Category: Branding
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Nokia N900: A monster. A good monster.
Every object, every product, says something about the people behind it. In the old, pre-industrial days you would meet your carpenter, your blacksmith and your potter. People behind life’s object where more visible. Today, we don’t see the people behind the objects that define our lives. The creation of these objects requires the cooperation of…
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Egypt x Algeria: Football, brands, the Arab national state and God in a snapshot
This moment I am lying in bed. I’ve been lying here for the better part of the last 48 hours, with a fever and a headache. It’s a common cold or a flu (apparently not of the swine variety). As I write this, the Nile has turned into a river of tears. A little while…
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Amman’s most colorful day: a city no longer ashamed of itself!
For the past two years, the subject of Amman has been unavoidable for me. Not only do I live in this city, but I’ve also been, with my company SYNTAX, involved in the first big branding effort this city has undertaken. I am overdosed on Amman! The branding project has been completed but writing about…
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Experience Amman and its story: the most comprehensive city history site ever
It’s been a long time in the making, but now its here. Never before has Amman’s story been presented to its citizens and guest so vividly and comprehensively. It’s still a work in progress that Ammanis and their guest will complete in the coming months and years. I am talking about the Amman Centennial website,…
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Google listens to feedback, changes “Egabat” to “Ejabat”
And they even created a video to celebrate the change.. When I blogged about Google’s new Arabic Q&A service a while ago, I received a comment from Wael Ghonim, Google’s MENA Product and Marketing man, noting with interest the issue I (and others) raised about the service’s name “Egabat”. Now, after surveying the community and…
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“Migrating to the Mac feels like immigrating to a first world nation”
A Facebook update by my friend Bilal Hijjawi inspired this “360east imitation” Click to enlarge a little bit
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Amman’s new brand starts making an appearance
Earlier this year, SYNTAX delivered the brand guidelines of the new Amman Brand to the Greater Municipality of Amman, which was the final delivery of a project that kept us totally immersed in Amman, its history, its people and its character for well over year. It was an intensive process of discovery, research, conceptualization, writing,…
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SYNTAX scraps its website, replacing it with one lousy web page
At SYNTAX, we’re the kind of people who’d make fun of companies and government departments who don’t update their websites. If you hire us, we’d lecture you for hours about the importance of “staffing your website” with people who can communicate on the web and keep your website fresh and updated. We’d also point out…
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Amman is looking for its stories. Now YOU can write them..
I am very excited, as just a few minutes ago, the pre-launch page for the Amman Centennial website has gone live. This is not a ‘coming soon’ page, but an open invitation to all Ammanis (and expatriate Ammanis, of course) to share their stories of THEIR Amman. The last 100 years of Amman’s history, since…
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360east 24HRS Abu Dhabi
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A brand, a celebrity and a tweeting chicken: KFC goes KGC with Oprah
Yesterday, Oprah created an internet phenomena. She bought lunch for America at KFC. People went crazy over this and millions of people downloaded the free meal coupon on Oprah’s site. Now, I am a KFC fan. If you grew up in Amman in the 80’s, KFC might have been your first encounter with American fast…
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Flavored water: H2Oh! vs Masafi
While a lot of people cringe at the idea of flavored mineral water, I am definitely a member of such products’ target market Yes, a glass of pure water is sometimes the best thing for thirst, but I just find drinking a lot of ‘plain’ water hard and/or boring. That’s why I was looking forward…