Visual Communication in KSA or what’s left of it
Posted: August 19th, 2008 | Author: Moey | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Ads+Campaigns, Advertising, Funny, Personal, Portfolio | 5 Comments »It is hard when you work on a brand, that is related to women and will be expanded to some countries with restrictions, such as Saudi Arabia.
According to Hani Alireza, “There are certain things about Saudi Arabia that really make it seem out of this world.” I do not personally see it out of world, I see it weird and do not have a strong background.
Advertising wise, women are not allowed to drive or be illustrated driving cars (so this is one, cars advertisements die here). Shops close five times a day for prayer time (at least 15-20 minutes everytime so you can’t promote open all-time), you can’t advertise smoking, movies, alcohol or have nice restaurant visuals, unless you do them indoor and no faces, of course restaurants have two different sections (no, not smoking or non-smoking…): one for families and a section for single men.
Hani also says: In outdoor adverting showing the faces of people within ads is problematic because of its link to aniconism and the fear of idolatry (meaning that it is prohibited to graphically represent figures of people or animals). So in order to deal with this notion the solution most commonly used is to pixelate the eyes or cover them entirely. In previous years another solution used to tackle aniconism in school books was to draw a line across the necks in illustrations of humans and animals.
So, according to this… how do you actually advertise a make-up store? or clothing? or even charity… I wonder!
Here’s something I did to Madonna’s CD Cover (god forgive me!)…
I think I need to put some neqab or hijab on her head and maybe blur her eyes and hide a bit of her neck, thinking of it again… the clothes are too tight maybe she’d look better in an abaya!
They’re a bit too extreme for me! And what you did to the album cover… God forgive you fe3lan, though there’s a catwoman’ish charm about it!
You know what might look good? The intel logo with the words “Madonna’s latest album inside”
Its even worse! Prayer time closing takes about an hour for each prayer, not 15-20 minutes at all!!
And on the Madonna CD cover, you need to cover up to her neck, and your black covering is actually neat, its not a scribble done with a black marker :S
U know what, just put that “4 Minutes” sticker over her face!
Most of the time they end up with some graphics, the logo, and some text on the billboard. Tadaa!
I’ve been in Riyadh 2 weeks ago, for the first time in my life.. and i stayed for 6 days.. what i saw there is really different than what everyone stereotyping Saudi Arabia (extremest, bla bla..)
They have their own problems.. and they know them very well.
I’ve met there many Jordanians, Saudis, Egyptians and a lot of foreigners.. they’re all happy for staying there. they earn good salaries and they have a very good restaurants even
I can tell any resident who doesn’t like the country and always complains about the lack of Alcohol ads: You can leave and go back home!
but the funny thing is, why i should care about their local rules (that they might be happy with them) and i haven’t spent any moment of my life on their ground!!
for god sake!!
Hussein, I understand what you’re saying. But when you work on a regional ad campaign and you have to do a specific one for saudi it matters. Alcohol is not the problem here. the limitations applied on visuals and copy are the main points.
Who said they’re happy with the rules?
And to think I used to live there! Yes they drew lines on the necks of everything!