This is the 2nd part of the event coverage:

Transform 2011 marketing conference

Is There ROI in Social Media?

Amer Sarfaraz- Partner & VP Business – Bramerz

• Check what people are saying about your brand online – both positive and negative.
• The world of tomorrow looks more like the world of yesterday than the world of today. Just like people used to congregate in marketplaces likes Soukhs and all in the olden days, people are increasingly coming together in cyberspace with no social or geographical divide between them.
• Four things that matter the most:
1. Ownership
2. Personalization
3. Content
4. Response Time
• Latest Nielsen study shows that only 14% of people trust advertising whereas 78% of people trust recommendation.
• 1% of your audience will create the content, 9% will spread the word, whereas 90% will be influenced by it.
• Brands are increasingly attuning themselves accordingly, finding out the 1% influencers which in most of the cases are bloggers.  Blogger Meet-ups are being sponsored by major brands where these bloggers are lavished with gifts.
• Just like the rest of the world, star bloggers have cropped up in Pakistan with the potential to influence their fan following which runs in thousands.
• Haris Nadeem is one such blogger – a techie who has a large influence on the local social media scene. He’s doing his bachelors and already earning more than 60-70% of people present in this conference.
• Levi’s website is a classic example of observe and absorb behavior. If you visit their website while signed into facebook, the website would fetch upcoming birthdays of your friends and you would have the option of sending them a gift coupon to buy Levis jeans.
• There’s a dearth of e-commerce sites in Pakistan which is a big opportunity. My cousin in Australia wanted to gift chocolates to his friend in Pakistan so I recommended Lal’s chocolate which is the only local brand giving that option.
• What to measure in social media:
1. Volume :
• No. of fans, followers, tweets, status updates.
• Reach and frequency.   
2. Engagement:
• Re-tweets, sentiment analysis, comments, likes, time spent.
3. Actions:
• Leads generated, complaints handled, recruitments, response time, sales.

Brand Driven TV Content – The New Marketing Strategy

Shoaib Qureshy – Chief Strategy Officer – Bulls Eye Communications

Shoaib Qureshy Bulls Eye

• TV ads have lost their edge because of the fragmented media. 20 years ago people didn’t have any choice but to watch just one channel. Even if you came up with a dud ad, it would get noticed and produce results. Not so anymore.
• With more than 80 channels at your disposal, for some even 250 channels, you cannot get noticed the way you want to even with a colossal budget. 

• The diminishing power of TV ads is a result of 5,000 brands on TV with almost 50,000 ads per day.
• You’ve been bombarded with almost 10 ideas per presentation in this conference, I’ll give you just one potent idea.
• People watch TV for the content, not for the ads. Ads are enforced upon them by the marketers.
• Traditionally the 30 second TV spot was the driving force behind which all the other tactics were applied.
• With ‘Hero Banney Ki Tarang’ a reality TV show based on acting, we came up with a program that carried the brand persona of Tarang milk by Engro, and gave the consumers what they crave for – content that is absorbing.
• This way we turned the conventional marketing wisdom around, using the TV spot, billboards and all the other advertising vehicles as support for the branded program and not as the main content.

Q. What has milk got to do with reality TV show that also based on acting? Has that converted into sales?

ü  The problem wasn’t to do with sales. They were already having good sales numbers, but when they did a brand picture survey, their brand didn’t have the essence and the persona that they intended it to have. They knew their TVC campaign wasn’t working and went for this option to project their intended image.

ü  Secondly, the program is in its second season. If it wasn’t effective, they wouldn’t have continued it for a second year around.

Global Accomplishments and Local Possibilities in Digital Media

Rai Umair, Visionary & Director, Maventor, Australia.

Rai Umair Maventor

• In Pakistan there are:
• 5.4 Million Facebook users – 2011 Social Banks
• 22 Million Internet users – 2009 World Bank
• 108 Million mobile and Smartphone users – 2011 Wikipedia
• 1.8 Million twitter users – 2011 Dawn.com
• Customer expectations – rapid feedback and merger of offline content with online.
• Food Connection Pakistan case study presented by the CEO Nauman Sikander Mirza himself:
• FC Pakistan is a food guide of Karachi that was officially launched in July, after having a soft launch in April 2011.
• The website aims to bring all food-related blogs under one roof and has acquired over 28,000 fans on Facebook besides being figured prominently in print media as well.
• In order to generate content, a contest was held through the website and facebook page whereby people were asked to submit pictures of restaurants and their offerings. 26 participants submitted photos over a period of 10 days. The winner who submitted 220 pictures won an Android phone. He was called to the Forum and unbeknownst to him, we gathered 250 people at the mall to celebrate his victory.

Leveraging ‘Rural-Speak’ in Building Brand Equities

Mansoor Nawaz – Chief Strategy Officer – Dynamic Marketing Concepts

Mansoor Nawaz Dynamic Marketing Concepts

• People crave quality content even if it’s just folklore.
• A brand that has a story is that much easy for the consumer to assimilate and has more probability of being endeared to the consumer.
• What we did was take a popular folk tale and subtly embed a brand into the storyline.
• The folktale was that of Heer Ranjha – Jhang – Southern Punjab.
• And Telenor Talkshawk was the brand that was embedded in the Heer Ranjha skit, a skit that was performed across numerous villages across Punjab.
• Although this tale ends in a tragedy, we reversed the outcome, ensuring that our brand was the reason of that reversal.
• Although arrangements for 300 people were made, as many as 900 people turned up in some villages.
• The MNP rate (number conversion from one telecom brand to another) was the highest achieved at any point in time. This was possible because the sales reps of the Telenor were present wherever a skit was being performed.
• This goes on to show people never get tired of the folklore no matter how many times they see its rendition.
• Secondly product features and promotional offers when communicated in the form of a story have an everlasting effect.
• And the same tale can be used in different provinces with little modification. For instance in Sindh it would be Sassi Punnu.
• The concept of using folk tales to leverage brands is nothing new especially in the Western world.
• Red riding hood, Jack in the Beanstalk, Snow White, Cinderella all have been used by major brands like Pepsi, IBM, Coke, KLM and numerous others to differentiate themselves from the competition.
• Our heritage is far more rich in folklore than theirs and hence the opportunity to use this platform for brand immortality is enormous.  

Q- How did you promote these shows, through conventional media or something else?

ü  The dynamics of a village is entirely different from that of a city. In a village you’ve a central marketplace or corner where people congregate at the end of the day for idle talk. We targeted such places in each village, announcing the show one day before with the help of dhols and all, sometimes even handing out flyers.

CONCLUSION:

• Although the entire speaker panel was a glitterati of accomplished people in marketing, media and advertising, quite a few speakers chose to adopt the style of a lecture, teaching the basics of their profession a la textbook style instead of weaving stories and narrating anecdotes that would have conveyed their viewpoint that much better while keeping the audience hooked and awake at the same time.
• The conference was similar to GenMark Conference held last year. 
• Haseeb Ihtisham of Nokia was the only one who innovated with his presentation by making use of Prezi, the new buzz software when it comes to presentations, and the most likely successor to Powerpoint.
• Although Kellog’s was the main sponsor of the event having notable presence through their banners, a shrewd arrangement of their product packaging right alongside the stage, and the presence of their CEO herself who handed down plaques to the presenters, it was Food Connection Pakistanthat stole the show.
  

