The Cultural Relationship between the United Arab Emirates and France - Case Study Example

Report on Marketing Business The cultural relationship between the United Arab Emirates and France was given a major boost recently following the launch of the Le Louvre Abu Dhabi project. In addition to the Le Louvre, there have been numerous education projects developed by both governments that are proof of the continued political construction of strong cultural relationships. The following report is an analysis of the strategic recommendations that need to be considered when launching a new common media. These recommendations regard the following elements: the editorial and common cultural identity and values; the type of media used; the business targets used; the programs and services and the repartition and sharing of work and responsibilities between both countries. Other elements include the strategy of partnership with other types of media and platforms, proposals concerning matters of innovation and integration & participation of users and the business model of the media. Additional recommendations will be made with regard to ways to avoid the risk to be “one more-media in the digital world, with no audience” in addition to how to create the buzz and be an editorial reference. Introduction The new common media to be launched is a culinary TV program that will be hosted by a renowned master chef. The major roles of the chef will include travelling around the UAE and showing the best classical French recipe along with new innovative recipes. The innovative recipes, which are multicultural dishes, will be the focus of the TV program, because they will combine various types of eastern and western cuisine created inspired by the chef’s UAE exploration. The chef will visit and learn about traditional fruits & vegetables from whence he will choose exotic ingredients and prepare a new recipe. Other places that he will go to include fish markets, a desert safari including a traditional tent and a sumptuous barbecue. From his exploration of various hotels and restaurants around the country, the chef will come up with ideas that will form the content of the show. Additional culinary choices can also be developed from camel meat, camel milk and dates. From this TV show, the French people will discover the authenticity of the UAE along with its unique diversity. Using the culinary experiences that will be described, the Chef will include the French culture, history and traditions at the same time as he reveals a different look and feel of the UAE. Editorial and Cultural Common Identity and Values This project will take advantage of various common cultural identity and values between the United Arab Emirates and France. The Sorbonne and the plan to develop a mini Lyon city in Dubai that will be complete with museums, public squares and restaurants are major symbols of the increasingly developing cultural identity between the two nations (Landais, 2008). However, the ultimate cultural identity between France and the UAE is symbolized by the Louvre. Since its founding in 1793, the Louvre museum, with iconic paintings such as the Mona Lisa, has developed to become a favorite tourist destination from all corners of the world. The museum plans to open a branch in Abu Dhabi following developments between the Tourism Authority of Abu Dhabi and the French Ministry of Culture (Darraj & Puller, 2008). This project will significantly develop education prospects in the UAE considering that it will include a wing housing Islamic art and another one as an art restoration centre. The successful planning and announcement of the Louvre in the UAE demonstrates the significant role played by cultural relations between the two nations. The culinary TV program will seek to exploit this opportunity and provide an educational as well as an entertainment TV program to the audiences of the UAE and France. Abu Dhabi has spent colossal amounts of money to develop the Louvre along its shores. The museum name and brand have cost an estimated $525 million, and the French government received money for a number of projects, for example the wing housing the Islamic art together with the art restoration center. The new Louvre demonstrates a common cultural identity and shared values between the two nations considering that the new museum ill bear a modern design developed by French architect Jean Nouvel. The fact that the UAE government allowed a French architect to design the white, flat museum building with a domed roof demonstrates shared cultural values between the two nations. The planned common media project will seek to engage in a similar concept, as a renowned master chef will travel around the UAE with the objective of showing the best classical French recipe along with new innovative recipes. The Type of media The choice of the media type to make use of in this project was a fundamental consideration. Numerous types of media were considered, from television, newspapers, magazines, radio, and internet media. Television media was adopted for this project because of a number of considerations. Firstly, and most importantly, is that, analysts have established television media to be the most all-encompassing media form available. Characters used in commercials are part of people’s lives in numerous cultures and slogans from TV advertisements are well known in everyday conversations (Katz, 2010). Television presets the opportunity to combine sight, sound, motion and color all at once, making it the number one choice for the project. A culinary experience will best work with this type of media because it will help the chef recreate scenes and show people and various places in the UAE in situations that can be easily identified by both audiences of the two regions. This project has exploited the television media because the present-day electronic professionals have advanced to allow television media show everything imaginable. Of all media available, television is the best media that can effectively present products and services that portray the everyday lives of people in both the East and the West. Business Targets The promotion of cultural matters of the UAE and the French can be conducted using different methods utilized to communicate messages to the two target audiences. Promotion