The Obama Protocol Breaches

I’m loving the protocol-breaches of both Michelle and Barack Obama last week.

Watch Michelle touching the Queen of England here and Barack bowing to the Saudi Arabian King here.

They make their own rules as they go, showing that the US administration is not a power above all…now that it kewl change! What’s cooler, they even gifted the Queen an Ipod!

Under the umm… PLASTIC bag?

Last weekend, Coldplay made their Middle East debut here in Abu Dhabi, with a live concert on the lawns of the Emirates Palace. Apparently it was a sensational show for the crowd of 15,000, despite the heavy rain and thunder – which infact, as everyone seems to agree, has made the show surrealistically amazing!

But Coldplay weren’t the only heroes of the show. An agreement between the concert organizers and the Emirates Wildlife Society in association with the Worldwide Fund for Nature (EWS-WWF), to use the event as a platform to promote the ‘Heroes of the UAE’ campaign (a campaign by the EWS-WWF urging to cut down energy consumption, which was already launched in the UAE), resulted in 15,000 concert attendees  given a green ‘Heroes’ wristband to raise awareness about the campaign and drive traffic to its website. The collaboration did not just result in a marketing exposure win of 15,000 wristbands, some branded banners and press exposure; but as the concert date coincided with Earth Hour day, it was agreed that all the carbon emissions of the show will be offset by a new wind-farm investment in New Zealand (according to this article atleast). Further, Coldplay wore ‘Heroes’ wristbands throughout the show and wore Earth Hour/Heroes of the UAE t-shirts during the final song.

For the ‘Heroes of the UAE’ campaign (more about what I think of campaign later), the tie-up with the event generated great exposure and is a great example of how co-sponsorships can be leveraged in marketing communications. This exposure ultimately is great for the actual cause of the campaign.

For serving the cause too, the carbon offsetting of the  event’s emissions is a great initiative of course and for those environment-conscious concert-goers it must have felt good to be doing something for the environment while enjoying a great music show.

It is important to point out that this music show’s organizers did not allow people to use umbrellas. And because the weather forecast predicted the heavy rains, people came prepared with plastic bags to cover their heads. I could not help but wonder..were any arrangements made to recycle all these plastic bags? Or were they included in the calculations of the carbon emissions of the concert? And from the ‘Heroes of the UAE’ campaign’s point of view, was there a creative way to provide an alternative for umbrellas/plastic bags?