  Kellogg's sponsorship

•  Although just one of the co-sponsors, FC Pakistan leveraged this opportunity to the hilt by embedding one of their partner companies reps into the speaker panel and then using that opportunity to showcase what FC Pak is all about and what marketing ploys they’ve used to woo in the target market ,   and finally the grand slam, a prize draw for the audience which had the IPod shuffle as the grand prize.And you didn’t just enter the draw by default. To enter the draw, you had to tear the perforated section of the Food Connection card that was given to each participant and put it in the FC box during lunch. So to win something, you had to pick up the FC promotional card and once you picked it you had to read it. Very very clever. Just have a look at the card below:
  

  Food Connection Pakistan

• Yet  another good thing they did was that they had their entire team present at the conference, which tried to make their presence felt by asking questions from the speakers, sometimes just for the sake of asking, anything to keep themselves in the limelight. Kellogg’s could definitely learn a thing or two from these two limelight strategies.
• At the very least, Kellogg’s should have presented something, if they’re not doing remarkable marketing in Pakistan, at least their international marketing campaigns would have been good to see.
• FC Pakistan’s sponsor strategy is a perfect example of how any brand should make the most of any sponsorship opportunity.
• Although FC Pakistan team has proved as shrewd marketers at the tactical level making brilliant moves at the grassroots level, they aren’t the most able brand strategists. This is evident from their choice of their brand name. Food Connection Pakistan maybe a good move from a SEO and keywords point of view, but couldn’t be a worse form of brand name. Ditto for Karachi Snob. Both these websites would do well to learn from Google, Squidoo and Twitter, names that are unique, memorable and most importantly short with no more than three syllables.
• If you’re worried about your brand remaining in obscurity just because it doesn’t carry a relevant keyword for search engines to recognize, you’re selling yourself short and not in it for the long haul.
• Finally, the traditional gift hamper you get at the end of such conferences was an amusing eclectic mix of items. Kellogg’s four-in-one cereal pack, Delve Strawberry custard mix and Shan’s Bombay Biryani Masala.
• Now I’m not sure what the Shan marketing team were thinking in sponsoring this event or handing out this strange, but if they really wanted to make this effort count, this should instead have put a biryani stall at lunch separate from the main dining table from where the participants could taste a biryani made with this biryani masala and cooked by the best biryani chef money could buy. And on this very table, they should have put these free samples of biryani masala for the participants to pick up for free instead of unceremoniously giving them at the end.
• This effort would have paid rich dividends for the brand. Same strategy should have been followed by Delve as well which interestingly is a  dessert brand launched by Shan. 

Transform kellogg delve shan

Related posts:

1. Transform 2011- What’s Next in Marketing, Media & Advertising Transform 2011 marketing conference organized by Event Architects was held...

(Q – Questions from the audience.)

Transform 2011marketing conferenceTransform 2011 marketing conference

Art of Communication through PR

Zainab Ansari – CEO Xenith Public Relations:

Zainab Ansari Xenith Public Relations

• Public Relation plays the role of a catalyst.
• Bridges the communication divide between organization and target audience.
• PR informs, creates ideas, persuades people and makes things happen.
• PR is not brand management but corporate image management.
• While BM deals with brand identity and management, PR deals with corporate identity and perception management.
• PR delivers credibility, influence and endorsement.
• A survey was conducted by Reckitt Benckiser 11 years ago to determine its corporate image amongst the local populace.
• Majority of the people didn’t know anything about Reckitt Benckiser. The only thing they did know was that Reckitt Benckiser manufactured Dettol, as such their entire perception of the organization was based on how they perceived Dettol. The brand image of Dettol was in essence the corporate image of Reckitt Benckiser.
•  All the PR efforts of Reckitt Benckiser since then have focused on carving out a separate corporate identity.

 Q -  How do alcohol and tobacco companies do PR?

ü  Alcohol unlike in Pakistan is not banned in most countries and as such alcohol companies carry out PR directly as any other company in other industries.

ü  Tobacco has a plethora of stringent regulations imposed on them throughout the world and thus do PR more subtly.

ü  Pakistan Tobacco Company (PTC) does it by focusing solely on corporate social responsibility (CSR) – planting trees, especially those it has cut down for its manufacturing purposes as well as opening schools and hospitals in rural areas.

ü  Now the people who benefit from PTC’s such gestures will not start smoking because of it, but they do form a benign image of the company which is the real purpose of this strategy.

• When Intel came to Pakistan in 1997, Pakistanis were not tech savvy. A survey was conducted across different segments of the society to find what people knew about Intel.
• The overwhelming majority, including even the CEOs and students said that Intel was a box, meaning the CPU on which the ‘Intel Inside’ logo sticker was plastered.
• Today the entire technology paradigm has shifted with even the students owning laptops and Intel has managed to become a household name through concerted PR efforts.
• GreenStar relies a lot on PR efforts to penetrate and get its message across in the rural realm of Pakistan.

Q – How to determine efficiency of a PR campaign in the face of parallel massive advertising. GreenStar for instance promotes its products through songs and TVCs on a mass scale. How can you measure the effectiveness of a PR campaign when the BM campaign is creating so much awareness itself?

 ü  GreenStar came up with a product called EC (Emergency Contraceptive) which was a pill that would prevent conception 17-18 hours after the intercourse had taken place. This product was not allowed to be advertised.

ü  We came up with a PR initiative whereby professionals from across the medical profession were called to take part in a panel discussion. This discussion was so successful and created so much hype on its own that it received prominence in the print and electronic media. In the absence of any other tactic, the PR campaign was solely responsible for the success of this campaign.

ü  Secondly,  advertising per say doesn’t work in the rural environment the same way you and I wouldn’t be effective as strangers persuading the rural follk. The rural women are more likely to respond to the advice of influencers from within their own community, people who they look up to. And this is where PR proves as most effective.   

 Transforming the Brand Experience 

Afzal Shahabuddin – Managing Director – Resource Edge

Afzal Shahabuddin Resource Edge

• Every interaction is an opportunity.
• The conventional 360 degree has changed and every touch point needs to be differentiated to be able to impart value to the brand.
• Liberty Books has started a DIAL-A-BOOK plan whereby books can be ordered and delivered free on a mere phone call anywhere in Pakistan.

Socializing Ideas across platforms

Amin Rammal CEO – The Brand Crew

Amin Rammal Brand Crew

• Our perceptions and perceptive are constantly changing. For instance, no one asks if you get the flu, however if you’ve a heart attack like I did  sometime ago, everyone was inquiring about me. That’s because heart attack is still uncommon especially in a person of my age whereas flu has become a common phenomenon.
• Cancer was once an ominous disease but now people view it with less apprehension because cures have been found and there have been more survival stories now than ever.
• We live our lives in a perpetual state of beta.
• People want to use social networking sites- facebook,twitter, linkedin- anywhere and everywhere, even in offices. No barrier can stop this activity. It’s that ubiquitous and pervasive.
• Hashtags # in twitter is responsible for more breaking news more rapidly than any mainstream medium. I found out about the burning of a café on Zamzama through twitter first.
• I switched from Blackberry to Motorola Android and I still don’t know why although I compared the functions of numerous models and brands.
• 95% of decisions are made on an unconscious level and hence cannot be rationally explained.
• Consumers don’t think in a linear way. Marketers think they can run a campaign and consumers will straightaway go and get hooked to it.
• It doesn’t happen that way. Real value is built over time.
• Volkswagen Canada came up with a brilliant ‘Great Art Heist’ campaign  to promote the new  2012 Jetta GLI whereby improvised art galleries  featuring long exposure light painting  graphs created by Jetta’s car lights at night  were placed in unusual places all over the Canadian cities. The paintings were loosely hung with no security to entice the people to grab the paintings. Afterwards, those who did ‘steal’ the paintings were encouraged to share their experience online through Volkswagen Canada Facebook and Twitter pages under the #VWArtHeist hashtag. While the activity was conducted in the real world, it went viral in the online world.

