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.

• 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.


Bushra Iqbal - Brand Manager Always

• It’s infinitely more difficult if it’s a Kiryana store because the girl don’t want to ask for the pad from the shopkeeper especially if there are other people around. She would risk coming later again rather than buying it then and there.
• To work around the problem we have started a 360 campaign that is customized for the target market.
• Since TVC is not the most effective medium in bringing home the message we have targeted those media where the girl is going to be the most receptive.
• Web surfing is largely a private activity so we have created a website www.alwaysgirl.com.pk where she can stay informed and be influenced without any fear or hassle.
• Then we have gone to the schools, educating teachers to educate the girls about the benefits of using Always.
• We have branded the washrooms and the canteens of a lot of girl schools especially in the public sector.
• We have put billboards and branded bus stands en route to girls schools and colleges.
• Then we had the branded TV show hosted by Marina Khan in which a select group of girls were asked to compete in a number of activities that tested there mental, physical and emotional response under duress.
• There was a worldwide market research to determine what women want the most with reference to the subject ‘ See the brighter side of your period with Always’. Different countries yielded different answers. In India it was empowerment, and since both India and Pakistan are very much alike we have adopted the theme of empowerment as well.
• Always is branded as Whisper on the eastern side of India and here as well. In India a campaign was launched with the Whisper brand in association with MTV India.

Questions from the audience:

Bushra Iqbal - Brand Manager Always

Q. You can’t empower women just by asking them to be bold enough to go out there and buy Always on their own. I have fourteen year old daughter and I buy this stuff for her and not she herself. That doesn’t mean she’s weak in any way.

A. By empowering we are exhorting the girls to accept their feminine side and to turn one of their weakest moments of the month i.e the period into something not only bearable but a springboard to something greater in life.

Opinion. The women you have shown in your ad represent roughly 1% of the Indian women. Most of the women have empowerment as the last thing on their mind considering the conditions they live in. Secondly there was a study conducted in India which found a steep rise in the sale of Always in one particular region was due to the farmers using the pads on their necks to absorb sweat rather than female population using it.

Instead of focusing on women, you could come up with a campaign which targets men and their attitude.

Marketing Pakistan to Youth –Qashif Effendi – CEO 180 degrees

• I’ll be talking about the brain drain that is occurring at an increasingly alarming pace in Pakistan. If all the bright minds are pulled away from the country whose going to run the country?
• I recently attended a conference at the Governor’s house in which heads of all major educational institutions of Pakistan were present. If these are the people who are going to be running our institutions in the future as well, then God help our country.
• We prize on sending our people on scholarships. Recently the HEC proudly announced that they had sent 560 people on scholarships. Only 60 came back.
• A student of mine told me that he was going to Australia for higher studies. I told him I was disappointed to hear the news. He was amazed I was the only one who was unhappy about this news.
• I’m working on a project to reverse this process and as part of that project recently persuaded five Pakistani luminaries – all esteemed Ph.Ds to come back to Pakistan and serve their country for a while.
• The problem with persuading the youth to stay back is what we are giving them here to make them stay. We don’t have gas, sugar, electricity and yet we want them to stay back.
• There’s a complete breakdown of law and order, inflation is soaring high and jobs are scarce and yet we want the youth to stay.
• Then they don’t have any role models. When I was young, Imran Khan was our role model and to me he’s the only real role model we have had in the last 50 years and yet what we have done with him. (shows a snap of Imran khan dragged away by a youth gang).
• Is Junaid Jamshed a role model? I last saw him recording a song for ARY, singing ‘Gori Bahain’. Something about a religious man with a beard singing that song just doesn’t cut it.
• We need institutions and role models to create an environment where the youth will be motivated to do something for their country by staying in the country.
• Two solutions I offer you. One read the book ‘Good to Great’ by Jim Collins. This should be your number one priority. The book proves with the help of empirical evidence how some modest companies with humble leaders were able to deliver sustained performance consistently over a 15 year period, and not one of these companies was amongst the Fortune 500 companies or had a hotshot leader.
• The book is based on a research and one of the insights accidentally discovered during it was the Level 5 leadership. One of the qualities of Level 5 leader is that when faced with success, he attributes it to his team and when faced with failure, he owns the responsibility.
• This characteristic is unheard of either in the corporate world or public sector of Pakistan. Pakistanis are prone to do the opposite and hence the dilapidated state of our affairs.
• The second thing I want you to do is read the last sermon of the Holy Prophet (SAWS) again. Apart from just two lines exhorting the ummah to pray, give alms and perform hajj, the entire sermon is focused on human values.
• We are failing as a nation because the laws enshrined by God are being violated by us with impunity. You break the laws of God and there’s a price to pay which we are paying on a regular basis.

