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While Al Arabiya’s Qatari rival, Al Jazeera, has grabbed far more global attention – the latter was named the fifth most influential brand in the world in 2004 by Interbrands – the Saudi-owned channel has stuck to reporting the news rather than making it. While this means it has established a less controversial, more professional image than Al Jazeera, it also means it has had to rely more on conventional marketing than its rival.
 
The channel has deliberately positioned itself as the antithesis of Al Jazeera’s warts-and-all approach to journalism, claiming its news is “ideology-free” and stressing its policy of “ethical news broadcasting.”
 
The theme of Al Arabiya’s last major ad campaign was making the viewer feel like they’re at the center of what’s going on. You had a guy in an armchair sitting in front of an advancing army, and similar images. It wasn’t very good, but it still seems to have inspired at least one poor copy: the disastrously Photoshopped campaign for the news show on Dubai's One TV.
 
The old campaign was clearly a case of overpromising: No five-minute news bulletin could ever hope to properly convey what it’s like to be in the middle of a battle. And for a channel hoping to communicate that it’s a reliable source of factual reporting, overpromising isn’t a good marketing hook.
 
The tagline for Al Arabiya’s new campaign, from Grey in Dubai, is far more relevant and effective for an information provider: “Know more.” The ads, too, are a vast improvement, featuring thought-provoking copy and striking imagery – particularly the collection of prosthetic legs, each labeled with a name and a location (all of which are villages in southern Lebanon). 
 
There’s some humor involved too. The ad featuring George W. Bush bending down to address a child, for example, features the copy, “Are you with us or against us?” – a reference to his (in)famous quote about the “war on terror.”
 
Four of the other five ads we’ve seen also have a political theme: a shot of the wall in Gaza, a door with “Kill all Arabs” written on it, a smashed wedding photo lying in the rubble of a bombed building, and a classroom which, the copy informs us, features a geography class in Gaza, although “their country is not on the map.” It’s a very well-executed campaign all round, and should attract new viewers to the channel with its mix of intelligence and eye-catching imagery.
 
However.
 
The execution may be good, but the campaign doesn’t really fit with the channel’s claim of impartiality. There is a clear political angle to the ads. Take the George Bush one. There’s an overt implication that anyone who tries to paint the world as black-and-white as the US president likes to is, at best, a simpleton who would be more intellectually suited to hanging out in kindergarten.
 
While it’s hard to argue with the suggestion that Bush is a simpleton, or that his “You’re either with us or against us” claim was the creation of a brain resembling an echo chamber, the ad itself is obviously designed to show Bush in a bad light. Just because your bias is the only sensible option doesn’t mean you’re not biased.
 
There are many who prefer their news to have a political slant, and, like we said, this is a striking campaign that will likely raise Al Arabiya’s profile and viewership. But maybe the channel needs to face up to the fact that, consciously or not, it appears to have picked sides. 

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