• The marketing team of Mini came up with an addictive location-based game which comprised of an app which when installed  on your cell  got the user chasing after a virtual Mini on a real map of Stockholm. The way to acquire that Mini was to get within 50 metres of where it was located in the real world on the map. The twist in the tale is that any other user with the app installed can snatch it away from him by coming within 50 metres of him. So the only way to keep the virtual Mini was to physically run away from all the users from coming within 50 metres of his real world location. Anyone who managed to keep the virtual Mini for a week would win a real Mini Clubman.

Amin Rammal Brand Crew

• Pakistan’s own Rozee.pk came up with a social media campaign that was based on the Stockholm Getaway campaign.
• Tesco came up with an app for smartphones for product promotion whereby ads seen through the camera lens of the smartphone came alive with animation and all.
• KLM came up with a real-world campaign to delight its customers who were waiting in the airport lounge waiting for their flight that utilized the power of social media.
• First KLM identified the customer’s presence at the airport lounge through their FourSquare status and tweets. Then their team went to the lounge with a surprise gift that was relevant to the customer. This was identified by going through their social media conversation to know what they like and what was their wishlist. The entire episode was filmed to capture the customer delight at receiving this unexpected gift.

Q- How does wasting your resources on a few customers convert into better image or even sales conversion for the brand? It’s just a marketing gimmick. Wouldn’t it be better if KLM instead focused on improving their overall service for all customers or doing something different that affected their entire customer base? Besides, once other airlines start to copy this activity, it wouldn’t be that effective and customers may instead start demanding it.

• It’s true KLM campaign was just a marketing gimmick. And if your points of parity (POPs) are not in line with the industry standard, there’s no use coming up with marketing gimmicks to create Points of Differentiation (PODs). However, you do need marketing gimmick every now and then to instill some excitement into the brand experience.
• Secondly, a marketing gimmick such as the one used by KLM may wear off its novelty once the other airlines start using it. On the other hand, it may become so common that the customers actually demand it from the entire industry. In that case it helps if you were the first one to start a trend.

Haseeb Ihtisham – Head of Marketing  

Nokia Pakistan and Afghanistan

Haseed Ihtisham Nokia

• Traditional ads have ceased to be effective. Take me as an example. I watch TV at night, changing the channel the moment an ad starts. Most of my office time i.e. morning till evening –is spent connected to cyberspace. The best way to reach and influence me then would be online rather than offline.
• With so many channels to choose from, traditional ads are no more effective.
• The only viable way to cut through the clutter in today’s fragmented media is to cultivate brand advocates who already have a huge fan following across different platforms in the online as well as offline world. Amin Rammal for instance acted like a brand advocate when he influenced all of you by saying he preferred Motorola over all the other brands. Whether he’s a paid brand advocate for Motorola is a different matter altogether.
• Nokia came up with a strategy whereby free E7s personally signed by the CEO of Nokia were given to those brand advocates who have a substantial influence online. These brand advocates were identified through their tweets and facebook conversations. After the handing of phones, their online activity was again monitored to gauge their level of delight and to what extent they communicated this experience to their online followers.

Q.  How can brand advocates be effective especially in Pakistan and how much influence do they really have on the masses? Can the entire marketing plan rely on these people?

ü  I can’t recall a single Iphone ad in Pakistan let alone a campaign and yet iPhones are being increasingly adopted in this part of the world. That’s brand evangelism at its best. And if one brand can do it, others can emulate it too.

• In order to show the real power of the N8 camera phone, a campaign was run whereby eight directors were chosen who were given two N8 phones each to showcase their creativity which was adjudged through a contest online. The campaign generated massive attraction not to mention great quality content proving the worth of N8.

 http://vimeo.com/25451551

• Nokia partnered with Disney for a brand alliance with their movie Tron Legacy. N8 sets custom-made for this movie were made. Then the website of Nokia was shown as to be hacked by the villain in Tron and you had to come up with the code to restore it. The message went viral so much so that people started tweeting in binary codes.
• Nokia also came up with a pink N8 campaign that we weren’t confident would be successful but turned out to be quite a smash courtesy some shrewd online tactics that went viral.

Q. Does all this hype and publicity stunts online really convert into sales? How do you measure that?

ü  Responses are definitely measured but it doesn’t mean we’re only monitoring the conversion rate. A giant screen is installed in the Nokia HQ which shows all the tweets, mentions, likes, comments etc being generated in the social media sphere. So a number of parameters are used to gauge the success of a campaign.

Q. How all of this is pertinent to Pakistan? We don’t have the same structure where a brand advocate can influence thousands of people online.

ü  There’s a guy in Lahore who already loves Nokia and has a huge following we’re going to surprise him by giving a free phone and all the information he needs to spread the word around in his social influence online. It doesn’t mean we’re bribing him to talk good about the brand. The guy already loves the brand. We’re just facilitating him so that he does what he’s already doing even better.

Q. How do you create brand advocates in rural areas? Majority of Pakistani market is rural, how do you apply the concept of brand advocates under those circumstances?

ü  We’re in the process of identifying and creating brand advocates in SEC C,D and E colleges who will then influence their peers. But yes, this strategy has limited penetration and we are looking at different models to penetrate the rural market which is about 80%.

Q. Why hasn’t Nokia Pakistan implemented this strategy if it’s so sure of its effectiveness?

ü  There are certain business reasons I cannot disclose that we have to follow the traditional marketing practices. However, the fact that I’m presenting these techniques to you does mean that I myself am going to follow them. Maybe we’ve already started doing it and my presentation today maybe part of that plan to influence you.

TO BE CONTINUED IN THE NEXT PART………..

No related posts.

To be fair to Honda, they did come up with a stylish City whose front was akin to Accord, precisely what the consumers liked to see. But it didn’t work out the way Honda intended to do. There were two major reasons:

One is the pervasive false notion, ‘We have a great product, and it will sell by itself.’ If that were the case, why would celebrity brands like Pepsi and Coke still be spending billions of dollars on marketing? Why would Unilever be spending a fortune on Lux Style Awards? Why would Toyota launch an aggressive campaign for the new Corolla in spite of the fact that the old model was doing good?

‘Marketing is the battle of perceptions, not products’.   Al-Ries

The best Honda did was launch a subdued print campaign and a direct marketing campaign, which by the looks of the sales figures didn’t do much good.

The second equally criminal reason was to do with a number of smaller glitches that combined to create one big negative impact. This included the look of its backlights, the sort of a pentagonal shape that consumers just didn’t like. A consumer survey beforehand would have rectified this problem in the design stage. Another glitch was the quality of the buttons used on the dashboard. A Honda fanatic fan alleged that the quality of the onboard panel was no better than the Chinese SUV brand GoNow.

If you just look at the sales comparison of Honda City and Toyota Corolla for the month of July last year and the one previous to it, you couldn’t help but gape at the yawning gap between the results of the two. In 2008 in the month of July, City sales were 625 when the old model was still there and last July the sales increased to just 686, a mere 10% growth. Even if you include the Civic sales for the sake of equivalent comparison since Corolla is the equivalent of both City and Civic, the total Honda sales went up from 1025 to 1140, a 10% growth.

