The ethos of ‘it will do’ won’t do any more

Eamonn Carey is a director of the Dubai-based digital agency URBN

“If I was to tell you that a chunk of digital media spend in this region is at risk because of laziness, ignorance and incompetence on the part of certain agencies and service providers; would you really be surprised? The reality is that for every agency producing high quality work; there are plenty of others who don’t think about things like terms and conditions, execution and genuine engagement.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at some of the Facebook pages for some major brands in the region. A large number of these are characterised by having a number of similar traits – the use of fake profiles, the use of paid ‘fans’, and the use of promotions and competitions that breach Facebook’s terms and conditions.

Here are some of the things that you agree not to do when you set up a Facebook page: “You will not administer a promotion through Facebook, except through an application on the Facebook Platform”. Or how about: “You cannot: Notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles or pages.”

Breaches of these terms and conditions are rife among brand pages in this region. Fake profiles also seem to be regularly used by certain agencies and providers. Watch out for multiple profiles with the same profile picture and same 22 fans (I’ve counted). Look out for pages that have massive concentrations of fans from places that you wouldn’t expect – Malaysia is a pretty popular spot at the moment. Frequently, these ‘fans’ have been bought at a cost of around $110 per 25,000. Don’t expect much in the way of engagement from these ‘fans’ though. They’re fakes and also constitute a breach of the Facebook terms and conditions.

For a region that is sometimes overly concerned with numbers as a metric of success, we need to educate clients so that they see that having 200 highly engaged fans is immeasurably better than having 20,000 fakes.

I talk to people at Facebook regularly and I know that seeking out competitions and pages that breach their terms and conditions is a priority for 2011. I’ve already seen multiple reports of pages being shut down (with the loss of all fans – real or imagined) for breaching the terms and conditions. Expect to see a lot more over the coming weeks and months.

A rising tide lifts all boats – and in this region we need a lot more good news stories to drive up digital budgets. The converse is also true. If incompetence results in pages being deleted by Facebook, there will be a lot less budget for digital projects in the region.

This is money out of everyone’s pockets, so if you’re an agency or business thinking about using Facebook apps, be smart, be honest and be accountable. There are plenty of providers out there who can generate meaningful campaigns without resorting to dirty tricks. If you don’t we are going to see a lot of MENA campaigns being run by agencies based in London.”