Skip to main content

The long road vs. the shortcut


A few days ago, I had an interesting conversation with a Saudi.

He is one of those Saudis who went abroad to get a top education, and upon returning to Saudi, he certainly did well for himself, working both for the private sector and for the public sector, building a network of high-level contacts. I was trying to convince him to put me in touch with a minister he knew, a minister several people had told me to get in touch with.

Things didn’t go as I was hoping on that front, but the conversation was still very interesting.

The general topic of the conversation was Saudi Arabia’s strategy to change its global image, the very topic I have been working on for over 3 years. On this topic, this Saudi man expressed in clear terms things I had already heard here and there before.

To tell you the truth, the conversation took a hectic turn. I must admit, sometimes I lose patience when I am facing men who think they have it all figured out, when I know they don’t.

The man explained to me that he wasn’t feeling comfortable putting me in touch with the minister and anyway, he said, there was no need, there was a plan and it will bring results by 2030, I should just be patient. He mentioned the infrastructures, the new cities, the robots, all this.

I know that plan, I call it the long road. It’s a plan that consists in improving Saudi Arabia, among other things, to make it more welcoming to foreigners, both executives and tourists, so that they realize what a good country Saudi Arabia actually is.

The long road.

A entire decade of investment in infrastructures, of social reforms, of building entire new cities, of implementing technologies that are at this stage still experimental to eventually see stars in people’s eyes when they come to Saudi Arabia.

I honestly think that it’s a great plan to develop Saudi Arabia but I doubt that much is needed to improve Saudi Arabia’s global image. For that, it seems to me Saudi Arabia already has everything they need, more than they actually need. The plan I am working on is the metaphorical equivalent to turning your head to show your better profile.

The problem with the long road is that it is long precisely.

As we see right now, so much can happen within 3 months, let alone 10 years. God forbid, there can be another Khashoggi, there can be another coronavirus, there can be another bigger Pensacola, there can be more trouble coming from Iran, there can be people within Saudi Arabia getting impatient, there can be a much less friendly US president, there can there can be an environmental crisis leading to global tensions on basic food supplies, there can be a solar storm, you just name it.

And if you are counting on that 10-year plan to eventually improve your image, that means that for 10-year you are vulnerable to some of those things.That means that for 10 years, your voice on the world stage is not heard as much as it should be heard.

My whole argument was to say, ok, fine, pursue on the long road, yes, by all means. But you should also consider the shortcut, a shortcut that will protect you faster, a shortcut that you can actually take *while* you are also walking the long road.

I explained to him what that shortcut was to me. I told him about Monaco. I should have told him about those years when Zinedine Zidane was popular and what a positive change this made for us French people when we were traveling abroad. All of the sudden, our colonial past disappeared, our reputation as snobs disappeared. I should have reminded him what good years the Saudis must have had while the Crown Prince was popular.

But he still thought I should just be patient. We were arguing and then at some point, he said this sentence, and I hope I am not misquoting him:

“Anyway, the Crown Prince is not interested in doing propaganda, he doesn’t need it. He says “Let me build the country, and let people judge me on my deeds in the end.””

A part in me collapsed hearing this. Another part screamed in fury hearing how this was worded. This word. Propaganda. Other people had told me this before, but they had spared me the word propaganda.

Honestly it was mildly insulting but it says a lot about how my job must be considered by some.

I am a communication professional with a business background, I don’t do propaganda. I acknowledge things can be complex sometimes and I am fine with that. But precisely, propaganda is simplification and simplification is betrayal. Part of my job is to break down complex issues, not to simplify. It’s a fine line, the fine line between communication and propaganda.

But I know this is probably, indeed, what the Crown Prince thinks. Saudi Arabia’s inability to communicate to the world is sometimes breathtaking and they pay a really high price for it, the Crown Prince in particular.

I have been observing the Crown Prince closely for 3 years. I can only imagine what he’s been through. Not what we have seen in public, but what went on in private, what went on in his mind. I certainly cannot blame him if he thinks communication, or PR, is useless. What have his PR efforts done for him ? How have they protected him from being nickname “Mohamed Bone Saw”?

Believe me, I know. I understand. I sympathize.

But if I knew the Crown Prince, I would still tell him to give PR another shot.

The Crown Prince is like a man who fell off a horse while he was riding with a smile through the wind towards his destination. When he got up in shock and realized that he was badly bruised but okay, he gave some thought to what just happened and made that decision it was safer to just walk along his horse towards its destination.

Will he get there? Yes, probably he will. Will it take him more time? Yes, it surely will. Will he be more vulnerable to people who could attack him, to bad weather conditions, to thirst and hunger? Yes, yes and yes.

If I knew the Crown Prince, I would tell him “Your Highness, please, I am begging you, get up on that horse again. This is where you belong. Let this be my job to help you get up there and to make sure that this time, you are safely harnessed.”

If only I knew the Crown Prince...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Arab growing in me

Sometimes people ask me why in the world I am so interested in Saudi Arabia. There are multiple factors but I know that one of them relates to my own childhood.   See, I am French, but I am not a Parisian. I grew up in a small village near the German border. Only later in my life, I moved to Paris. I dressed like a Parisian, acted like a Parisian, but deep down, I remained the girl from the small village. Now after a decade in Dubai, four days in Paris are really all I can take before the negativity and the judgmental idealism crawls under my skin.  Deep down, I am a girl from that small village and something in that quite conservative childhood clicks with Saudi Arabia.   Let me start by saying I didn’t like my childhood very much. Boredom was a huge part of it. As a child, I wasn’t interested in nature very much and it seems that’s pretty much all there was.   When I was a child, we would go to church a lot. There was a mass for children on wednesday...
1 comment
Read more

About the recent surge of Islamophobia in France

As a French living in a Muslim country, I have read a lot recently about France’s islamophobia. Friends have messaged me about it ever since Macron has announced his law on religious separatism. I read calls for boycott of French products.   What has fascinated me most these last few weeks is that the Muslim world does not seem to understand where the French islmaphobia is coming from and specifically what drives the recent surge. I read ridiculous theories according to which the UAE and Saudi Arabia were responsible. Well, aren’t they always responsible for everything, according to some? I realized that while things were quite obvious to me, maybe it was indeed difficult for people who are not French to read into the recent surge of Islamophobia.   So here is my attempt to explain. First, one has to respect the fact that France has gone through not one, but a whole series of deadly terrorist attacks in the last decade, and all of them were carried out by Muslim extremis...
Post a Comment
Read more

"We don't need help"

A few months ago, last time I was in Riyadh, I had this experience. It wasn’t meant to be an experience but sometimes findings are where you don’t expect them. I was in Riyadh and I saw on the map that the ministry of investment was not too far from my hotel. I thought I should take the chance to go and drop my resume.   I remember standing there looking at this big building, gathering my courage, telling myself I can do this. Once I was inside, I told a gentleman who was just walking by what I wanted and he told me where to go. I got lost a bit, but eventually found this young man at this desk. He was chatting with another young man, but they interrupted themselves to see what I wanted. I told them I was French, living in Dubai. I told them I wanted to drop my resume in case they needed someone. He said OK but he looked unconvinced. I got a copy of my generic resume out and I started highlighting a few parts here and there, the parts that were most interesting to them. ...
Post a Comment
Read more