However, from a historical perspective advertising can be news — the news of what was happening behind the stories and the context in which they were produced.
The first few years of advertising in the adolescent Arab News were almost Victorian in their instructive tone and Arab News was clearly thought of as a local paper in which one could sell off a few items — almost a classified advertisement local paper.
Shipping times and the imminent arrival of cargo carriers from exotic places took up spans of newspaper. Orri Lines and the Islamic Port in particular were regulars with what at first sight were quite detailed announcements until on closer inspection it was revealed that the MV Typical was expected to arrive soon with “general cargo.” The staid announcements and thrills of the imminent arrival of an unspecified cargo told of the drama and excitement of something happening, enlivening what must have been a fairly dull existence for many expatriate workers in the Kingdom at the time
To some extent, that is true; the Kingdom was in the early stages of infrastructure development and much of the imported material was connected in some way to the construction industry. Temporary shedding, self-assembly warehouses and particularly earth-moving equipment featured in half-page advertisements, jostling with the shipping timetables and government advertisements requesting tenders for some new project or other.
Dotted among the formal advertisements were the first luxury items. There was not much for an expatriate worker to spend money on and the first in were the watchmakers. A small, highly portable and expensive item that could double both as a way of transporting cash and as easing paths toward deals of various kinds. Omega in particular was an early arrival on the scene with their chronometers and the iconic Seamaster — a watch with more dials than a Dakota.
A decade on in the 1980s, the advertisements for second-hand construction — both for sale and wanted — turned the Arab News into something of a construction machinery marketplace in terms of advertisements.
June 17, 1980, saw requests for second-hand tower cranes, dozers and assorted earthmoving and bulk-carrying equipment. In classic style – soon to become the delight of amateur proofreaders among the purchasers of the Arab News — typographical errors in the advertisements began to appear on a regular basis. For the record, it has always been — and still is — Arab News policy to print advertisements as submitted.
On this day a “yard crawler” was offered for sale, 75 percent of a rather square one. “For Sale a ¾ cubic YARD CRAWLER for sale” the headline announced. On June 25 Raid announced in a pleonastic classic that it; “Kills bugs dead” relieving thousands of stressed expats. A live killed bug is such a nuisance. Datsun noted in a half page spectacular on (July 16) that, “My dashboard a complete command of every lever or knob.” Reassuring.
The mid 1980s also saw an increase in the advertising of electronic consumer goods, particularly top end hi-fi equipment, for example KEF and Bang & Olufsen. Television, although introduced in 1965, was clearly not sufficiently entertaining — at least to the target consumers of Arab News advertisers — to warrant the expense of advertising TV receivers. The Japanese invasion of consumer electronics was conspicuous by its absence. However, one could buy an Apple computer with 48k memory and 12-inch monitor for just SR8,995. Today for much less money in real terms it is a 24-inch screen and 350 gigabytes — proof positive of the effects of mass production and the popularising of IT products.
Advertisements, for staff such as “Pilifinos Wanted” (September 1982), mainly engineering and construction had increased as had the offers by airlines for bargain travel, perhaps indicating that there was considerable disposable income up for grabs. Gulf Air, PanAm, KLM (with their new DC10 fleet) BA (with Tri Star) and Al Italia (touting the new airbus) all offered getaways.
For much of the 1980s, more than half of each issue was advertising — understandable as much of it was to attract the skills and contractors necessary to support the rapid growth of the Kingdom.
The mid 90s and the face of advertising changed. Saudia had a new fleet of jumbo jets and was pushing its eight-times-a-week service.
In a turnaround from the advertising of expensive luxuries that had dominated the paper outside infrastructural advertisements previous decade, “Big Sales” and “Shop for Less” supermarkets had arrived in force. Advertisers had changed focus and were after the riyal in the average family’s pocket. Panda, Euromarche and Bin Dawood led the way. The recent influx of Japanese cars often featured as prizes in shopping prize draws as retailer ratcheted up the competition.
Indeed, the Japanese had positioned themselves as the ones to beat in the car market and they used the only word that could possibly attract local attention: Cheap. It spilled over from supermarket and food advertising into the main stream. A June 14, 1995 advertisement for the new 306 model announced:
“Priced lower than the Japanese for the first time in the history of Peugeot”. It was however still the US and Japanese cars that people wanted.
Five years on and the computer revolution was in full swing. Arab News was onto the task with its now familiar weekly computer section CompuNet and the advertisers followed. By today’s standards, the level of advertising was modest and the laptop was yet to arrive. The bulk of computer advertising was still for commercial applications and the software companies generally targeted the business market.
The range of advertisements had taken on an identifiable character. There were fewer construction and commercial equipment advertisers — the companies that were to survive had established local distributors and were running smoothly. The main fare was a menu of cars, supermarkets, luxury goods and travel. Clearly the disposable income of an increasingly large portion of the Saudi community was an attractive morsel for advertisers. Exotic destinations — Singapore, Malaysia and Bangkok — were touted, many using the hook of the millennium celebrations as bait.
Electronic goods, which had been aggressively marketed a few years earlier, were part of the advertising mix, but strangely mobile phones, although available in the Kingdom and televisions were oddly almost absent from the scene. However June 15, 2000 saw a relatively small advertisement for the launch of EURO-box the first digital satellite receiver in the Middle East. It presaged the change in television viewing demands in the general public and the flood of television choice — both programming and technology — that was to follow.
The Internet, struggling on poor copper-wire infrastructure, was developing as a fact of daily life. As contractors in two decades previously had advertised their technical wares, so geek-speak began to appear in the Arab News advertisements. Impenetrable sentences such as; “The 3Com autosensing XJACK connector for simple 2-in-1 connections through LAN or modem” began to emerge, and just as the earthmoving machinery went to contractors building the Kingdom’s physical infrastructure, so this new IT machinery went into the building of the Internet architecture.
The digital revolution was building apace. By December, Showtime was offering 600 movies a month for fewer than five riyals a day, the assumption behind the advertisement being that the equipment was either in place or soon to be available to capitalize on the investment in providing the service.
Five years on, and the vogue marketing word was “solutions.” No one had a phone; they had a “personal communications solution”. A bottle was a “personal mobile beverage consumption solution” — the world was in danger of dissolving.
A major change in the appearance of the Arab News was the introduction of full colour printing. Car advertisers loved it and it produces a flurry of sometimes quite striking images. Durango’s “fortress on wheels” advertisement using a pastel and misty castle set in blue hills was an indicator that car photography had, in some cases, gone beyond simple record into evocative mnemonic images that created mood and desire by evoking atavistic feelings of power and security.
At the other end of the taste spectrum, Geant’s July 13 full-page spread was a riot of primary-colour product shots. The spread ranged from lurid red beef mince to baby shoes via a mysterious substance called “Chakki Fresh Atta” and a mobile phone. It certainly caught the attention through color clash if nothing else.
Advertisers took up the new opportunity for color with a vengeance. The Dec. 5 Top 100 supplement saw full colour on all its 32 pages. That supplement probably did more to change the face of advertising within Arab News than any other single edition of the paper. The advertisements were large, many were innovative and the riot of color over so many pages could not fail to impress.
It was perhaps our “advertising solution” to set the standard for a new generation of advertisers.
