Mahmood Nanji Story of Success

Mahmood Nanji is one of the marketing gurus of Pakistan’s branded world, having served at the forefront of many company’s marketing department, including the coveted position of CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) at Tapal.

He was the force behind the TVOne program Brand Power, a one-of-a-kind program on the Pakistani electronic medium. Although it generated a lot of interest, for some reason it was discontinued. He has now moved to Indus News and started a new program Story of Success.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb2f2lALqPY

Tycoon on Express News is quite similar to Story of Success but the host doesn’t have the same aura as Mahmood Nanji to make an everlasting impact.

The lack of interest by the media in this breed of people is probably due to the fact that these people don’t have an onscreen persona which the local media rates as the wow factor in wooing the audience toward their channel. The quality of content especially the wisdom these people can communicate to the audience is not given preference by our local channels. In this sense, Indus News has done a tremendous job in breaking away from the status quo and trying something fresh.

So, going by the famous BCG matrix, will Story of Success go on to become a star or end up a dog?

For starters, Indus News itself is not the strongest of brand in the world of News Channel brands. Geo and Dawn News rule the roost while Aaj, Dunya, Express and Samaa follow close behind. In this cut-throat competition, Indus News has its work cut out. Amazingly, not a single channel from this lot is willing to differentiate itself in some way, not having the guts to break out from the brand clutter. Everyone wants to follow the same red ocean strategy which the market leader has set out and no one is venturing forward to come up with a blue ocean strategy.

Does that mean any program which is on a channel that is not popular itself is doomed for failure? Not necessarily. But it does help tremendously, especially if your media reach goes beyond just the electronic medium.

Take the market leaders. Any program they produce they promote aggressively not only on their own sub-brand channels, but also in their print publications. Geo for instance promotes a new program on all its sub-brand Geo Entertainment, News, Super and Aag, as well as Jang and The News newspaper. Think of the enormous reach of all these communication vehicles combined together and compare it to what Indus can do. If Indus is to use all these modes of communication, it would cost a fortune to it whereas on the other side Geo and even Dawn News can do it literally for free owing to belonging to powerful media conglomerate which is omnipresent in all modes of communication.

Indus News cannot compete with the likes of these giant brands. And any program aired on it faces the same dilemma. So what can ‘IN’ do about this?

For starters, it has to upload all the aired episodes on the internet, preferably Youtube. This was what was done with the program Brand Power whose episodes were uploaded on the website brandsynario.com. This is the most basic requirement in today’s age of media proliferation. With a plethora of channels to choose from, chances are your program is going to be missed by majority of the target market who may be viewing something else at the time the program is aired.

But would that be enough? No. At the very least the program needs to have a strong brand presence on the internet. Ideally it needs to be promoted 360º but since that’s going to cost a fortune, internet seems to be the most viable option.

On the internet, it needs to have a brand identity on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Youtube and Slideshare. It can take a leaf out of Naveen Naqvi’s book who has done a tremendous job positioning her program on Dawn News on the internet. Then there’s Ayesha Alam and Faisal Qureshi both who have done a good job themselves promoting themselves and their talk shows online. They even maintain a blog, which wouldn’t be a bad idea for Mr. Nanji himself.

Although they have come up with the facebook profile, it needs to be constantly updated and spiced up with a few attractions as well. For instance you can offer prizes for winning a quiz which is based on the contents of a particular episode. This would certainly pique the interest of the audience.

There’s a small clip of one of the episodes with Citizen Foundaton’s creator Mushtaq Khapra’s but that’s uploaded by one of the viewers rather than a deliberate ploy by the producers or promoters of the program. Finally Mahmood Nanji’s personal account at Twitter has tried to promote the program but the program needs to have its very own Twitter profile.

That’s the promotion part. What about the program itself? Is it great? Or does it need to improve? Yes it does. While making it glamorous wouldn’t be a good idea, adding some other elements would definitely spruce up the proceedings. This could include pictures from the interviewee’s past highlighting his achievement. A brief look at the business in action during the course of the interview would add further depth to the program. Although this format was followed in the Liberty Books program, it isn’t made the standard format which is a pity.

Story of Success could go on to become a renowned program which inspires millions of people. All it needs is a few tweaks of the format coupled with a healthy dose of some shrewd marketing.

No related posts.

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.

Related posts:

1. Tipping Point Conference- The Social Media Event It was supposed to be graced by Chief Minister of...

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.

No related posts.

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.

No related posts.

Now only if the service worked as it was communicated to the entire nation by a very expensive branding campaign.

