Brandasy – A Branded World

Win In and Outside the Classroom – Bushra Iqbal – Brand Manager Always -P&G

• The brand I’m representing belongs to the other end of the spectrum of Nokia and Djuice when it comes to media omnipresence.
• Most people are not comfortable with the sanitary napkin ads and would change the channel if another family member is sitting around.
• Females spend less than 35 seconds in the aisle for sanitary napkins as opposed to more than 1 minute in the hair product section. They don’t want to be seen in this section by anyone including any male member of their family with whom they have come to the shop and want to grab it and be done with it. [Read the rest of this entry...]

GenMark 2010 was a marketing seminar organized by Total Communications, an event management company. to highlight the differences between marketing to three different phases of human life : kids, youth and adults and to showcase this differentiation, various luminaries from the marketing and branded world of Pakistan were called in to speak on their respective areas including Numan Nabi Ahmed – CEO the brand partnership and cartoon network, Miftah Ismail-CEO Ismail Industries, Zeeshan Misbah – Brand Manager Djuice, Afzal Shahabuddin – Marketing Head Nokia, Bushra Iqbal – Brand Manager Always, Qashif Effendi- CEO 180 Degrees, Amjad Shahabuddin – Change and Engage Manager Shell, Aly Mustansir – Head of Brand Management HBL, and Taher Khan –Chairman Interflow Communication. [Read the rest of this entry...]

CityFM89 may not be the most popular channel on the local FM radio diaspora in terms of reach and number of listeners, but it can be considered one of the most popular ones in terms of branding.

The fact it’s a strong brand can be proven in many ways. For starters, it follows the laws of branding more than any other FM channel. Most of them strive to be everything to everyone, one of the most common fallacies committed by any brand in any industry, whereas CityFM89 strictly adheres to the law of focus whereby it tries to cater to a  specific niche. [Read the rest of this entry...]

The ‘eating-out’ industry of Pakistan has seen an exponential rise in the last couple of years in spite of bone-crushing recession and all the doomsday hoopla. However, Moolah ceases to be an issue for the denizens of this part of the world when it comes to food. People love eating out. Period.

But it’s not a new trend by any stretch of the imagination. Pakistanis have always been into eating big time since God knows when. [Read the rest of this entry...]

‘I went to Alvi dental hospital along with a colleague. We went there because we heard Dr. Arif Alvi was one of the best dentists in the city. As such I was expecting a pleasant experience but I was definitely disappointed on that count’, narrates a senior research executive at one of the leading research firms of Pakistan. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Nestle Fruita Vitals campaign is an interesting online campaign that has caught the attention of some members of the Pakistani online community. The keyword here is ‘some’ because although the campaign is geared towards getting viral, it hasn’t done so to the extent that you would expect it to.

Why would you expect this viral campaign to go big? [Read the rest of this entry...]

Telenor’s new branded service easypaisa appears to be a novel concept, intended to remove the hassle in the payment of utility bills. What’s more, you don’t have to be a Telenor customer to avail this service.

Now only if the service worked as it was communicated to the entire nation by a very expensive branding campaign. [Read the rest of this entry...]

The movie sky-rocketed to the top of the charts. Why? Did it have a plausible plot? Hardly? A riveting name? Far from it. Movies with song titles abound but very few end up making a decent sale. A star-studded cast? No.

So what was it about this movie that moved the audience so much that it topped the charts? [Read the rest of this entry...]

Metro AG, is a German company which owns both Makro and Metro, making both brands compete against each other. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Back in the 80s, when café rage was yet to hit the Karachi foodscape; branded franchise (Pizza Hut, KFC & McDonalds) were non-existent, and places like Copper Kettle and the Zamzama street were still in the womb, Chinese restaurants were the place to hit if you wanted to have an upscale eating out experience. Most of the Chinese restaurants in the city including Peking, Kowloon and Hong Kong were concentrated in the PECHS and Bahadurabad area. And the king of the lot was none other than NanKing – a spacious Chinese joint situated opposite the area where Dolmen centre is now on Main Tariq Road.  It had the best Chinese [Read the rest of this entry...]

BUILDING INNOVATION NETWORKS

Khurram Hamid – Global Strategic Projects P&G

Ø Last year when visiting Karachi, the billboards were that of the telecom companies and the financial services. This year the broadband companies like PTCL and Wateen have taken the lead.

Ø So there’s a definite paradigm shift happening which many people are not aware of.

Ø An idea however brilliant it may be is not enough.

Ø A profitable business model, venture capitalist, and consumers with a need all of that is essential.

Ø Pakistan has a reported 20 million internet users, but where are the start-ups to capitalize on this huge market?

Ø There’s a Connect & Develop Hub in India but not in Pakistan.

Ø If you have a great innovative idea, submit it on www.pg.com. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Entpreneurship ’09: Winning Strategies for Business Growth was a conference organized by the Memon Professional Forum in conjunction with TerraBiz at the Sheraton Hotel on the 12th of August 2009. Here’s what transpired at the conference briefly:-

THE HIGHLIGHTS

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Did you watch the T20 Final between Pakistan and Sri Lanka on Geo SUper? Did you hear what the commentators said after the winning runs? I couldn’t.  Why? Because the abominable Geo animated character was dancing to the equally repressible jingle ‘Geo to aisey’.  Either a child was at the controls hitting the animation button gleefully, or a mentally retarded employee had gone berserk. What else could it be? [Read the rest of this entry...]