Automotive brand-wise sales growth comparison

city-civic vs corolla graph

Coming to Corolla, sale was a mere 298 in July 2008, last year July it rocketed to 3,124 units, that’s a staggering 948% increase in sales!  (All sales figures are courtesy PAMA).

honda vs toyota sales comparison

Honda city vs Toyota corolla sales graph

The last two years’ sales have been analyzed because they present a clearer picture of the before-and-after difference between the launch of the new models.

Such stellar sales performance is unprecedented in the history of automobile industry in Pakistan. Do you really think this unbelievable gap is due to the difference in quality and performance of Corolla and City?

Do you really think that Corolla is that much better to drive than City or Civic for that matter? Even if it is (though I doubt it would be), is there a mammoth 948% difference between the two?

No. Not by a long shot. It all lies in the perception in the mind of the consumer. And the brutal truth is that Toyota was better able to influence the consumer with its marketing effort. The amazing thing is, all this happened without the consumer even test-driving the brand, they were that much awed by the branding communication. Honda on the other hand gave ample opportunities to test-drive the new City and yet the sales didn’t pick up as much as was expected. This real-world example again lends credibility to the adage coined by the venerable Al Ries:

‘Marketing is the battle of perceptions, not products’.

And remember that the new Toyota launch campaign is not a great one by any stretch of the imagination. This just goes on to show how poorly its competitors are faring at marketing their cars.

Toyota has communicated its brand positioning in every Tom, Dick and Harry publication. The other day I received a magazine called Slogan I didn’t even know existed – and right at the back cover is the new Corolla in all its glory. To Toyota’s credit, they have inculcated all the three elements of the Brand Value Pyramid (proposed by Scott) – features, benefits and values. And one of the features is that it is ‘Ipod Ready’! Pretty impressive.

On the radio, they targeted the upscale albeit young segment by sponsoring the Evening Drive Show on CityFM89 and offering tickets to the Cold Play concert in Dubai as prize for those answering a couple of audaciously simple questions. It can be said that the sort of people who actually listen to Cold Play are predominantly the youth segment which hardly qualifies as target material for Toyota. It is thus no surprise that the winner was a young bloke who although would be grateful to the Toyota people for giving him such a fantastic experience, doubt would be rushing to the nearest Toyota dealer to get his hands on the new Corolla. He just doesn’t have the wallet for it. It’s basic consumer behavior fallacy- trying to target those who desire your brand but can’t afford it.

Then there’s a positive review of the car by Umair Mohsin published in AutoMark magazine. Whether that positive review about Corolla is independent or sponsored by Corolla is not known, but this much is known that Toyota did provide the car to the reviewer (the Altis Cruisetronic) for testing purpose.

Remember that whatever has been discussed is entirely based on the positioning of the two brands. No stock has been taken of the actual performance of these two brands – the ‘driveability’ of them. Why Toyota is preferred in rural areas. Is it because its body is almost one foot higher from the ground while Honda is much lower, or is it because the off-road grip of Toyota is better than Honda? All this has happened without the consumer taking into account the flat floor of Corolla at the back due to redesign of the torsion beam or the improved ability of Corolla to stabilize after passing over a pot hole or to maneuver around corners.

There’s also the general perception that the Pakistani consumer prefers the aerodynamic shape more than any other feature. While a segment of the market may prefer that, it’s hard to believe that the overwhelming majority values that feature the most. If that were the case, wouldn’t Kia’s Spectra be selling like hot cakes by now? That car had the sleekest aerodynamic design until Civic Reborn came along. Unfortunately for Dewan Motors, that was the only worthwhile similarity Spectra had with Reborn.

Honda City is sleeker than Toyota Corolla and yet Honda has been unable to command a price premium over it. Delving into the intricacies of the design aspect requires another in-depth article.

Coming to the SUV line extension of the two brands, even here Toyota has done much better by aggressively promoting its rather extensive line of sub-brands, from Terios to Prado to Hi-lux to the new Fortuner. Compared to Toyota’s arsenal, Honda has just one SUV in the region – CR-V, and you would be hard pressed to find the car either in the world of advertising or in the real world as far as Pakistan is concerned. Pakistanis can take a leaf out of their Indian counterparts notebook with regard to their shrewd strategy of placing the Honda CRV in the movie ‘Wake Up Sid’. It’s not a new strategy by any stretch of the imagination as Hollywood has been indulging in these sort of tactics since time immemorial, but they are still effective. What was so admirable about this particular instance was that the car was used by the lead character in having the time of his life along with his friends. What’s more, the character is played by the latest heartthrob Ranbir Kapoor. Although the movie wasn’t a phenomenal success at the box office, it did  manage to strike a chord with the youth.

So when you put two and two together, you get one hell of a cool association for the Honda SUV. Whether this was intentional or accidental is not known, but it sure worked.

This is the sort of subtle advertising Honda Pakistan needs to indulge in. This movie which has been well received in Pakistan as well has already shown which segment to target and what ought to be the brand persona of the SUV.

Let’s have a brief look at the effects (or lack thereof) of marketing on the finances of the two brands.

Here are the snapshots of the profit and loss statement taken from the annual report of Honda and Toyota. Just look at the yawning gap between the two. Why has Honda done terribly bad? A Rs.401.8 million loss when your competitor has reaped a whopping net profit of Rs. 1.39 Billion in exactly the same period and circumstances should cause a pandemonium in the Honda dugout.  And this happened in spite of the fact that Toyota pays more royalty than Honda, about Rs.490 million, while Honda pays Rs.287 million.

honda profit loss statement

toyota profit loss statement

Here’s the comparative analysis of the financial statement.

Honda toyota financial war

But misdirected marketing strategy is not the only reason for this state of affairs. The thing is, Honda is focusing a bit too much on the Euro Compliance. All it’s efforts are directed towards making its brand more environmentally friendly by introducing ever new technologies. The problem is, leading a ‘Green’ lifestyle maybe the ‘in’ thing in the First World, in our part of the world the masses don’t give two hoots about the environment. They want cheaper cars with more gadgets and gizmos. Period.

And Toyota is giving them what they want, while Honda is investing its precious capital in something that does not add value in the consumer’s reality.

So what’s the best thing Honda can do under the circumstances? Well, it’s a bit late for an aggressive launch campaign similar to what Toyota did. One thing they can do to good effect is the use of the blogosphere.

Lately, Honda has been focusing on BTL activities more. There was a press stunt where the members of the press were invited for a test drive of the new City. A good idea. Now they need to turn this good idea into a great one. And the internet is the best place for a viral BTL stunt.

How? First they need to find a blogger who is a popular opinion leader. Whatever he says about some brand becomes the voice of his audience. Then they need to give this guy (or girl) a City to test drive, not for a day, week or month but for at least six months, twelve months preferable. Now give this person free reign to write whatever he wants to about his experience with this car. If Honda is confident about the superior quality and performance of their car over Corolla so much so that they didn’t even bother to have a proper launch plan, then they shouldn’t have anything to worry about.

Of course, the tester blogger will have some flaws to report about the car, but then no car is perfect. In fact having the opinion leader reveal the flaws (which ought to be few, if the car is that good as claimed by Honda) would convince the consumers that Honda hasn’t bought the blogger and whatever he’s reporting really is the ground reality.

Believe me, the way news spread on the internet, Honda would have an unprecedented viral campaign reaching every nook and corner of the cyberspace in no time. And at what cost? Just the cost of a single Honda City. This much amount is spent on advertising on a full page in a major newspaper, and that lasts for how long? A single day. And even then, not every possible member of the target market gets to see it.