There’s no doubt that the local branding endeavors have become quite refined in the last decade. Pakistanis are fast catching up with the Indians in communicating the brand promise. Trouble is, the promise is broken more frequently than the frequency of the loadshedding.

The same is the case with Easypaisa. It’s launch on the 15^th of October was unprecedented in the history of branding in Pakistan. Full front and back-cover print ads in all the major dailies except Dawn. Even in Dawn, a full page ad was present, only that it wasn’t on the front page. That’s impact for you.

And the cost? A full page ad in one of the inside pages of Jang costs a staggering Rs.1.3 million. Now if you want to take the entire front page, which isn’t offered as an option, it must have cost twice that amount. Multiply that by the number of major dailies, both English and Urdu, and you get a staggering Rs.100 million plus thrown away on a single day, and that’s only the print medium. You can safely add another 100 million for the TVC and then you get an idea of how much Telenor is spewing out on this campaign.

Of course it’s their money and they can dish out as much as they want, there’s no law against it. But when the moolah changing hands is in the scale of millions, it does make you wonder why a fraction of this dough couldn’t be spent on streamlining the service before going for an all-out launch?

The reason this thought is probably crossing the mind of any marketer observing telenor’s easypaisa launch is because it has begun to take stingy hits from the consumer almost as soon as the launch. Since the launch was aimed at pretty much the entire nation, the masses influenced by the campaign reacted favorably by opting for the service right away.

Maybe Telenor was not expecting a response of this magnitude or it wasn’t ready at all. In any case, the blogosphere is buzzing with mostly negative to lukewarm reviews of the service. But the most damning verdict has come in the form a letter to the editor in which the irate customer narrates his ordeal that in spite of paying his electricity bill through easypaisa, his electricity connection was disconnected by LESCO.

Although Mr. Sikander Ali, Director of Tameer Bank, tried to control the situation by replying to the letter in the same section right away, the damage had been done.

This was a one-off case. The most common complaint doing the rounds in the blogosphere is that it’s way too expensive. One blogger on Karachi metro blogs narrates he was charged Rs.10 on a mere bill of Rs.140. He says if he has to pay that much, he might as well do so through online means rather than going to all the trouble of physically visiting the easypaisa shop.

So there are basically three issues at work here. One, easypaisa is expensive, two, it is not that convenient, and three, it is not 100% reliable.

No service, no matter how sleek, is 100% fool-proof. There are bound to be problems, some that you cannot even anticipate beforehand. The trick, however, is to find out as many of them as possible by launching a stealth mode instead of coming out with the all-out launch right away.

There’s no evidence that Telenor did take easypaisa for a net practice. That seems to be hurting it badly now.  The fact that a company of this caliber will be able to weather this storm is secondary. The primary consideration ought to be preemptive measures to save the brand not only from the competitor onslaught but the more deadly consumer onslaught as well.

And in this day and age of social media, it is surprisingly easy. All Telenor needed to do was create a Facebook profile for easypaisa augmented by a Twitter account (which it has done now). It should have notified its customers (which is the 2^nd largest customer base after Mobilink) through SMS of its new service, and then just waited to see what happens. No ad. No TVC. No nothing.

Telenor’s investment in this strategy? Zero.  Was this so hard to do? Or because it entailed no money that the brand manager thought it won’t work?

Of course, even then there would have been some negative reviews, but only confined to the blogosphere. And it would definitely have created a buzz in the real world that Telenor was doing something radical in the online world. It would have gone viral and although it wouldn’t have reached the 170 millions souls Telenor claims to have reached with this extravagant campaign, it would have given Telenor enough customers to take its easypaisa for a proper test drive.

Then when it had identified and rectified sufficient bugs in the system, it could have gone for the extravagant campaign which it did. There’s just no way this test-driving strategy would have fared worse than the present one.

So why did Telenor failed to apply such a common sense strategy? Herd mentality. Every brand worth its salt in Pakistan has not dared to come up with a launch strategy that kickstarts from cyberspace and then makes it’s appearance in the physical realm.  There have been  online campaigns, alright, by some of the well-known brands, but they have been far and few in between. And no exclusive product launch.

The best that has been done is what is fashionably referred to as the 360º launch strategy which entails making use of all medium to create both hype and awareness about the brand.

But what’s so bad about creating hype first and then not living upto that hype?

 You break the immutable law of marketing, ‘ Underpromise but over-deliver’. By doing what Telenor has done with Easypaisa, you over-promise but under-deliver.

