Outdoor marketing? No you can’t.

20 Dec, 2009  Annoyances, Gov, Random

I just wanted to talk about something which doesn’t make sense to me. Qatar’s making some great strides towards getting rid of monopolies and improving the country through competition. One ‘exclusivity’ doesn’t make sense to me; QMedia. I’m not sure why they have the exclusivity / monopoly, I assume its because they were the first and only and there weren’t others that were keen on entering into such a business.

JCDecaux’s website says

Qatar:

q.media Decaux, a joint venture between JCDecaux and Qatar’s media market leader q.media, enjoys the exclusivity for the entire outdoor advertising network in Doha. q.media Decaux also manages exclusively the advertising on a fleet of 1,450 buses and 800 taxis in this capital city.

How can one company that has exclusivity to outdoor marketing possibly be good for businesses? I remember just being excited at the fact that I wanted to bring some new display technology to Qatar and just try and take advertising to the next level. I loved what I saw in Tokyo and Shanghai. When I went to the authorities, they simply said that I wasn’t allowed to start that business because QMedia had the only rights… I don’t get it… the country is encouraging it’s youth to try and start businesses but when they actually have an interest, we’re shown that we can’t do anything because of a monopoly.  It’s sad… I wonder when this next hurdle will be passed in the progression of Qatar.

  • http://eye-kare.blogspot.com Ahmad

    Isn’t Q-media owned by QF?

    من يملك القانون في بلادنا .. هو الذي يملك حق عزفه

  • http://www.iloveqatar.net Kei

    Really?! I didn’t think that QF had anything to do with Q-Media….

    what’s your view on this ?

  • Mike

    Actually it’s not just outdoor marketing they have a monopoly on. They are also the only media representative allowed to provide advertising on Qatar TV and Qatar radio.

    The thing that annoys me is that after digging up all the medians and erecting their awful billboards every 50m on the main roads, almost all of them are still empty. The only company advertising on 90% of QMedia’s billboards is QMedia. Makes me think they were all built then with no purpose in mind???

    And as a monopoly provider I guess they can dictate their own prices, which might explain why so few companies are willing to shell out for it. Perhaps if there was some competition in the market, then some companies might actually rent billboard space??

  • Kei

    Yeah they have exclusivity on QBS radio station but not all radio.

    If I have to guess, I’ll tell you why the were built. So that when they finally DO open up the market, everything’s taken.

    The reason why they’re empty is because of their prices and that’s what happens when there is no competition.

    We NEED competition, especially in marketing to fuel better quality of service and to encourage businesses.

    They charge something like 8Million QR a year for the huge billboard on c-ring road.

    where do they think that billboard is? Times Square?

  • Mike

    I’m a bit over the racist QTel billboards around the place –
    the Indian with his broom,
    the white guy with his shirt and plans,
    the woman who is happy because she owns clothes,
    the Qataris who just like football,
    and Adel dangling a fish.

    Bad photos, and wtf is it to do with the QTel? They must have dropped a bomb on that campaign, but I can’t see what value they will get back from it. QMedia will be happy about it all though.

  • Arun

    have to agree with mike, that q-tel ad of ” fuelling senses ” dint seem to make any sense at all. Ive seen the ad on tv as well. It looks nice. But unfortunately dint mean anything. Maybe the meaning was emphasised more in arabic. Lost in translation ???

    the monopoly thing has been goin on for ages. Smaller competitors seem to struggle in trying to beat their rivals cos the contracts are always ” pre-signed ”

    anyhuu..maybe it will all change in another 5 years or so when people get tired of seing the same companies again n again. Remember the excitement when vodafone came thru ?

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