Of course Honda could argue that even with this BTL Blog campaign, much of the target market would not get targeted. And they’re right, to some extent.  And they aren’t for two reasons.

They are right because not everyone with money in his pockets have jumped onto the internet bandwagon lock, stock and barrel. Their idea of the internet is checking mail and checking the KSE (Karachi Stock Exchange) website. Period.

And they are wrong because of the following two reasons.

One, many accomplished executives have not only  jumped onto the blog bandwagon, they actively scourge the blogosphere to find out what other bloggers are talking about. Whatever is happening in that world, they do get influenced by it.

Second, blogs have taken over Google. For some reason, Google just loves blogs. Whenever you search for something on Google, the top ten result Google returns more often than not lead to blog websites. (This narrows Honda’s search to a blogger who’s  popular in the blogosphere).  Now, which search engine do most Pakistanis use for searching anything on the internet? Google.

This essentially means that anyone looking for some information on Honda City will be directed by Google to this blogger’s website who’s writing about his experience using Honda City. Whatever he says about City would become the talk of town in no time.

Remember, it’s just the cost of a City car. This much amount can be spent on a couple of print ads, or it can be spent for generating goodwill about the car on the internet, where it will remain forever for all to see. What more can you ask for?

At the end of the testing period, Honda can either choose to take away the car from the blogger or it can let him keep the car. Choosing the latter option would again result in lasting goodwill. If the strategy achieves the phenomenal success it is slated to achieve, Honda can go for multiple bloggers.

A twist can be introduced by Honda to the proceedings by giving the blogger incentive for praising the car. If the blogger is able to generate substantial goodwill or even sales for the City, Honda would offer him cash prizes or even let him keep the car. This arrangement may be construed to lie in the grey zone of ethics, but in the world of subtle marketing, much worse has happened.

This innovative and rather daring tactic hasn’t been used as yet, (to the best of my knowledge) and it’s effectiveness will last for only so long. Once every brand starts to make use of bloggers as marketing and publicity tools, consumers will slowly lose confidence in the authenticity of it. But for now, it’s a golden opportunity for any daring brand. Can Honda be that daring brand?

Branding. It has been written off by some as a mere abstract concept devoid of any measurable output while some has exalted it to the status of a deity wasting millions in its name (think Pakistan telecom industry).

But if done correctly keeping in mind the immutable laws of branding, the result is a remarkable boost in the sales for the long haul. Corolla’s sales performance, however dazzling it may be, is short-term after all. If Corolla can deliver this result consistently over a period of 3-5 years, only then can it be deemed a successful branding endeavor.

Chances of that happening are not that bright owing to what has already been discussed – Toyota is trying to be everything to all people with just one branded shape. In the long run, it just doesn’t work..

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First, a little about the ‘The Second Floor’. The Second Floor now rechristened as the T2F 2.0 is the brainchild of Sabeen Mahmud, a sort of a social entrepreneur. The brand is positioned to be a haven for intellectual pursuits, from book-reading to Singing workshops to Entrepreneurial seminars, it aims to be in the thick of creative endeavors of the city.

This session was coordinated by Jehan Ara, the president of PASHA in the absence of Sabeen Mahmood.

Here are the highlights of what transpired at the event:

(Shahjehan kicked off his presentation with the famous social media video that has become the norm at all such events:

• How many users are there on Facebook in Pakistan?
• About 1 million and the numbers are increasing exponentially.

• That’s the paradigm shift in cyberspace. With the proliferation of social media platforms, news spread instantly, virally and exponentially.
• I can try any brand and then blog about it and hundreds of people would know about it right away.

• A product can make or break by a single post from the user because everyone is connected to everyone else.

• Social media has stirred changes in publication in the following way:
  • Publish:  Infinite as opposed to few
  • Comment: Feedback as opposed to Monologue
  • Share: Viral as opposed to limited distribution

• If HBL for instance provides unpleasant customer service to just one person like me, I can spread negative word of mouth in the online arena and within no time HBL will have a serious problem just because of one disgruntled customer.

• However, you just cannot write something about a brand or a person and get away with it. When you are writing for a publication in the real world, credibility is neither established nor wiped away instantly, but online the entire world can comment on your article and everyone else can see what the others have said about it. So credibility is quickly built up or destroyed virally solely by the commentators of the article who themselves may not be the experts.

• As an entrepreneur if you are thinking what am I going to say to my customers online, then you are asking the wrong question. What the customers are saying about you is a more pertinent question.
• How to create enormous value for your business at virtually zero cost is a real possibility and ought to be the ultimate aim of any business aiming to use social media.

• T-Shirt Wars (Showed the video on Youtube) is a video made by a couple of budding entrepreneurs on a shoe-string budget and yet it has been able to generate enormous interest, having 4 million views to date.

• In contrast brands like Mobilink and Telenor spend crores to generate the same level of interest.

• The new mantra is to create an experience around your brand to engage the consumer instead of just communicating the message which is a fundamental flaw of marketing of today’s era that communication wins customers.

• The fundamental mistake of advertising is that repetition works. Of media is that content is king.

• Offering a platform to the consumer to interact and engage in the brand, generating his own content along the way is the new age strategy.

• Facebook is most effective in spreading information because of the news feed feature. Anything one person updates or writes about gets permeated to all the connected people. But the new itself ought to be enticing enough so that people pass that down to their connections.
• Coke Studio was a culturally relevant product which appealed to this connected world, becoming a mega-hit in the social media sphere and not because it was produced by Coke.

• In networked markets where there are hundreds of thousands of blogs, e-zines and what not on every topic under the sun, the commodity which will be the most scarce is Attention. You get the attention of the consumer and you’ve made it in the new world. Hence this is the age of Attention Economy.

• The best way to get the attention of your target market is to engage them in something that excites them. Threadless, a small start-up was able to do just that by offering customers the opportunity to design their own shirts which threadless would then manufacture.

• Daily Fashionist is doing well on Facebook having made 70,861 fans.

• However, as a small start-up don’t expect to reach this number anytime soon and that also without spending money. If you want to be popular on Facebook having a large number of fans, you need to advertise on facebook.

• And without a huge number of fans, you cannot expect to create a viral campaign. Just don’t expect to create a facebook page, put all your friends on it as fans and expect to go viral any news you put in your network no matter how good it is.

• Until and unless you have at least thousands of fans for your brand, you cannot create a viral campaign on Facebook.

• The good news is that advertising on Facebook in Pakistan is extremely cheap. For just a $100 or so, you can generate a lot of fans provided you advertise the right way. Instead of directing your target market to your website, you should direct them to your facebook profile and urge them to become a fan. That way you can stay connected to them and entice them with good offers as opposed to making them visit your website where they’ll just visit once and forget about it.

• Also while creating the ad campaign on facebook, choose the CPC (Cost per click) instead of CPM (Cost per impressions) because by choosing the former you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. In the latter option you would have to pay for every impression generated which is a waste of money because if you bid too low, facebook won’t show the stats of the impressions that your ad got.

• Also while choosing the target audience, don’t choose the sex. For instance if you choose female, chances are you’ll end up with a very low turnout. It’s best to choose all options under Pakistan. That way you’ll have the maximum possible reach.

• On an average expect to pay Rs. 3 to 10 per fan. But that can wary enormously depending upon a number of variable. For instance a brand about fashion and style is going to generate a lot of fan following because these are the topics dear to the Pakistani heart especially women.

• Facebook advertising in Europe and USA is very expensive, and if the same rates are applied here as well, then you would be better off using the traditional modes of marketing.