The best way a business can flourish is to exceed customer expectations. Not many businesses are able to do that, but then not many businesses are successful. And marketing is just a tool to deliver this positioning. The real value addition has to be imbibed into the core of the business, not embedded merely in the branding strategy.

The fledgling Wimax industry in Pakistan is a classic example of these blunders. First to commit the original sin was Wateen which offered the moon to its customers but failed to satisfy them because of technical glitches and constraints which it didn’t address before the formal launch. Then came Infinity whose story was just a tad better than Wateen. Then came Witribe all guns blazing with its launch, its most glaring blunder being, its inability to offer the services in many parts of the city it advertised to be operating. On top of that, potential customers who expressed their interest in the service by registering online as well as at the sales outlets were never contacted to let them know when the service would be available in their area, or even a courteous response.

This pretty much sums up the appalling state of branded service not just in the telecom sector but across different industries in Pakistan. Qubee, the new player in the Wimax domain looks to be the only one with a shrewd strategy, that strategy being to remain low-key until it has streamlined its network substantially. It is aiming to promote its brand only through shopping mall kiosks and its own service outlets spread throughout the city. And of course it has its website to spread the word. In addition to that, it has dedicated one of its reps to surf the online lounges and counter jibes taken at Qubee, an extremely cunning tactic if there ever was one. No other brand has had the common sense to make use of this virtually free tool.

Does this mean Qubee will have no customer problems? Hardly. But at least, they won’t spread like wildfire like the rest of the brands, because Qubee hasn’t as yet come out in the open with clear-cut brand positioning and promise, so what will the customers complain against?

A few problems have already arisen and are well-documented in the blogosphere but if Qubee plays its cards right, it ought to be able to deal with them without them being known too much. That’s the beauty of keeping a low-profile until you get a grip over the simmering issues.

So what’s the verdict? Easypaisa could have been a better launch if it was beta-tested akin to what has been done with Windows 7. And even then, it should have been confined to a few niches rather than going for the masses. To Telenor’s credit, it invited some bloggers to the launch ceremony held on the 16^th of October at PC Karachi, but for some inexplicable reason, it has failed to garner the support of bloggers which it probably expected with the invitation. At best there have just been a few posts mentioning the event not the rave reviews Telenor would have wanted. At worst, well, here’s a trailer of that.

The other thing not in favor of easypaisa that it’s not entirely unique. Settlement of utility bills through mobile banking and the likes already exist. It’s only they are not that well-known and thus confined to a few niches. In fact Nadra’s E-Sahulat fulfills the same purpose for almost free.

Easypaisa on the other hand is geared towards the masses and yet requires a somewhat hefty charge.

Whether Telenor will be able to weather the storm and make its branded service relevant to the masses only time will tell.

Related posts:

1. Jaane Tu…. Ya Jaane Na – An exercise in shrewd branding The movie sky-rocketed to the top of the charts. Why?...

You switch on your TV, the ‘Suno Zara’ song is there. You try switching the channels, it’s no use. It’s on every freaking channel. You turn on the radio while driving and you’re hit with the blast of ‘Suno Zara khushi ki Aahat’, at the same time you pass a billboard with a chick in full winter gear and a humungous ‘Touch’ pack pasted alongside her. Talk about making the right associations with your brand for the ‘right’ brand image, the guys (or gals) at  suddenly seem to have awaken from a deep slumber. Either that or there has been a change of guard at the helm of their brand management, or maybe there’s a sudden influx of much needed capital from their parent company Population Services International (PSI) which is headquartered in, where else, Washington D.C., the place which seems to make all the major political decisions for Pakistan. Who knows.

But I would put my money on the influx-of-capital theory, because only a couple of weeks ago I saw their Job Opportunity ad in the Dawn Advertiser with no less than four openings at the top level.

Coming back to the Touch campaign , they seem to have done pretty much everything you can expect by way of the usual 360° brand campaigns in Pakistan. Sometime back they even launched an aggressive sales promotional activity whereby they offered prizes like tickets to Dubai and generators as prizes.I wouldn’t be surprised to find a facebook.com/touch link as well leading to the Touch profile on Facebook.

But it’s taking things a bit too far when during the cricket commentary (Pakistan vs Australia series) on FM 106.2, you suddenly hear that the boundary that has just been hit was sponsored by ‘Touch’! I mean, we got the point through your song that Touch condoms are cool and are being used by young hip couples, so do you really have to stoop to that level just for the sake of brand awareness? Research shows (Ogilvy on Advertising) that there’s no correlation between brand awareness and brand preference. That means even if you’re able to drill your brand in the mind of the consumer, he may not necessarily go for it.

