It's all about the work, the work, the work

Gifted copywriter with a decade of industry experience and a clutch of gleaming Cannes Lions in the den. No, not me. I’m a promising young writer with two years of sweatin’ it out in Oman’s neo-kitschy advertising and online mediascape. The official job title is ‘Content Strategist’. I work on leading telecom, industry, FMCG and auto brands in Oman. Will fit in as a valuable sidekick in any team willing to not only raise the bar, but also throw it away, should the need arise. And yes, I come with a few awards as baggage.

Here’s the better sheep from my flock. And the best are yet to come. On with my work.

INTERACTIVE / NEW MEDIA:
www.nawras.om
Brand: Nawras, a leading mobile communications service provider in Oman
Clientspeak: Hey partner, lets create a website that reflects Nawras as ‘The Sultanate’s customer-friendly communications provider’.
Lowdown: From creating a presentation that clinched the pitch from some ‘big’ names to developing an effective web strategy; donning the hat of a project manager and canoodling the team to work against looming deadlines; writing over 500 pages of gobbledygook; visiting net cafes to carry out usability studies; and overseeing daily web updates and content management – Nawras is my baby on the Web. Winner of 2 Gold awards at Oman Web Awards 2006: ‘Best of Best’ Website in Oman. Best ICT website in Oman.

www.imtac.om
Brand: IMTAC, a leading business technology solutions provider in the Middle East
Clientspeak: We need our corporate website up and running in time for the Arab Health Expo 2007. But hey, that’s only 1 week from today!
Lowdown: My claim to fame here is project management – ensuring that this leviathan website was designed and developed in just a week’s time. Met the deadline for both Arab Health Expo and Oman Web Awards. And walked away with a Silver award at Oman Web Awards 2006: Second Best ICT website in Oman.

www.yarisoman.om
Brand: Toyota Yaris
Clientspeak: I’m launching this new car for youth and I need to create a splash on the Web. What next?
Lowdown: Created an exhaustive strategy presentation (my first ever) that helped produce and sell the work to the client. And there’s been no looking back since. Been making online strategy presentations for clients across various domains in the Middle East which have helped us win new business. Guess, that’s why they promoted me to a Content Strategist.
Oh yes, yarisoman.com was the Gold winner at Oman Web Awards 2006 as Best Automotive website in Oman.

ADVERTISING:
KNOCK OUT THE COMPETITION - 2006
Brand: OMAN ECONOMIC REVIEW (OER), a leading business magazine in Oman
The Work: A direct mailer for OER CORPORATE CHALLENGE 2007, a 'Corporate-Olympics’ event with the ultimate aim of identifying Oman’s No.1 corporate team.
Lowdown: Whether in boxing or any corporate duel, victory is when you knock out competition. A branded boxing glove & booklet were sent to over 500 top movers & shakers in Corporate Oman who were challenged to don the glove and participate in the event. With a response rate of 16.9%, the DM created a buzz and resulted in 22 teams signing up.

“GOT MORE?” - 2006
Brand: OMAN ECONOMIC REVIEW (OER), a leading business magazine in Oman
The Work: A press campaign to create hype about OER CORPORATE CHALLENGE 2007, a corporate-Olympics’ event with the ultimate aim of identifying Oman’s No.1 corporate team. Lowdown: It takes a lot of grit, wits, guts and more to create true champions. The campaign announced to the corporate world that only corporate teams with the above attributes and the will to prove them were welcome at the Challenge.










Click here if you want to check out the other plump sheep in my flock such as…
Micro site for OER Corporate Challenge 2007
Micro site for Oman Mobile – Khareef Festival 2005
Micro site for Oman Mobile Business Communications Solutions
Corporate website for Khimji Ramdas, a leading business house in Oman
Corporate website for Al Safwah Dairy, Oman

Click here if you want to see more of my advertising work.

UMSi creams Oman Web Awards 2006 & takes off to the moon!

UMS Interactive, Muscat (the web solutions company I work for) made a clean sweep at the Oman Web Awards 2006 yesterday. By bagging a whopping 10 awards (5 Gold, 3 Silver and 2 Bronze awards), UMSi totally dominated the proceedings in a glittering award function held at Crowne Plaza Hotel that had the who’s who of Corporate Oman in attendance.

The icing on the cake was Nawras (http://www.nawras.om/) winning the much coveted top honour – the ‘Best website in Oman’ as well as ‘Best ICT website’. Nawras’ victory is particularly thrilling for me as I work on its the content management, web strategy and client servicing fronts. IMTAC’s win is also gratifying – as a Project Lead, I worked with a team that designed and developed this mammoth website in just five days!!!