• Remember that fans on facebook do not necessarily translate into sales. You have to engage the fans in a meaningful way for you to cajole the fans into buying your brand.

• Twitter although an effective viral tool in the world is not so in Pakistan because not many people here use it. You need to have a critical mass on a particular platform for it to be effective. Until more Pakistanis embrace, it won’t.

• The same goes for Youtube. Do a search for Pakistani videos on Youtube and you would be hard pressed to find a single meaningful one. That’s because Pakistanis are not that active on Youtube and most of the videos they themselves refer are foreign videos.

This was just a brief account of what Shahjahan presented at that talk.

Now, the brand valuation of the brand that is Shahjahan Chaudhary. Shahjahan is one of those budding entrepreneurs that are specialist in a field that didn’t even exist a few years ago. But he’s sensible enough to know that promoting yourself the traditional way in the real world is still the best possible strategy. Giving presentations and interacting with people face to face still reigns supreme, and he’s capitalizing on that to build his personal brand.

However, he does need to spruce up his presentation style. Nothing wrong with his delivery or confidence, it’s just that his presentation sounded more like a lecture in the university rather than an allusive speech on social media. Captivating the audience for two hours straight is no child’s play, and to capture their attention even for brief moments of time within that time frame is no mean task. He was able to do it for small bouts interspersed in dull passages of time, which was evident from the audience’s body language.

To be fair he did manage to engage the audience in the dying moments of the workshop and ended on a high note. Plus he was candid enough to state the ground reality about facebook instead of raising it to the altar of invincible success. He was forthright about the pitfalls and limitations of facebook and other social media tools which most other ‘social mediapreneurs’ won’t tell you about. He even explained about how to advertise on facebook on your own instead of seeking his help.

What he needs to do is instead of just explaining things like ‘being honest is going to be effective in the social media sphere’ or giving hypothetical examples, give concrete examples. The shirt wars and threadless were good examples. He needs to inundate his presentation with such examples, giving an example for each point he’s making, preferably even giving examples from his own experience. People warm up to you when they hear about your own success or failure story.

Shahjahan got off to a good start showing the famous social media video, but then he launched in a sort of monotonous lecture devoid of real-world cases. Even the slides were bland at most.  The slideshow is available on slideshare. Judge it yourself.

The thing is, if you lose your audience in the first five minutes, you’ve lost them forever.

To Shahjahan’s credit he managed to recapture his audience to an extent. And every time he piqued the interest of his audience, it was either due to a real example or a pragmatic way to boost up their business, and that’s exactly what he should be doing for majority of his presentation.

The most mindboggling thing about this whole event is its lack of coverage, let alone mainstream media, even online. The most amazing thing is that there’s no post-event review even on the organizers’ websites, t2f 2.0, PASHA or on Jehan Ara’s blog even though she seemed to be filming the whole event. There’s no video on Youtube.  Then there were quite a few people from the media side including Dawn and Synergizer yet no one bothered to cover the event online.Maybe there is some sort of mention of it in the dark recesses of the net, which is as good as non-existent.

Then Shahjehan has a blog of his own by the name of Billion Dollar Workshop which he seems to have abandoned after just a single post more than two years ago. If he’s not going to be using it anymore, he ought to completely delete it instead of letting it stay in a state of limbo because it’s showing in the search results. You don’t want any material floating around that doesn’t augment the brand image that you are trying to project, not if you can help it.

Bottom-line: You need to capitalize on every available opportunity to promote your brand even if it’s just a presentation in the real world or a blog in the virtual world.

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To become a great brand, it will have to do a whole lot more than what it is doing right now. Let’s first see what it has been up to. If you want to get a feel of what sort of goodies they are offering, head over to Restaurants Uncut analysis.

There’s no doubt that Studio Café is far ahead of any café or restaurant in Pakistan in terms of its marketing endeavors. Except maybe OPTP (One Potato Two Potato) which has actually come up with an app for Facebook which enables it to conduct contests and offer prizes in terms of OPTP goodies.

Studio Café has a presence on Facebook, and a favorable one but it hasn’t gone to the extent that OPTP has done. But it sure is able to generate quite a following there with a whopping 1,227 fans and counting. And the reason it has been able to do that is because it keeps itself relevant and updated to the latest happening. Come Valentine’s Day, it tailored itself to that. Then when the U-19 Pakistan cricket team got to the finals of the World Cup, it offered a cup of free coffee per table if Pakistan won the Finals, and it communicated this with the help of a poster on Facebook. Someone asked whether it’s one cup per table or per person. So it would have been better had they offered one cup per person. That would have provided more motivation than just one cup. I mean it’s only coffee and not one of their main entrees. And anyway, Pakistan didn’t win and so the offer didn’t materialize.

By and large people on Facebook seems to be quite happy with what they are offering, so Studio Café has a real time feedback system and should be able to tell them if they do something horribly wrong. That does not mean they shouldn’t have a feedback card in place at the café which they don’t. People will usually not remember any small foibles by the management enough to comment on it later on facebook but they may well remember it in their subconscious, enough not to come back. That’s one area where they need improving.

Then although they have created a Twitter account and they have not written a single Tweet since the place opened shop on 6^th December. Can you believe that? Twitter has become one of the most effective viral tools on the net and Studio Café is just keeping it dormant. They need to focus on it more. But what can they do with it? Same thing they are doing with Facebook. If they have a special offering, they should tweet it. Although they seem to be having seven followers on Twitter, on closer inspection you will notice that at least five of them are just spam accounts. So it needs to ensure that it has proper followers on Twitter.

The wisest thing Studio Café has done is promote the brand on karachisnob.com. Karachi Snob is fast becoming the online hub of eating houses both for the restaurateurs and the consumers. Not only that but if you Google any restaurant, chances are its going to be mentioned on the top 10 results courtesy Karachi snob. And Karachisnob does do a great job of promoting a food joint, taking brilliant snapshots of that place to create a virtual tour which it showcases along with the general description as well as the menu of the restaurant.

They even have a presence on Youtube, but a five second clip containing a solitary image does not make for a good Youtube video by any stretch of the imagination. And this was uploaded by them as part of the publicity hype before the opening. They need to add more material there. But what?

It could make a video clip showcasing the portraits that they have taken, taking permission from the people whose snapshot is taken of course. Nine times out of ten people will be eager to be shown on Youtube looking their best. So that shouldn’t post much of a problem.

Studio Cafe

The biggest shortcoming of Studio Café to date is the absence of a website of their own. Sure they have a tremendous presence on karachisnob but karachisnob only offers this focus for a limited time and it costs money each time you want to be highlighted. Once that period expires, you are left with nothing, like it happened with The Original Crepe Factory. Sure there is facebook but facebook cannot compete with a proper website in terms of reach. Studio Café needs that badly before the arrangement expires on karachisnob.

Then if they can manage it, a blog to go with the website providing the details of the latest happenings as well as any new product they are introducing, what were the challenges they faced in coming up with that product and how great they think it’s going to turn out. They can even propose a free sampling of the new product, say between 7 to 8 pm only on a specific Monday. That will not only catch the fancy of the target market but ensure it doesn’t cost a fortune by severely limiting the free period range.

Which brings us to their menu. They have a pretty limited menu compared to the competitors, but it’s a good thing. Branding laws state that you can never be everything to everyone so why waste the energy? Instead of trying to offer everything under the sun, offer just a few items but focus on making them the best stuff the customer is going to taste that part of the town.

