Mind Soup

For a while now, Al Jadeed (one of Lebanon's controversial television stations) have been copying Lebanese bloggers' content and pasting it as is on their website without asking for permission. Some can argue that Al Jadeed is helping out the bloggers by giving them more exposure but this is not the case here. The second a website or a blog has advertising banners on it, it becomes a commercial website that aims to make money through impressions and clicks on those ads. Additionally, since AlJadeed.tv is a website for a commercial TV station that promotes its shows, there is not doubt that it is a commercial website.  When such a website copies bloggers' content, it aims to increase traffic to their pages and hence increase profits from ads. Bloggers have a hard time creating original content and copying their content without consent is unethical to begin with. Would Al Jadeed be happy if another television aired one of their popular shows without their consent an...

“There is no room for mistakes, the competition is severe. The right image has to go with the right text.” Deema Saidi studied Marketing at the Lebanese American University (LAU). With a committed passion for the arts and everything glamorous, she had the chance to work for prestigious, well-established companies such as Elie Saab, Oscar De La Renta, Missoni, Diane von Furstenberg, Y3, and Furla. Armed with experience in social media for fashion and hospitality, she now resides in the UAE where she works as a luxury and PR marketer. In this interview, I discuss with Deema the state of online fashion marketing in the Middle East. What is the biggest challenge, in your opinion, when managing fashion social media accounts? Fashion social media accounts have a lot of challenges, just like any other product or service you have to make sure that you are consistent with the voice, the brand image and the quality. As you may know, fashion is a form of aesthetics and maintaining the ima...