MARKETING TO ADULTS

Amjad Shahabuddin - Change Manager Shell

Building Brand Affinity – Amjad Shahabuddin, Change and Engage Manager, Shell

• It is imperative that you know your brand’s trade route to market. All the branding won’t help if you don’t know the touch points along the way.
• You should have a proper chain for delivering the brand experience.
• Focus on the emotional and rational triggers to change and retain, the biggest being the heart and mind.
• Involve the target market as much as possible.
• Equip your marketing around the following factors:
  • • Share success stories
    • Focus on right levers
    • Use the buzz
    • Build confidence
    • Living in the market
    • Scenarios building
• Training is crucial, and so is repetition.
• Use a game of ‘Chinese Whispers’ to deliver the brand experience through the trade.

Question from the audience: Why Schumacher was used to endorse Shell Helix? How many people know about him in Pakistan?

A: Shell Helix is a new synthetic oil selling at a premium price and targeted towards the premium segment. So the target market we are trying to reach has every chance of knowing about him.

Aly Mustansir – EVP and Head of Brand Management HBL

Aly Mustansir -Brand Management Head HBL

• What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear adult marketing?
• A guy was trying to sell tickets for a movie show but was getting nowhere. Suddenly he had an idea and wrote something on the wall. Immediately there was a rush and in no time he had sold all the tickets. He had only written ‘For Adults only’ on the wall.
• Marketers tend to treat adults as adults in their marketing communication focusing on the rationality of it all.
• In reality, adults are living in a dead serious world with overly serious issues and stuff and the only way they cope with it is through fantasies.
• A myth breaker – the average age of a Pakistani online gamer is 33 years.
• 70% of Generation X(27-44) and 44% of Baby Boomers own a PS3, Nintendo WII or Xbox.
• Reality Shows are the reverse of that. They are actually FRE (Formatted Reality Experience) geared towards facilitating fantasy role playing in adults.
• All the Reality Shows like ‘Big Brother’, ‘Survivor’ and all fall under this category.
• In short adults need fantasies to cope with  the real world.
• (Showed Lynxjet ad and then the documentary of its phenomenal marketing success which offended one of the females in the audience)

Q. Not offended, but how does what you are showing relevant to Pakistan? This is something tailored to what the Western male wants?

A. Males are basically the same irrespective of the country or nation. All males desire a hot sultry woman which they yearn to get without sweating it out, even more so in Pakistan where the male has to gulp 10 times before even thinking of approaching a girl. Even in a seminar such as this, there would be many males who would have eyed an attractive female in the audience and then for the rest of the day they would try to come up with ways of approaching her. They’ll try to muster courage to do it in the morning tea break, chicken out, then lunch break,chicken out, finally they’ll promise themselves to ask for her email at the end but by then she would be gone.

So men are universally the same. The Axe Effect ads by Unilever were based on this insight. So were the Impulse deodorant ads, which were the female equivalent of Axe, but more subtle. Having said all this, yes there are restrictions to what you are allowed to do in line with the cultural constraints. You have to take into account how the consumer is going to react to it. There was this coffee ad made in India which showed a couple fooling around and then having that brand of coffee afterwards. During a focus group post-ad, one woman was asked whether she’ll buy that coffee. She said no way, what would the shopkeeper think about me that why is she buying this brand of coffee? So the sexual connotations of the ad were proving to be barrier in the buying decision for the females.