But this does not mean they should keep the menu static. Far from it. They need to keep coming with new and innovative dishes which they can promote on their blog, website, facebook and most importantly, within their café.. They could either put it on a blackboard or make a small plaque advertising the new hot stuff. It’s nothing new, most of the big brands like Copper Kettle and Arizona Grill indulge in it, and it’s worth emulating. You need to make the customer coming back for more by tempting him with new exciting recipes.

Studio Café is taking maximum advantage of the promotion on karachisnob by including the product of their studio section as well along with the food snaps. But the snaps are almost all wedding portraits, which gives the impression that they only offer wedding portraits. What they need to do is show off a couple of casual photographs as well to show that you don’t need to snap a photo only on a wedding occasion, but you can make every occasion a memorable one and savor it by getting your group photographed.

And they would do well to showcase their studio packages as well on karachinob just like what they have done with the menu. In fact they need to showcase these to the diners as well who come to the place, especially the first-timers. The management is assuming that whoever walks into the café is already aware of the three different offerings of the place. Never assume, especially in this business.

What they can do is create a master menu which offers the three services: dinner, sheesha and photograph, and then have individual menus for them. In fact, give all the three menus to the customers so that while they’re indulging in one service, they can be tempted to try the other two services as well.

We for instance didn’t know about the different offerings of the place and just stayed at the diner lounge because that was where we were seated by the waiter in the first place. During the course of our stay, no one from the management approached us whether we would like to get our group photographed. And that is a serious blunder. Don’t pester the customer but at least let him know what other things you’re offering and what are the price points, then leave him to decide on his own.

All in all, Studio Café has done a good job of promoting the place especially online. Just Google it and you would find the top 10 results not only mentioning the place but highly in favor of it. But, and there’s always a but, it needs to further jazz up its marketing especially in the first two years of its life. Remember the happening café Caffeine near MacDonald Sea View which used to offer pretty much the same things as Studio Café minus the photography part. Well, it’s no more.

Another rumor doing the rounds is that the whole Khayaban-e-Shahbaz strip on which Studio Café is situated is jinxed. Grapevine has it that quite a few restaurants opened on this strip, did roaring business for the first three months, and then all of a sudden ceased to exist. Studio Café will have to guard against this trend, even talk to the previous entrepreneurs who opened shop here to find out what precisely what went wrong with their business.

Getting off to a rollicking start is a good measure of whether the place will survive for long. But it’s not an absolute measure as Caffeine cafe found out the hard way.

If you want to get a feel of their sumptuous factor, head over to Restaurants Uncut.

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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.

The second reason it can be deemed a full-fledged branded radio channel is its shrewd marketing strategies which woo the top brands to it in spite of the fact that it’s target base is nothing compared to channels like FM103 and FM100.

A.C Nielsen FM channel research

A.C Nielsen fm channel research

Not the most popular channel, huh? And yet it has been able to make brands want a piece of it. That’s the ultimate aim of any branding endeavor – to make your consumer crave for your brand. Whether the underlying reason for this change of fortune is its marketing manager Munizeh Sanai or someone else is not known.

But exactly how they are making it happen? By coming up with branding ventures that are cost-effective and yet appealing enough for the target market. For instance there was the ColdPlay Concert Tickets contest sponsored by the new Toyota Corolla, then there was the Valentine’s brand campaign ‘Have love, Will travel’.

The latest to hit the market is the ‘Spotlight’ : The Chance to become Pakistan’s next singing sensation sponsored by Nokia’s 5230.

But the event under scrutiny in this article is the ‘Win a Macbook’ Contest, the prize for which is a MacBook. Now they haven’t mentioned which one of Apple’s laptop they are referring to, whether it’s a high end product or just a low end one, but then a MacBook is a MacBook and of all the prizes offered by CityFM89 till now, this one looks to be the most lucrative of all.

Win a Macbook on CityFM89

Normally CityFM89 doesn’t advertise their contests much over the boob-tube or even the print media, confining themselves to just the radio medium and the website. This time however, they went one step ahead and made a small TVC which they placed on, guess where, Dawn News channel, their sister concern. It makes perfect sense, considering they probably didn’t have pay a single penny for this endeavor. The only problem is, there is a disparity between where the target market is likely to be found and the placement of the ad. The target market is primarily the teenagers and at most 20something. Now these segments are unlikely to be watching Dawn News. Even if they do, they do it for very brief interval of time, and considering the frequency of the Macbook ad, chances are they are going to miss it altogether. A far better option would have been to target channels like Aag, Play TV, Oye TV, The Musik and the likes. That would have cost money, but then there’s a cost for everything.

The reason we are emphasizing so much on the penetration of the ad is that the contest hasn’t caught on in spite of the allure of the Macbook. The biggest indicator of this lack of response is the fact that the management of CityFm89 has extended the deadline for the submission of entries to more than 1 month, from 5^th February to 15^th March. Now that is something very strange. Even stranger is the fact that even now CityFm89 hasn’t increased the frequency of the TVC on Dawn News.

The reason CityFm89 didn’t really pour money into the contest popularity was the fact that they were banking on word of mouth online to spread the news around. And they pretty much covered most bases online to make it happen. Just Google the phrase and you’ll get an idea of how much interest the contest has generated in cyberspace. The epicenter of this interest online is Facebook.

And yet, something has not gone right. Either that or  CityFm89 was expecting an overwhelming response to this campaign and the result, although good enough, is not enough for the management of CityFm89. After all, they are dishing out a MacBook as a prize. They probably want more bang for their buck.

It could be, the response hasn’t been dazzling not because the marketing strategy was flawed but because the contest itself hasn’t tickled the fancy of the target market. So what exactly is the contest?

Basically, the participant has to unleash his creativity and submit a unique story that could fit into one A4 size paper. It could be anything – story, article, poetry, illustration – anything at all, provided it is not plagiarized. 20 top entries will be included in a publication while the winner amongst this lot would get the Macbook. This contest was to coincide with the International Storytelling Week starting from 26^th January.

On the face of it, it does appear attractive enough, but maybe the consumers who are being targeted are too lethargic to probe their brain for even a single page of creative expression. Or maybe people have responded alright, it’s just the responses have been either below par, crude or plain obscene  to be published. There could be a myriad reasons why the CityFm89 people had to go to the extreme of extending the deadline by more than a month.

Yes, the marketing strategy is good but it’s not great. If you take just the online tactics, CityFm89 could have done a whole lot more. With most of the social media tools virtually free, they should have created accounts specifically geared for this branded contest on most of them instead of just confining themselves to Facebook. Even on Facebook there was no dedicated page for it.

A Twitter presence is a must these days. Then there’s the now old-fashioned but still popular blogging platform. Ideally, the management of CityFm89 should get hold of a popular blogger to carry this out so that he reaches the maximum possible number of people in the blogosphere.

But what would be posted on this blog. How about the entries itself? Make it interactive. Get people to vote for the entries and pass judgment on them. Right now the participants have no way of knowing what their competition is like. By looking at what other people are contributing will not only help them get an idea of where do they stand, but also galvanize them into action.

Then all those bookmarking services Stumbleupon and Digg and what not will also come into play big time. There have been a little bit coverage in the blogosphere but the top bloggers have chosen to either ignore it or they don’t even know about it.

One more thing the CityFm89 people could have done was offer some sort of consolation prizes for the top 20 contributors instead of just confining the prize for the number 1 spot. They could still do it. Just approach a couple of brands to sponsor these prizes and the contest’s attractiveness will increase exponentially. Nothing big or expensive.