Some of the other websites I have worked on that won awards include:

Best Website in Oman 2006:
Nawras

Gold:
Nawras – ICT
Toyota Yaris – Automotive
National Hospitality Institute – Hospitality
A’Safwah Dairy – Industry

Silver:
Oman Cables Industry – Industry
IMTAC – ICT

Bronze:
Khimji Ramdas – Corporate

Oman Web Awards is the most prestigious honour in the Sultanate's webscape. Under the auspices of Oman’s chief IT body - Information Technology Authority, OWA is a prestigious industry platform that recognises creativity, innovation and excellence in online media.

The nine award-winning websites will now be participating in a bigger competition – Pan Arab Web Awards 2007. Keeping our fingers crossed for that!

The fact that our team has won these awards - all our entries except one made the cut - comes as a great motivation to the team at UMSi. May be I really need to get a T-shirt with ‘Award-winning coffeemaker’ emblazoned on the front and ‘Award-winning copywriter’ on the behind!!!

Oman still has quite a way to go when it comes to having a modern digital society and e-culture. I also strongly feel that there’s a lot of room for improvement in our interactive work offering. But what’s important is that we are on the road to getting there.

We will continue developing user-friendly, creative and dynamic-technology driven sites that are in best-in-class for our clients. The new goal is getting ready for the future – Web 2.0 and its inherent opportunities and challenges.

Apocalypto - Now in Muscat

I watched Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto yesterday at Ruwi Cinema. And my verdict is – Simply Superb! Apocalypto opens with an interesting quote by W.H. Durant on the collapse of the Roman Empire - “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.” Apocalypto explores the Mayan civilization in the Yucatan Peninsula on its way to decline. The main protagonist of the story is Jaguar Paw, a the son of a Mayan chief who along with his villagers, are enslaved by another Mayan tribe to be offered as human sacrifices to the Sun God. The movie highlights Jaguar Paw’s escape from the clutches of those who have held him captive and his return to his family in his native village in the jungle.

The entire movie is in an amazing language called Yucatec Maya that has such as beautiful, mellifluous feel to it. I came back and did some reading and learnt that the movie was quite controversial – most historians allege that Gibson has not portrayed Mayans accurately and the film is riddled with historical inaccuracies. In fact, a lot of critics have chastised Gibson for his ‘racist portrayal of Mayans’. Click here to read Liza Grandia’s (an anthropologist and postdoctoral fellow at Yale) article - The Sober Racism of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto.

Gibson says that he made the movie because he finds great similarities in the way the Mayan civilization disintegrated and the world today, especially the West, which is steadfastly moving on a path of destruction. There’s no mistaking the amount of painstaking work that’s been put in this movie – it’s a compelling story, creating that magical effect on you – Gibson’s passion as a filmmaker is unquestionable. Even his message of using civilizations on decline to drive in the point that humans create the very conditions that cause their destruction would have been more powerful if he had picked the right civilization.

Apocalypto is heart gripping, packed with moments of suspense, thrill and action. The photography is just amazing – the pristine view of the Mesoamerican jungles almost leaves you glued to the seat. You are always rooting for the protagonist of the movie, Jaguar Paw, who has decided to ‘seek a new beginning’. It’s great that movies like this get screened in Muscat, despite the blood, gore and ample view of flesh. Apocalypto is never to be missed!

The Yahoo! Scare, Baba Kalyani, Aanachantham & the weekend

Uhmm… It’s another weekend in Muscat and it’s almost over! I went and watched Pokkiri again this afternoon – my dissertation on it is turning out pretty well. :) Have like a ton of clothes to wash, gotta sort that out. Plus there is work I need to crack for tomorrow – a content assignment for a client that deals with pipes and valves for the oil & gas industry. I spent the better part of yesterday evening shopping for a washing machine. Saw some stuff at Bausher LuLu, but couldn’t decide on what I wanted. Have to make a few rounds before I go in for the kill. I went for ‘Baba Kalyani’ on Wednesday at Star. Wasn’t worth a second view, but had some time to kill! That’s the story from here this evening. Let me also post this entry which I had made on Tuesday, 6 Feb, but never ended up posting.