• Ensure that you have a good looking person in your ad otherwise it’s better that you don’t make the ad. The entire ad, especially the model reflects upon the brand.
• Most brands suffer from the short life of the marketing director. The average period a marketing director spends in a company is 22 months. I have already spent 4 years at HBL after having spent 12 years at Unilever so I’m the exception to the rule.
• Getting useful insights out of focus groups is extremely difficult. We were once doing a focus group for Feast in which the participants were women. For some reason the question came up that what you do first thing in the morning. one of the women replied that the first thing she did was offer Fajr prayers. The next one said she prayed and then read the Holy Book before anything else. It became a chain reaction and I was certain the next one would say I go all the way to Saudi to perform Umrah and then come back to perform my other duties. Suddenly one of the women remarked after seeing the Feast ad we had shown to the group that the guy’s body was great. And that was the insight we were looking for.
• So what holds back brands? No real insight, lack of creative thinking, playing it safe.
• ‘Most clients …. think the rational appeals for their products are much more important than the consumers thinks they are.’  Hal Riney O&M
• Piyush Pandey, the advertising great of India is credited with breaking away from the norms and bringing excitement and fantasy to the adult marketing genre, carving out such hit ads as the Cadbury one. He’s not much liked by the Hindustan Levers brand managers for he has rebuked them for playing it safe.

4E’s – Taher Khan- Chairman Interflow Communications

Taher Khan-Chairman Interflow

• I’ve got the graveyard shift and to maintain the excitement generated by Aly’s juicy presentation, let me narrate first a couple of Meera bloopers.
• Meera once said appeared on an TV show and when the host asked her how she was doing, she replied she had just arrived from America and was hijacked (instead of jetlagged).
• Then once Meera smsed me telling me that when I called she couldn’t ‘hear my vice’. Then another time she smsed me informing me that she had ‘sinned on my papers’. It’s a good thing that my wife is very understanding and knew the smses were from Meera otherwise she would have thought what a pervert I was.
• In today’s world consumers are ahead of marketers, therefore the traditional four Ps have become obsolete.
• Instead of 4 Ps, we now have the 4 Es: Experience,Everyplace, Exchange and Evangelism.
• You have to create a customer journey like Dove has done with the Beauty Shopping  Journey and Hershey has done with their store at Times Square.
• Hershey was looking for a giant billboard on Times Square when they got the idea to instead open a branded store in its place.
• The place basically sells nostalgia to adults and has the highest sales per square foot in the entire world.
• Then there’s the story of red paper clip, how a Canadian blogger and economist Kyle Macdonald started off with a mission to trade a paper clip for a house. He posted his progress on his blog, trading the paper clip for a fish clip then that clip for something bigger and so on. His blog following increased manifold as he traded bigger objects so much so that he became a celebrity, getting invited to talks shows and meeting Hollywood stars until finally he got the house.
• Lego went a step further in consumer interaction when it invited people to design for the brand. This strategy resulted in a staggering 200% increase in sales.

All in all, GenMark 2010 was a great success considering how seminars are  managed in this part of the world. And the credit goes both to the organizer, the sponsors and the presenters. One of the biggest fallacies of any such seminar in Pakistan is the deviance from the topic at hand. Many times it has happened that the presenter had no idea what was the essence of the event and he would go on talking about something entirely different. Not in this event. Most of the presentations were crisp and relevant to the theme.

The sponsors did their part with FM91 and TVone providing attractive branded pens and notepads for the participants to use. FM91 also provided gift packs which were given at the end of the seminar. However they were limited in quantity and not all the participants got them.