Ask Pizza Hut/Domino’s/Papa John’s to dish out a couple of pizzas to 2-3 winners, ask swatch to give a couple of watches, ask Audionic to give a couple of MP3 players, ask Jafferjees to dish out a couple of leather wallets, ask OPTP to give away a couple of deals and voila, you have the prizes for the winners at no extra cost, other than mentioning the sponsors in the communication material.

And a youtube presence of the TVC is a must.

All in all, the concept is a novel one and Pakistanis need these sort of platforms for their creative outlet. What’s amazing is that no major brand has come forward to sponsor and promote this contest.

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Why would you expect this viral campaign to go big?

There are a number of reasons for that. One, it is being conducted by Nestle, the largest MNC (Revenue-wise, surpassing even Unilever) operating in Pakistan. Secondly it is being simultaneously conducted on the viral networks of today, viz. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, augmented by a dedicated website 7days1night. Thirdly, and more importantly, there are an estimated 2 million online users in Pakistan, more than 500,000 of which are on Facebook. Nestle’s campaign falls way short of  this number. How do we know that? The evidence is right there in the number of comments the website has received (about 6,200) as well as the number of Facebook members which stands at a mere 5,438 members.

nestle fruita vitals-facebook

nestle fruita vitals-twitter

nestle fruita vitals-youtube

nestle fruita vitals-website

But even if you ignore these figures, how many people do you know who spend a majority of their time online knew about this event? Many of my net-savvy friends didn’t know about it. I deliberately search for such online events and even I almost missed it.

The premise is simple enough. You need to state why you should be the one to be adjudged the winner. The interesting thing is you can give as many reasons as you want, but no two reasons should be posted within five minutes of each other. The even was divided into two parts, the winner of the first stage got an Ipod Touch and the second stage winner got to have an HP Notebook in addition to a limo ride and dinner with six friends.

This pretty much ensures that each and every visitor spends a lot of time on the site and brand profile pages on facebook and twitter. Simple but cunning nonetheless.

The other thing surprising about this event is that it hasn’t caused any major ripples in the blogosphere. Apart from Teeth Maestro and ProPakistani, no one has really bothered about it. Even both these bloggers have just posted the most basic of information.

If you google the phrase nestle fruita vitals, most of the results reflect material posted on the net by Nestle itself. Not many independent reviews, unfortunately for Nestle. In fact, even most of the independent reviews are just reverberations of Teeth Maestro’s post.

So, is it a failure? Not really. It all depends upon the goals set by the brand manager Beenish Pervaiz. If her goal was to target a particular niche of young people, and the interaction was more important than the penetration, then it may be construed as a success. It all depends upon the perception and objectives of the people running the show.

It won’t figure prominently in the list of top viral campaigns, that’s for sure. The Lays Chips Haram controversy was more viral than this even though it was merely spread through email which then got picked up by the bloggers. But then it had more time to ‘germinate’ than this one. After all, a couple of weeks is too short a time to spread the word, even if it is online.

To Nestle’s credit, all the communication material online is immaculately thought out and designed including the Facebook profile. The one thing missing is the lack of Facebook applications.

Remember Burger King and their double whopper application on facebook where you could get a free whopper for sacrificing your facebook contacts? This innocuous tactic spread like wildfire in the online community so much so that Facebook had to step in and shut it down.  This was an ideal opportunity for Nestle to do something along those lines.

And these viral events really get you thinking what are the essential ingredients of a successful viral campaign? Here is Nestle, a giant of an MNC which has come up with a pretty safe campaign strategy which encompasses all the electronic media, and yet it doesn’t achieve the magnitude of an epidemic outbreak which, let alone organizations, mere individuals have been able to attain.  

Remember the ‘Numa Numa’ video (fat kid dancing) on Youtube? That video has been viewed over 900 million times all over the world and has made a star out of that guy. His investment was a  computer, internet connection and a webcam. He comes nowhere even close to the effort and time and money put in by Nestle. So what gives?

If Nestle’s aim was to nurture brand evangelists, then this campaign which concluded two days ago was right on target. The winner along with his six friends is definitely going to have a stupendous experience which he’ll associate with the brand, and hopefully stay loyal and vocal about the brand for life, unless of course, things don’t go wrong terribly.

Pakistani marketers have had some good success with their online campaigns like the Samsung Treasure Hunt, but none so far have matched the viral speed of the controversial emails that spring up in the Pakistanis’ inboxes from time to time.

It’s high time that some brand came along that swept the whole nation off its cyber feet. And it better be something positive.

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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?

In a nutshell, the story is about a group of friends whose friendship lasts unscathed beyond the college days. The group is dominated by Jay aka ‘Rats’ (Imran Khan) and Aditi aka ‘Meow’ (Geledina D’Souza), two inseparable individuals who don’t think they are in love until they start going out with other people. It’s a rehashed story as easy as they come in Bollywood. There are no twists and turns and the ending is predictable even for a three-year old.

Although the Indian consumer seems to have an insatiable appetite for romantic chick flicks, many such movies bomb at the box office. And yet Jaane Tu was able to break through the clutter.

There are no hot shots to enthrall the audience apart from cameos from veterans like Naseeruddin Shah, Parish Rawal, Arbaz and Shahbaz Khan.

What gives then? It’s the infectuous and the eccentric chemistry of the Group with all its nuances and innuendos that carries the day for the movie. The direction is good, but without this particular group dynamics, the movie would have fallen flat on its face. It’s the aura permeated by the characters that they’re really having the time of my lives which rubs off on the audience, and not just the antics of the hero and the heroine.

And therein lies the lesson for any marketer looking to make its BTL activity resonate with the heartstrings of the consumer. Remember the contrasting BTL activities of Minute Maid and Zong and how Zong came out to be more successful in spite of the fact that its presentation wasn’t as immaculate as the Minute Maid’s?

The same principle was at work there. Zong had hired a number of youngsters who appeared to gel well with each other and looked to be enjoying themselves. Their positive group dynamics projected a contagious aura on the consumers loitering nearby and they were drawn towards the group to inquire what the occasion was.

In short, any brand, and I mean any brand at all can hire a bunch of youngsters, make them dorn attires according to the brand essence of the brand to be projected, and then let them loose with the strict instructions to just enjoy themselves and be pleasant to anyone who approaches them. And Viola! You’ve got a successful BTL activity.

 Of course, you need to work upon the presentation and the embedding of the brand in that particular environment, but that in reality is a secondary consideration, contrary to what the BTL pundits would have you believe.

The movie didn’t offer only this lesson in branding. There were a few others as well. For instance did you notice how Coke was neatly embedded in one of the scenes? In fact it was so brilliantly and yet subtly promoted as a viable alternative to liquor when at the end-of-college party the fat friend dejected from Meow comes to the bar and asks for Coke – on the rocks – and the bartender responds with a straight face as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do.

The element so fascinating about this scene is that most of us as kids tried to emulate the drinking phenomenon we saw in the movies using Coke as an alternative. Coke was considered the best alternative because if you pour just a pint of it in the glass, it doesn’t look its usual color of dark brown but instead gives a yellowish orange glow, just what liquor looks like on the big screen.

This is not the first time brands have tried to embed neatly into the storyline of a Bollywood movie. Bachna Ae Haseeno had the main actor Rambhir Kapoor working on the development of a video game for Microsoft. So while Hollywood have had a great run embedding brands subtly into the plot lines for decades, Bollywood is just starting to copycat the phenomena like it is used to copying the entire scripts of Hollywood flicks. Is anyone from Lollywood listening?

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