perceived as truth — in precisely the same way as the story of a simple fruit juice on a packet is accepted as true; it is healthy, it does me good, it is therefore the product I will buy. The Arab brand essence has been hijacked and, as Dr. Worcester said, “Years from now people will be misled into believing that it is a true story.” The big question is: Is that the brand essence that the Arab world wants to present to the target market, the West? I would suggest it is not.
Then maybe it is time for Arab World Inc. to review and reassess the image it is presenting and what the West is receiving — not necessarily precisely the same thing — and work positively on what it wants to present. As with any marketing campaign, the brand owner has to monitor and position its brand in the market place and rigorously defend it. But first it has to identify the essence of the brand.
Who or what is the Arab world today? It’s time to repackage the product and sell it in terms the target market — the Western consumer — is familiar with. Nobody would buy milk in black cartons.