Tuesday, 6 Feb 2006:
Yahoo! really gave me the heebie-jeebies yesterday. I couldn’t access my yahoomail yesterday owing to some ‘technical failure’ from their end. This is what the ‘yahooligans’ had to say when I tried to log-in. I had to retrieve an important email id from my yahoomail and I had to anxiously wait for a few hours till the problem was sorted out. I did send an ‘error notification’ form to yahoomail customer care and sure they did respond back – only thing was that I could see the response only after the mail started working yest. Now, that’s funny right? And this is what they had to say: Thank you for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care. We received your question and the wheels of progress are in motion. A support rep will get back to you as soon as possible. In the meantime, please visit our online help center (http://help.yahoo.com/), if you have not already done so. You'll find a lot of good information there. Wheels of progress, huh? I’ve been using yahoomail for over a decade now; I prefer it more than hotmail, and I use my mail to store important stuff – in my line of work, I constantly use yahoomail to be in touch with my clients, I prefer it better than my office outlook address. But since yest, which I hate to admit is the first time it has ever happened to me – I’m kinda wondering – Is it a wise idea to depend a lot on external mail providers to store your vital data? I mean, anything can happen to stuff on the web - technical failures, what not… I don’t know… I guess I need to keep other backups as well. Hmm!
I joined a new group on yahoo yest – railkerala. It’s actually fronted by a bunch of rail enthusiasts who belong to the Kerala chapter of IRFCA. It’s nice to be in the company of some ace rail nuts. I can’t wait to catch up with them – definitely the next time when I’m in India.
If you are from Kerala and wanna join a group of railnuts passionate about trains in Kerala, simply click on - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/railkerala/
I went for Jayaram’s Anachantham at Star Cinema yest. In a theatre that has got room for over 900 people, there were around 10 people. I liked the movie – pretty watchable. Don’t miss it – especially if you have a thing for elephants and want to catch glimpses of rural Kerala. Mohanlal’s Baba Kalyani is back again – might go this weekend – for the second time.

Raves & Rants from Dubai

I got to Dubai yesterday evening. Left Muscat at 4.30pm on an ONTC coach. Listened to music throughout the journey. Dozed off once in while. Got to the borders - Wajajah at Oman and Hatta at UAE. Thankfully there was hardly a crowd, and breezed through the visa application formalities in a jiffy. The traffic scene in Dubai was kinda OK, so got to Deira around 10.30pm. Got a cab, whizzed past Dubai, entered Sharjah and reached a dead end in Ajman. Spent close to 2 hours in a traffic gridlock in Ajman, where UAE nationals where celebrating their victory over Oman in the recent Gulf Football Cup Final. It was a crazy scene, with hundred of cars decked in the UAE national flag colours, confetti, flags, spray paint and what not clogging the roads, honking and generally kickin up a storm. Wondered what would be the scene if UAE actually won the FIFA cup. Btw, today the UAE national football team is gonna b given a grand reception by the ruler of Dubai, which includes a ceremonial ride around Dubai Roads before leading them the Global Village at Dubai Shopping Festival. Also, it happens to be the last day of DSF. Got to Ajman where I am staying, a little past midnight. Spent time with my folks and then slept like a log. Woke up in the morning and checked my blog and discovered that Etisalat, the ISP here, had blocked my blog's Flickr widget, that enables you to see my Flickr album in this blog as a slideshow. Etisalat says: "We apologize the site you are attempting to visit has been blocked due to its content being inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political and moral values of the United Arab Emirates." What's my Flickr photo album with India travel snaps got to do with the religious, cultural, political & moral values of the UAE?????!!!!
Oh yes, if you guys are headed to the Marina Mall at Abu Dhabi today, you can catch a glimpse of the Ferrari F1 drivers - Raikkonen and Massa. Mubadala, a UAE based investment firm, has picked up a piece of Ferrari F1 and they have brought in these guys to the UAE. Neat! When is Mubadala gonna pick up a stake in the Indian cricket team?
Before I log off, let me tell you an interesting thing that happened yest... there is this mag called Thursday that comes with the newspaper Times of Oman. The current issue of Thursday has got a student - a young chappie on its cover... well what's wrong with that you may ask - the current issue is after all on exams and students - and there's a serious looking young bloke clutching his pen and deadpanning into the camera surrounded by a heap of tomes... now for the surprise bit - he looks just like me, except for the nose!!!
Found that coincidence pretty intriguing - especially with people asking me - r u the guy on Thursday... lol...
have you ever run into someone who resembles you in looks? Okie dokie, that's my news from over here, what's yours?