Regional means Dubai

On the org chart of almost every international company in this region, the word regional is a Dubai address.

The regional director sits there. The regional agency sits there. The regional plan is written there, in a tower in a city that works Monday to Friday and keeps holidays the Kingdom does not keep. The Saudi plan comes out of that building, written by people who fly to Riyadh on a Monday morning and home on Wednesday night.

Ask who the plan is actually written for and the honest answer is the person who signs it. It is written to survive a regional review, in the regional format, with the Saudi slide sitting between the UAE slide and the one that says rest of GCC. The family in Riyadh it is supposed to reach is a line in the audience section.

It shows in small things, which is where things show. The launch lands on a Friday, because in the city where the plan was written Friday is a working day. The offer runs across a week with a Saudi public holiday in it that nobody in Dubai had on the calendar. The copy is in an Arabic that belongs to nowhere in particular. And the promotion goes live without the Ministry of Commerce licence, because it was reviewed by people who had never applied for one.

None of these people are careless. They are competent, they travel constantly, and they are writing a plan for a market from a seat that is not in it. The plan cannot help being about the seat.

A plan for Riyadh written in Dubai is a translation before it is a plan. The plan should be written where the Friday is.