Weekday mornings 70,000 copies of 7DAYS are distributed across Dubai and Abu Dhabi before readers are awake and the service is now available to companies keen to reach the same audience
At 2am UAE residents are still sleeping soundly in their beds, but not Mohamed Zein and his crew of distributors.
Zein, distribution director at Al Sidra Media, is already at his desk and his distribution team are on the streets delivering door-to-door.
Yesterday, 7DAYS readers read how a Bangladeshi cricket player paid out dhs25,635 to have a curry delivered to Dubai from the UK.
Many regular readers will have read the cover with their coffee or over their morning cereal and, while not quite going to the same extreme, they also demand efficient and reliable door-to-door service.
For Zein and his crew it is their job to get a copy of 7DAYS to all those readers before 6am each morning.
"We did a survey of where our target audience lives, where they work, where they go for coffee, where they go shopping, where they have lunch and where they go at the weekend. We basically tracked their lives from dawn until dusk and placed a copy of 7DAYS there for them to read," said Zein.
Consequently, 70,000 copies of the newspaper are delivered to around 26,000 individual villas and the rest to various residential tower blocks and commercial outlets, throughout the two cities.
That unique level of audience reach is now being offered to other companies in the UAE who want to have their targeted marketing material delivered to 7DAYS readers.
"The material is put inside the newspaper and that has received very good feedback," said Zein.
"If you drive around you will see flyers hanging off letterboxes and doors and they just stay there, go yellow and are thrown out.
"If the material is inside the newspaper the material is more likely to go inside the villa and be read by the whole family".
In addition, the distribution team can deliver products through the network, independently of 7DAYS.
Zein also points out that the service can be targeted to a specific list of names and addresses if required.
The team can accommodate most sizes of material, from A4 leaflets to magazines and can also design the artwork if necessary.
There are 15 delivery vans in the crew, with a supervisor and up to ten delivery boys in each team.
The delivery is carried out in three stages. The newspaper is at the 26,000 villas by 6am; coffee shops and restaurants are then stocked to facilitate those stopping for a caffeine buzz on the way to work and the familiar stands in commercial buildings are the final stop-off point so readers can grab
a copy on the way to their desks.
By 10am while readers are talking over the latest cover at the water-cooler, Zein's crew are finishing up another long night's work.
© 7Days 2009