One opportunity Total communications did miss was before the start of the event. When the delegates were just sitting waiting for the event to get underway, FM91 theme was being played over and over again, which became monotonous, not to mention frustrating after a while. What they could have done is make a promo of the company highlighting all the events that they have organized or helped organize and then intersperse the theme of FM91 or whatever brand is sponsoring the event within that. That would have been far more effective and entertaining as well for the delegates.

Pakistan’s branding fraternity needs a lot more of such events to grow and blossom like their Indian counterparts have done.

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1. GENMARK 2010 – The Art of Marketing to Generations-1 GenMark 2010 was a marketing seminar organized by Total Communications,...

GenMark 2010

GenMark 2010

Marketing to Kids

Numan Nabi Ahmed – CEO The Brand Partnership and Cartoon Network

• I have been in this industry for 15-20 years.
• We are the ones who persuaded cartoon network to come to Pakistan.
• We organized T20 cricket matches in Canada and this year again in September we intend to repeat that.
• Kid marketing in Pakistan is mostly superficial, the marketers confining themselves to just pester power.
• On the international stage, there has been tremendous research in this arena. Those researchers are focusing on mother-child relationship, how the mother seeks the opinion of her offspring for her choice of perfume to how she looks.
• Pakistani marketers have gone nowhere. They don’t have the guts to promote durables on cartoon network when it has been proven that kids have a large say in major buying decisions.
• Indian research has shown that kids influence even car-buying decision from the color right down to the make of the car.
• My own personal experience has shown this to be true. When I was intending to buy a Prado, my son persuaded me not to buy it because it gave the impression that you were a Wadera. I brought a Surf instead. My line of thinking as in any father’s line of thinking is, if my kid is not going to enjoy sitting in this car with me, what’s the use of buying it.

• Then many years ago when I was going to buy a Honda Civic, my younger daughter persuaded me instead to buy an old Accord. In those days the Civic didn’t come with the sunroof whereas the Accord version had it.
• Even travel decisions are influenced heavily by kids. You may want to go to Thailand but your kids want to go to Malaysia. Again you reason that you are taking the vacation for them. If they are not going to enjoy it then what’s the use.
• A new category of kids has been identified which seems to have a major say in buying decisions –Tweens – kids aged 3 to 12.
• This was known by the Pakistani marketers back in the 60s and 70s as well which resulted in classic ads such as State Life, Binaca and Naurus all which employed a kid as the focal point of the ad. Now insurance is something which is not understood even by adults, so the rational of using a kid to star in a State Life is not apparent because kids are not the target market for it. Yet their influence reaches even a serious issue as life insurance.
• Kid in the age group of 7-9 years observe and absorb the most from their surroundings and they have strongest aspirations of all kids. This is the time they seek and identify with a role model. It can be anyone, from a blood relative to a distant cousin to something shown on TV.
• Brand Activation is bullshit in Pakistan. They don’t know the difference between activation and on-ground activities.
• I have identified four pyramids which encapsulate the domain of kids marketing.
• The real power of the kids’ influence has been realized by brands like Safeguard and Lifebuoy so much so that they have changed their brand positioning by 180% to take this factor into account.
• Commander Safeguard was not so successful in the Philippines but it has met with resounding success in the Pakistani region. This forced Lifebuoy to change its 30 year old positioning.
• According to New Generation Research, a comprehensive research on the tweens of this region, when kids were asked to name any brand they remembered, Safeguard got the highest spontaneous recall at 19% even though it’s not brand that they buy themselves.
• There are 48 million tweens out of a population of 170 million in Pakistan. Out of these 28 million reside in the urban centres.
• About 19 billion rupees are spent by kids.
• There’s a perception amongst Pakistani marketers that the average pocket money of kids is just Rs.5 and thus they are confined to that amount. What they don’t take into account is the fact that when the father goes out in the evening to buy groceries, the kids usually accompany him on this trip and get him to buy a number of goodies for them far exceeding the Rs.5 amount.
• Marketers need to come up with characters that kids can look up to and then build their brand strategy around that.

