Busting the Dubai Bubble City

At the height of the Dubai property boom, an advertising agency called The Creative Council proposed an idea to Damac Properties for the teaser launch of their project, Park Towers. The idea was simple enough - to create a spoof of The Gulf News business page using a two-sided page wrap which would serve as a teaser for the launch. Considering that Damac's idea creativity was always limited to putting their buildings in the middle of the Pacific Ocean or to show over-sized golden keys getting morphed into a tower, it was quite surprising that the idea was accepted and implemented.

The main heading in the advertorial was exciting to say the least - "Bubble City: Amazing New Project Launched" with a picture photoshopped badly enough to suggest that it was a spoof. The news items in the page also supplemented the idea with some ridiculous articles.

Little did the agency nor the developer imagine that a seemingly obvious spoof would become the most talked about project in the property industry. Being used to such announcements of bizarre projects, many of them failed to see the whole advertorial in the proper context and no one even remembered the advertised project.

I was amazed by some peoples reactions to this advertorial and how easy it is to spread wrong information in this region. Even today, this refuses to die down, even finding mention in the Washington Post, increasingly associating Dubai with real-estate projects which does not go beyond an artists impression. (Thanks to Grapeshisha for the scan)

Some of the reactions at various blogs, forums and websites regarding the launch of Bubble City..
"Arabian people are selfish guys they just spend money on these unwanted things..."

"Ummm, I think you meant $30 BILLION, not $30 million."

"Heh.. well, I always told people that ruling Dubai is like playing SimCity with the money cheat ;)"

"whoah. i thought that sorta thing happens only with the jetsons."

But this quote is a gem..

"2 words: STUPID" . Yes, you said it.