uses both the B2B and B2C market to achieve success in marketing a product or service. In the B2C market target, the promotion of products or services is conducted using the television, newspapers or radio media for the objective of reaching a high number of potential buyers. More consumers are reached because of the emotional value associated with the product or service, as opposed to the B2C media, which is directed at a smaller market whereby television spots are almost inexistent. In B2B target, marketing is usually conducted using magazines and journals. It is because of this reason that this project will utilize the B2C target market. However, because of the complexity of this project, both the B2C and the B2B markets will be utilized. The B2B target marketing has major benefits that this project cannot afford to ignore. For example, in B2B targeting, it is much easier compared to the B2C targeting when listening to conversations about the TV show. This is because the target audience is smaller, there are few conversations to monitor and there is less competition for the best search rankings. In addition, there is less anonymity in B2B target marketing, which means that the conversations obtained are more meaningful, are, more relevant and of a better quality. This will make it easier to track conversations about the TV show. According to Brian Frank, the LinkedIn director of global enterprise operations, the professional identity and public identity of an entity is usually the same thing, which makes it easier for someone to know who they are talking to and who their business or service is reaching out to. The types of Programs and Services This project will make use of an interactive TV program that will also have interactive tv services to achieve the objectives set. A number of interactive TV services will be used to make this project a success. These include program-related services and dedicated services. Program related services include TV services that are directly related to one or many video programming streams. Using these services, the users can obtain data related to the programming as well as the advertising content to play and bet options or interact with other viewers of the same program. Dedicated services include the standalone services that are not related to any particular programming stream. They use a model that is closer to the web, although there are differences in hyperlinks, the mode of persuasion and media usage. This form of interactive service includes information services, entertainment and transaction services (Pagani, 2005). Repartition and Sharing Work and Responsibilities The sharing of work and responsibilities between the two nations will be achieved by developing a multicultural culinary experience; it is worth noting that the TV show will not be just another culinary TV show in the UAE. Instead, both the audiences of the UAE and France will be offered a new culinary concept based on a multicultural culinary experience in ONE show. The chef will talk about France cuisine, culture, history and traditions while revealing a different look and feel of the UAE. This TV show will ensure that work and responsibilities are shared between the two countries by airing it both on Abu Dhabi TV and on France Television. The TV show will also have a have a website, developed with both French and Arabian languages to accommodate the potential audiences from the two regions. In addition, a forum will be developed and even come up with a magazine later on to maximize the audience generated. The culinary TV program will make use of the model used by the new Louvre in sharing responsibilities between the UAE and the French governments. One of the objectives of the new Louvre was to open dialogue between the Eastern and Western regions with regard to art. This burden was not shouldered by the Louvre alone, considering that there were branches of a maritime museum, the Guggenheim Museum and the expected Sheikh Zayed Museum. All the four buildings, in addition to a performing arts center, comprise the new cultural district on Abu Dhabi. Strategy of partnership with other Medias, Websites and Platforms To maximize the impact of the media, the culinary TV show will collaborate with other types of media using a number of strategies. The strategy the TV Show will achieve this is by using the social media. The social media is a very popular tool in the present day information age that can be applied to many business areas including product and service development, sales and customer support. One of the practices that will be adopted to increase the impact of the media using this strategy is setting up a social media dashboard, which can be achieved using services such as iGoogle, My Yahoo! and Pageflakes. Google Reader is a free online service that can facilitate the success of this project because it will enable the tracking of news about the television show, in addition to blog and search results through RSS (real simple syndication) feeds, which are then shared, monitored and indefinitely stored online using the service. When the dashboard is displayed, one can obtain the latest search results. Listening to conversations about the TV program is critical when considering ways to increase the impact of the media. This is why the social media strategy will seek to partner with other media types by using Google Reader. Using the Google reader, the project’s analysts will not have to search for relevant information. Instead, they will just save the complex queries such as the thoughts or comments of people in France and the UAE with regard to the French cuisine and other multicultural dishes developed by the chef in his exploits. The project will particularly use Google reader because there is no limit to the number of RSS feeds one can monitor in Google reader (Barschel, 2007). Proposals in Matters of Innovation, Integration & Participation of Users The following is an analysis of various strategies that will be used to integrate user-generated content (UGC) for the TV show. According to a recent survey conducted to quantify the adoption of UGC by conventional news agencies, there has been a dramatic increase in opportunities for reader contributions. In-depth interviews with senior news executives revealed that