Audience Questions:

Q-  What do you have to say about the ethical implications of using kids as a marketing material?

There’s nothing wrong with it. Unless I’m marketing an illegal or harmful product, it’s perfectly alright. Even in the tea ad (shown earlier), the kids are not shown drinking tea like an adult, they are just used as a theme. What’s wrong with that? They are, after all, used by marketers as objects in marketing products for the kids.

Q. I agree with him that marketers have a responsibility towards what they market. Blue Band was found to have plastic content, how can you market such products?

Ans. So sue them. It’s not the responsibility of a marketer to check for this. By the time the product reaches the advertiser, it is approved by all the authorities with respect to its quality. If it does not meet standard requirements, then prove it instead of rumor mongering.

Dos and Don’ts – Miftah Ismail – CEO Ismail Industries

• I agree with Numan that a manufacturer has everything to lose if one of its brands is sub-standard. Lays is a major competitor of ours and yet I myself assert that it is a Halal product.
• There are only two types of activities possible in school – education and wasting time.
• You should be clear what sort of value proposition you are offering to the target market.
• Kids love colors and change. When they go to buy a candy, they desire it to be wrapped in different color packaging.
• Rio made brilliant use of this insight when they changed the vanilla flavor in their sandwich biscuit category to two flavors – vanilla and strawberry.
• Despite the fact that there was no real innovation in it, kids loved it and the sales of this brand shot up.
• Kids are completely open-minded and they will try a new thing everytime. But they have their own value system and they have the intelligence to see through your deception if you try it.
• On the other hand, it is extremely difficult to get adults to try anything new. Almost 20 years ago, I tried selling a new shampoo and there were no takers. There was this 40 year old woman who didn’t want to try the shampoo and yet she gave a new brand of biscuits to her kids to try.
• In 1992 went to Germany to attend a confectionary exhibition. At that time our bubble gum was selling for 50 paisa like all the other brands. Their I saw a tattoo feature that would have added 10 paisa to our unit cost. I rejected that proposal and went to USA but my brother got this technology implemented and sold the bubble gum for Rs.1.
• It became one of the biggest selling bubble gums despite the doubling of the price. The moral of the story is that kids will go for new features even if the cost is high.
• Have tasted failure as well. There was this lollipop Funny Bunny which we used to sell for Rs.2. Out of stupid arrogance on my part resulting from the fact that we had no competitor, we jacked up the price to Rs.3.
• Although we had conducted research before the price, asking kids if they would have the lollipop even if the price was increased to Rs.3 to which there was a consensus of yes, the strategy failed badly. Out of the blue JoJo industry in Faisalabad and one other in Karachi started making and selling lollipops at Rs.2 and our sales went from 18,000 units to 3,000 units.
• Even if these competitors hadn’t cropped up, kids could have easily switched to some other category. It’s not a cancer drug that you absolutely need to have it.
• This also shows that you got to be careful when conducting market research where there are children involved. They don’t lie but they don’t necessarily tell you what they want or will do. You may ask them if they will buy an expensive candy and though they may tell you they will, they will never act on it.
• Fanty candy was one of our biggest success stories. Fanty used to be priced at 50 paisa. We increased the size of the candy and priced it at Rs.1 and since then there has been no looking back.
• We created a simple ad for it with a simple jingle that kept repeating. Never use minglish words in the jingle because they tend to confuse the audience. You can use them in the ad however.
• Check whether the name of the brand is something which can be easily pronounced by everyone, including the sales team. We named one of our brands Giant. Giant is a simple English word and yet most of our sales people pronounced it as ‘Gheeant’. So ensure that everyone is at ease with the name of the brand.
• Try to invest as much as possible in the ad creation. The better looking the ad, the more sales it will generate.
• Hilal doesn’t spend much on the creation of TVC but they spend a lot on the media placement. Their distribution is not that strong so they usually rely on their branding efforts to make inroads into the market.
• After Cartoon Network, Star Plus is a big market for advertising candies and goodies for kids because most nights of the week, the children have to watch this channel because their parents are hooked on to it for the Saas Bahu dramas.
• Billboards is a medium I’ve always opposed in my own company because I don’t know how to measure its effectiveness.
• Adultism is the new jargon which refers to discrimination against the kids in the sense that they are looked down upon and not given respect as an individual. As a marketer, it is imperative to never indulge in it otherwise the brand suffers.
• In fact never show a kid losing out on something, always show them as winners.
• Kids in general love music, excitement, silly humor in ads. Boys in general love slapstick and wicked humor. They born built in with the stupidity gene so that while an adult may sympathize with a person slipping on a banana peel, a male kid would laugh at it.
• Bisconni grows by 40-50% per year in terms of units sold.

