Dubai Diary – Day 3 (Jan. 4th)

**Disclaimer** Please disregard al l editing errors I am trying to play catch up with the blog and trying to save time.

Finally, after a FULL nights rest I woke up Monday morning mostly refreshed and ready to start my day. And this day would prove to be very interesting and informative. We left the hotel around 9 am (and when I say around, things are VERY flexible here and I mean more like 9:20am) and arrived at Media City and were hosted by TECOM Investments. I should take time to explain the structure of the city. Basically, a lot of the city is built around the idea of “clusters”, which is a city land development strategy that gathers companies of similar industries together to facilitate business activities. The most famous examples of this in the United States are Silicon Valley, Sonoma Wine Country, or Philadelphia’s sports stadiums. So at Media City a number of global and local media companies are located here including CNN, Middle-East Broadcasting Corporation, and a number of different print and internet media companies. They support Advertising, Marketing Media, Media Support, Event Management, Event Support, and Consultancy. Being in the communications industry this was a really pertinent site visit for me. This was also a beautiful area of Dubai as you will see in the pictures.

Or next meeting would take us to THE single most impressive board room in all of Dubai and maybe in the world. We were visiting Brand Union Company, which is a marketing company who specialize in marketing specifically to the UAE. They are located in the Chrystler Towers, which look strikingly similar to the Chrystler Building in NYC, but I couldn’t get confirmation that they were the inspiration. I won’t bore you with the details of the site visit as it wouldn’t be of interest to anybody outside the marketing field, but the board room they hosted us in was BREATH-TAKING. How so? It was on the 42^nd floor and over looked the Palm Islands, the world island development (which is currently on hold), and the Burj Al Arab (the world’s only 7-star hotel). It was gorgeous and no further information is needed. I will post the pictures in a few minutes.

Our last meeting of the day took us to the headquarters of HSBC in the Middle East which was located in the Burj Dubai complex (not in the actual building however). This was a very insightful presentation on how a British company changes marketing strategies to focus their effort in the Middle East. Certain respects have to be paid to Islamic law when it comes to doing business here and this presentation showed us how they did that without alienating non-Muslims and gaining market share in the area. It was very interesting stuff.

As you might have heard on the news the Burj Dubai was schedule to open that night and since we were in the area decided to stick around. This also coincided with the 4^th anniversary of Sheik Mohammed taking power in Dubai, so it was a very special day. A number of people wore scarves with his picture on it, which was interesting to see. So we fought the crowds and made it outside right underneath the Burj to catch the event. It was spectacular show! It started with parachutists coming in, followed by a water fountain show that rivaled the Bellagio’s fountain show. At this time the crowd got to be too much for me to handle and me and some others in the program headed for the exit. On the way out we saw the fireworks which were coming OUT of the building! It was an amazing sight and I was upset that my camera took crappy pictures and I got virtually no pictures of it. Check out the short video attached.

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100105/MULTIMEDIA/100109868/1676

The official height of the building was announced as 828m (or 2716) and was built to accommodate more height if it, one day, is dwarfed by another building. The building was renamed the Burj Khalifa, in honor of the ruler of the UAE, who has recently help Dubai with its debt obligations. We got some insight as to this move from and Emirati national and he said it is seen as a “Bedwa” (sp?) which is in Arabic is a genuine Thank-You that was not expected. It was a night I will not soon forget. Pictures (during the day) will come after the jump.