Advertising photography in the UAE relatively unharmed by financial crisis

Even as the media world is witnessing considerable drop in advertising spend, some photographers claim to be devoid of any recessionary drop in their work, while others accept the current circumstances have affected their work. "What crisis? We don't feel the crisis here," says Joe Sassine, who co-founded the Dubai-based Shadow Professional Photography with a college friend. "The crisis has doubled our work. It didn't affect us at all. There has been an increase in volume and budget of jobs. When there is a recession, people invest more in advertising." Talking about the flip side of reality, Sassine said, "Normally, advertising flourishes in a bad situation," he added. "Because there are lesser people buying then companies have to drag what is left from the market to their product, not to others." Ajay Nair of Reflection Photography said the effect of the crisis has almost no effect on its pipeline of projects. The firm, which has recorded Dh2 million revenues last year, is still expecting some growth in 2009. "The effect is not that much," Nair said. "It has almost no effect on us, except that before there was not much bargaining, but now we see most of bargaining in our deals. There has been cost cutting in term of fees by about 20-25 per cent." The "bargaining" trend is also observed by Suresh Subramanian of Suresh Subramanian Photography. "We didn't lose clients, it's just that they didn't have much work to do," he said. "We have thus deliberately reduced our fees by about 10-20 per cent to support the agency's budget restrictions due to the current situation." Suresh, however, said the crisis has dawn on the advertising photography industry. "The professional photography industry in the UAE has been affected as most of the multi-national companies have been affected. Naturally, they cut their budgets on advertising," he said. "I've been here for 14 years now and have seen all the major developments. The past two to three years were better than this year, suddenly work declines. Well, this is happening not merely in our industry, but the crisis has affected everyone," Suresh said. But bargaining is currently not being experienced by Shadow, says Sassine. "Bargaining? No, we are still working according to our prices," he said. "People are still demanding. In my opinion, the only institution affected in Dubai are the real estate and the banks, which are not giving loans. " According to a survey conducted by Gulf Marketing Review, the biggest losers in the marketing sector are likely to be advertising (63.6 per cent of the respondents said it will be negatively affected by the downturn) and media planning (49.6 per cent). More than a third, 37.2 per cent envisaged marketing budgets being slashed from 10-25 per cent this year. More than half, 51.2 per cent, of those polled said advertising budgets will be slashed from 10-50 per cent during 2009. Commenting on the quality of photography, industry professionals defend it as the need of the market and defined by the circumstances. Sassine said advertising here has been very direct and the copy is usually bombarded by multiple ideas. "The advertising here is at a primary stage. They are still at the stage of showing the product," he said. "They try to put so many messages in a billboard, which is not a brochure, for example. The advertising is too direct, they insist to put so much on the ad they don't need to do this. People are clever enough to understand, they can do more subtle things and this can attract more clients." Does that mean to say professionals here are less creative? "It's not about creativity it's about fear not to be understood well so they put too much information. This is the dilemma if you go too much to subtleness the majority of the people in the streets wouldn't understand it," Sassine said. For Suresh, who has been living in Dubai for 17 years, the staus quo is almost satisfactory. "It has improved. I don't think they are copying, what they try not to do is to hurt anybody," he said. "Before there were very few agencies, now there are a lot of international and local agencies, which create a healthy and creative competition. People are watching international works and agencies, themselves, have very good art directors. Now we have clever ads." The competition in advertising photography is just as heightened. With about 50-100 advertising photographers in town, it can be concluded that the emirate is over-crowded. But it is not so, say Sassine and Nair. "The UAE is a very small market with a very big competition. Nevertheless, I believe, maybe, there is enough room for everyone," says Nair. "There is quite a lot of players but we don't feel competition in Dubai because the market is humongous. There are so many jobs to do, so many companies demanding things," Sassine said. However, while there may be enough room for everyone, not all photographers can fit in the industry. "It's not about photography only, it's also about marketing," sa