Marketing to Youth

Zeeshan Misbah

Changing Youth – Zeeshan Misbah – Brand Manager DJuice –Telenor

• Today’s youth can be termed as the digital native youth.
• He may have 53 friends in the real world but that translates into millions of them online. That’s how connected he is to the rest of the world.
• There has been a paradigm shift in the consumer behavior of the youth.
• In my days I used to remember going to concerts and all. Today’s youth want their own  jamming sessions.
• Coke Studio is a great example of how a brand can reach glory through the power of the social media.
• Harley Davidson is a classic example of a brand staying relevant to the youth culture in spite of the fact that the average age of a Harley Davidson owner is 47 years.
• What today’s youth likes and wants doesn’t necessarily mean the rest of the population will want or like. For instance the sms thumb ad we ran was disliked by majority of the people but none of these belonged to the active youth segment.
• In reality the campaign was phenomenally successful. So are you aware of what your target market really wants?
• (Showed the interview clips of a number of teenagers revealing their aspirations and desires. Then showed the text excerpts of some youth interviews both from Pakistan and the US)

Question from audience: What was the insight behind the thumb ad?

Ans: It was based on an insight gleaned from an international study that a thumb was sitting in a bar and blabbering.

Q: Which SEC are you targeting within the youth?

A: We don’t define the segments in terms of SEC but rather in terms of lifestyles and behaviors.

Challenges & Opportunities- Afzal Shahabuddin – Marketing Head- Nokia Pakistan

Afzal Shahabuddin

• There are 75 million consumers in Pakistan in the age bracket 16-30 which is a bigger market than UK, Italy and Thailand.
• In 2007 Nokia was a market leader but it was not the leader in youth segment who considered it as a reliable brand but not cool.
• Nokia then repositioned itself focusing on music as the key to the hearts of the Pakistani youth.
• Nokia identified and used new touchpoints to leverage with the youth.
• Nokia took to the top 10 cities of Pakistan, conducting concerts and carrying out extensive BTL activities there.

Questions from the audience:

Q. What are the similarities and dissimilarities between urban and rural youth?

A. The similarities are that they love to listen to music and watch cricket. By way of dissimilarities, one of the insights we got from the rural lot was that they liked to listen to cricket commentary and music as a group, therefore in line with this insight we launched a new model which didn’t require the use of headphones.

Q. What’s the next step?

A. Touchphones are the next step. Nokia is increasingly focusing on apps on its Ovi store to make owning a Nokia brand a fruitful experience beyond just the features available on the device. Pakistan lack accurate and detailed maps of its cities because of which the Map app cannot be leveraged. But once maps are developed, navigation through mobiles would become a whole new ball game.

Q. There are many dual sim mobiles available on the market and apart from Samsung most are unbranded. Why hasn’t Nokia tapped into that market as yet?

A. Yes it is an opportunity and one which Nokia recognizes. However it’s not that big an opportunity as you are projecting. But Nokia is working on this and hopefully will come up with something to cater to this segment.

To be Continued in Next Part……

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