this expansion has been on the rise in spite of residual doubts with regard to the residual and commercial value of material obtained from the public (WUNSCH-VINCENT, SACHA, & GRAHAM, 2007). Websites such as Wikipedia, MySpace and YouTube will provide useful platforms with which the purported UGC can be found, as citizens from the UAE and France can publish their comments, photos and videos online. This new media culture will provide avenues with which the public can become active participants rather than passive participants. To achieve the best possible success using UGC, the following proposals have been made with regard to generic formats that can be adopted to encourage public contributions (Hermida & Thurman, 2009): Polls –These are topical questions where users are requested to make a response. Polls are a very inexpensive and risk free administering and they provide instant feedback to readers. However, they offer very limited interaction because they are restricted only to ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers. Message-boards- They are platforms that allow readers to engage in online conversations that are threaded and initiated by readers. The major benefit of message-boards is that the forums initiated remain open for a long time, which can be weeks or months. Comments on stories- The format for this platform allows readers to submit their views on a story. This will be exploited by generating stories about the escapades of the chef, different stories such as on fish market recipes, his desert safaris, hotels and restaurants around the UAE and juicy stories about camel meat, camel milk and dates. The Foundations of the Business Model of the New Media  The business model for this media will be based on a free media with advertising option whereby the TV show will be both aired and streamed online using free online services such as Hulu, Microsoft Corp, Apple Inc. and Netflix Inc. to facilitate its popularity. How to avoid the Risk to be “One More-media in the Digital World, with no Audience” This risk can be avoided by ensuring that a holistic picture is developed of the competitive environment and the target market. This can be achieved by starting with searching for mentions of the brand and learning more by opening the project’s criteria. This search will be conducted using the following search phrases: competitors, channel partners, influential television anchors, influential journalists and bloggers in both the UAE ad in France, and topic of relevance to our market. In addition, there are a number of sources with which to track the TV show’s popularity and avoid the risk of becoming another extra media in the digital world with no audience. These include blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other vertical social networks, Wikipedia, regulatory filings, video and audio websites, social bookmarking sites and online discussion forums. How to Create the Buzz and be an Editorial Reference   The television industry is increasingly getting crowded as general entertainment channels of local, regional, national and global status continue to mushroom. It takes a hundred flicks of the fingers on the remote button while surfing the news and entertainment channels from one television channel end to the other end. As a result, it is very difficult for any television program to generate the required interest of the viewers and keep the interest alive for a long time. The editorial sector is another very fragile area that requires special strategies to maintain the editorial reference needed to become competitive in the market (Koch & Heady, 2007). Therefore, to create the buzz and ensure that the TV show becomes an editorial reference, the following communication channels will be used (Gillan, 2010): Chat rooms Chat rooms offer numerous opportunities for the TV show to gain visibility. In the present day information age, more and more people are embracing the Internet to communicate on long distance channels. This is particularly effective for the TV show considering that people in the UAE and in France can gather in chat rooms and discuss about the multicultural recipes described in the TV show. Blogs Before the TV show is aired, blogs are the best places to generate buzz about the show. Avid consumers of the TV show, particularly chefs and people with keen interest in the culinary experiences of the French and the UAE will be encouraged to start a brand blog that will be full of information, ideas and opinions about the brand. As an alternative, information will be provided to existing blogs that match the image of the television show. Word of mouth The word of mouth technique can be achieved by using passionate consumers who cannot say enough abut the television show. Fanatics will be cultivated using various media, for example advertisements and other promotional campaign methods. References Barschel, H. (2007). B2B Versus B2C Marketing - Major Differences Along the Supply Chain of Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG). Munchen: GRIN Verlag,. Darraj, S. M., & Puller, M. (2008). United Arab Emirates. New York: Infobase Publishing,. Gillan, J. (2010). Television and New Media: Must-Click TV. New York: Taylor & Francis. Hermida, A., & Thurman, N. (2009). A CLASH OF CULTURES: The integration of user- generated content within professional journalistic frameworks at British newspaper websites. Retrieved May 24, 2011 from Katz, H. (2010). The Media Handbook: A Complete Guide to Advertising Media Selection, Planning, Research, and Buying . London: Taylor & Francis. Koch, E., & Heady, C. (2007). Buzz: how to create it and win with it. New York: AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn,. Landais, E. (2008). UAE and France share strong bilateral relations. Retrieved May 24, 2011 from http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/government/uae-and-france-share-strong- bilateral-relations-1.106157. Pagani, M. (2005). Encyclopedia of Multimedia Technology and Networking Volume 1. New York: Idea Group Inc (IGI). Wunsch-Vincent, Sacha, & Graham V. (2007). Participative Web: User-created Content. OECD’s Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry, Retrieved May 24, 2011 from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/57/14/38393115.pdf. Read More