Know-How Exchange : Strategy

To be honest, and this is only a hunch, the US data means nothing if used in your context.

Unless of course, you're selling to US ex-pats that is ;-)

When you speak of "middle east" that covers rather a large sphere of cultures. From Wahhabist Saudi Arabia to more moderate countries like Israel and confusing ones like Iran. Which is about all I know about the middle east apart from the layout of Bahrain airport ...

But we do have a key motive here - if my thinking's right, alcohol raises tensions in many parts of the middle east. Whilst Saudi Arabia is strictly anti-alcohol, the locals have regular drinking binges according to people I've met on my travels; but they were well assimilated in the local society and these parties were necessarily covert.

So when it comes to a funnel (or sales process) you need to find those people who have positive attitude to alcohol. This is the kind of thing you can determine more easily using a small scale PPC campaign*. Just ask the question - work out why someone wants to drink alcohol, where they do it and when. Work out why they might be looking for this online and you've got your campaign basics in a nutshell. Target one country for a week keeping the bids low and you'll get some real data. Not just airy pontification like this waffle, actual people putting their hands up and saying "I'm interested, thankyou". From your results you can work out where they are, and a good deal more.

You're in Istanbul, you've got a better feel for the local attitudes. Turkish attitudes to alcohol are also relatively relaxed after all. My hunch is that they'll be sharply divided across the country, with tolerance focussed on the cities. Again, only a hunch, based this time on what I was told about Saudi.

Does this help any?

*Local advertising conditions may apply!

You probably need to build this up country-by-country, given the wide variations in cultural acceptance of spirits. And when you get the estimates by country, you'll need to weight them appropriately if you want an "average" for the Middle East.

Applying data from the United States to ... somewhere in the Middle East ... (where?) probably serves no function: different buyers and consumers, different cultures and traditions, and in many areas in the Middle East it is illegal to consume, sell, or possess alcohol.

thanks for your answers, guys! in this case Jay's links to data were most helpful. Gemma, Gary and Michael are right that huge differences exist between and within countries. My research confirms such differences across emerging countries, but also finds some common points on marketing communication effectiveness of these countries versus mature Western markets. It's an important part of my upcoming book 'It's not the size of the data, it's how you use it" , and i am looking forward in further exchanging ideas with you

Koen, is your book specifically about alcohol use in the Middle East? It's a touchy subject that's prone to high passion - both positive and negative. The problem I see is that these are also closely held foundations of those societies, and in order to get a good idea of how it's viewed locally you'd need a lot more than just "data". A bit like the attitude in urban Saudi Arabia where that western gentleman was invited to parties - my guess is that these are "modern" Saudis who were inviting him. Go to the countryside (? does Saudi have any?) - or wherever poorer people live, you'll find attitudes much harder. The problem here is that taking out a clipboard and asking people will give you results that reflect none of these carefully guarded attitudes. There will be questions you could ask that will draw a line between the two - but these always need the kind of insight into a society that most modern researchers don't have.

I'll give you an example. As a foreigner who speaks Dutch, everyone tells me I have an English accent. Now there's one question I can ask them that'll divide my good clients from my bad ones. The reasoning is extremely subtle - and also extremely powerful. It draws an invisible line between them, as it were. I simply ask them "how good is my Dutch?" - the ones who say it's excellent but with a slight accent are good clients. The ones who demur, look puzzled, can't think of what they might say are not good clients.

In any situation there will be a question of this kind that will cleanly divide them. As mentioned, with alcohol in the Middle East, this is much, much harder because of its public and covert use. There will be a question, it'll just be that much harder to work out what it is. Plus, it won't have much to do with alcohol either; that way you'll get a clear indication. Are you following this reasoning? After all, this is a long way from the way academia would approach this.

What experience do you have with direct marketing? Used with the internet it can allow you to side-step the need to crunch data, by forming it to your needs from the very beginning. My point is that if I've got an adwords campaign with four ads -

***I expect one of them to have as many clicks as the rest put together***.

Again this follows the rationale outlined above, but here it's more of a case of being the discovery phase of it. Plus of course, it's not controversial ...

I'm good at that sort of thing - getting a little touchy (others would say outrageously rude) - but online the effects are truly magical. However it's not the kind of thing corporations like doing because it affects their "brand image" or whatever they call these things. Again, there's a big dollop of psychology behind branding that few have grasped. Direct marketers are usually the kind who do.

The other side of my argument is that I don't bother with trends. A direct marketer needs to make money, and bucking the trend in some way is usually the way to go on this. More to the point, trends and extrapolations are but a beginning. Again, Adwords - in any market, I go for the most expensive keywords (at least the ones that have a decent amount of traffic). If you're interested in this aspect, let me know. In many respects, direct marketing goes against the grain of established expectations.

Thanks! No, my book is not on alcohol in the middle east, it does have a chapter on emerging versus mature markets. The book is about setting up and leveraging the measurement and analytic system to improve marketing decisions. It covers the ROI case of measuring ROI, selecting KPIs that lead performance and connecting them in a system to provide what-if analyses of marketing actions

thanks Carrie! closing this question now

koen