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Archive for the ‘on marketing’ Category

Steve Jobs and the iPad © AP photo

Steve Jobs is a master in presenting with passion.  He comes across as a genuine geek who changed the way many people and businesses on this planet live, work and play.  Not a bad line to add to one’s CV.  However, Job’s presentation skills are not the topic of discussion.  It’s Job’s presentation structure for the iPad. If you’ve seen the Apple Keynote presentation for the iPad, you’ll notice that Steve Jobs and his sidekick presenters demonstrated the product’s features and benefits very well.  They told us what the iPad does, its technical capacity and about all the collaborators onboard.  Yet, I was left wondering, “If I already have a MacBook Pro and an iPhone, what is the iPad good for? And if I buy one today, what can it add to my lifestyle or business?” ...read more

I’m not an entrepreneur or a manager of some sort, but I read your article regularly and I thought of knowing your Two Cents on malls in Kuwait. Where is the excitement and fun?

Thanks for being a loyal reader and for keeping your question short. Managing the mall shopping experience is not a challenge for local shopping malls alone; it’s something every mall management team in the world goes through. The difference is that some are better at it than others. Let’s breakdown the name: The word ‘mall’ refers to two types, a shopping mall and a pedestrian mall. The former is a large building or series of connected buildings containing a variety of retail stores and typically also restaurants. The latter is a section of a street, typically in the downtown area of a city, from which vehicular traffic is excluded. ...read more

We’re about to start a new business. It would be great for the image of the brand to name it an international name. My concern is that the general market might not understand some of the names we came up with. Should we choose the English name and have the meaning translated for the Arabic version? ...read more

As published on Bazaar Magazine monthly article: Loaay’s Two Cents

Everyone is talking about Online Marketing and how cost effective it is. We tried Email Marketing by using the same newspaper ad to maintain consistency, but we had no strong results? Is Email Marketing a myth? ...read more

As published on Bazaar Magazine monthly article: Loaay’s Two Cents

Our competitors are aggressive. We try to keep up, but no matter what we do, we feel it’s not enough and our budgets are vanishing like the wind. How can we keep up with competition without breaking the bank? ...read more

As published on Bazaar Magazine monthly article: Loaay’s Two Cents

As a marketing manager, I’m supposed to write the marketing plan. The problem is that the owners don’t read long documents. They depend mainly on my verbal presentation. Should I just do an executive summary?

Many managers complain about their employees not reading. If you’re into books, it doesn’t mean that everyone else is or should be. People learn in different ways. How they learn is up to them. Having said that, your managers should know every single detail of the plan before approving it. Most people are visually based. Show more pictures and headlines and less text and charts in your presentation. At the end of the presentation, ask them to review the plan, give their feedback before they give their final approval in writing. ...read more

As published on Bazaar Magazine monthly article: Loaay’s Two Cents

Why are the current marketing campaigns mostly about Sales and Promotions and are hardly about Services and Quality?

With the current financial crisis many companies have a hard time managing their stock or pushing their services. And like how teenagers are drawn to junk food as their first choice for dinner most Marketers and Sales Managers are drawn to ‘SALES’ and ‘PROMOS’ as their first choice for their financial hunger. So, naturally, the media gets flooded with ‘50%’ this and ‘FREE GIFT’ that. Out of fear that any spending other than sales-related activities may be needless in such times, companies reduce and even eliminate Branding, Corporate Social Responsibility, Sponsorship, Event Marketing budgets and more. ...read more