The song, however remains the core of their strategy, so let’s delve deeper into what they’ve done with it. It’s a catchy song, the same one which they used in their campaign a couple of years back. Only the picturisation of it has changed. Before there was Sara Chaudhary as the Touch wife with an unknown husband. This time, both the husband and wife are unknown, at least to me.

But the video has definitely improved. Not that it was bad even before.

The guy, and a smart one at that, is shown as a popular figure amongst his peers, which is good. You don’t want to show a geek or a Mr. Nobody using your brand. Just wouldn’t work, unless the brand is specifically positioned for the underdog. Then the girl, a pretty one at that, is new to the university/college and has the looks to make heads turn. There’s the usual collision with the books falling down, and you know the rest.  The two first exchange glances which progresses to online chatting to talking on the cell to finally tying the knot.

Two things. First, everything is top-notch. Right from the selection of the guy and the girl right down to the cellphone and the laptop they’re using to stay connected. Second, the steady pace at which the story progresses seamlessly from the first contact to the birth of the child is pretty good.

One thing I found really missing from the song was the presence of Touch or even GreenStar in the majority of the video. I mean here you are, spending a huge chunk to get this song composed and sung by no less than Najam Sheraz (I can’t identify the female singer), on top of that you’ve a quality video produced, and the best you can do is show your product when the baby is born and the doctor comes to offer you Touch?

There had to be more of the brand embedded in the video. Even the Tulsi video of the remix version of ‘Hamari Ankhon mein’ featuring Aamina Shafaat made better use of the brand.

So, what could have been done with ‘Suno Zara’? The thing is, Touch is one of those brands that cannot be conspicuously shown just about everywhere as opposed to other brands like, say Tulsi.  One of the things that could have been done was to include the Touch billboard in the backdrop in some of the scenes. That would definitely have looked natural.

There is, however, one more strategy that should have been used, and that is, subliminal advertising. What’s that? Let me tell you a story to convey the impact of this technique. In 1954, in a non-descript theatre, a coke bottle was shown for a fraction of a second intermittently during the movie screening. The time interval was so short that the conscious mind of the consumer couldn’t percieve it but the subconscious mind definitely did, for  a number of people watching the movie suddenly became thirsty and had to go grab a cola. This sort of advertising was immediately banned at that time. However, it has remained in vogue and a number of brand managers over the years have used it discreetly.  Even the latest bestseller Buyology by Martin Lindstrom that has been the rage these days endorses it full-heartedly.

An image of touch shown a number of times during the song for a millisecond would have been a good thing to use in this scenario. However, what’s done is done.

Now what GreenStar needs to focus on is the BTL stuff, a lot of BTL activities that don’t have the promotion of Touch at their core but a great consumer experience, and Touch would just ‘happen’ to be around in that setting. Without that, the impact of ATL strategy would fizzle out soon enough. They did some of it at the Lifestyle exhibition, however there was too much brand clutter in that event to make your brand stand out in the mind of the consumer.

 And now, if you haven’t had enough of the song, heres more of it:

Suno Zara on Youtube

No related posts.

Being in the branding business, I was most curious as to what enticed me to go for this brand. Was it Amina Haq or Atif Aslam (the celebrities endorsing it)? Or some other factor?

After racking my brain, I’ve identified the phrase in the new Clear TVC which states that men have more dandruff than women, and that Clear for Men has the formula to tackle that.

This was the single most important factor in my buying decision. So, was it that simple? That I wasn’t swayed by any of the glitter except a plain fact? Maybe it is. Or maybe the affinity for this brand was slowly building up in my subconscious mind by seeing the Clear TVC and all, and that hearing this fact was the final nail in the coffin. Who knows.

But why didn’t I go for Head n Shoulders endorsed by Shahid Afridi? Was it because the Clear TVC appealed to me more,  was more exposed to Clear’s communication tactics, or am I more tolerant of Atif Aslam than Afridi?

This just goes on to show that human decision-making is an extremely complex, irrational and non-linear process which cannot be predicted by any of the theories we religiously studied in our consumer behavior course. Which essentially means you’ll never know for sure beforehand that the brand strategy you’ve meticulously devised would work. It’s not an exact science by any stretch of the imagination. So you’ve to bundle the package with a lot of stuff, like Clear’s brand manager did by mixing glamour and facts all into one.

I definitely wasn’t bedazzled by the TVC, that’s for sure. I mean, if Atif Aslam chooses Clear ‘Men’, that’s his choice, but queer men just doesn’t do it for me. If this TVC was made in the West, Atif Aslam would have been the butt of jokes all around.

It’s in Pakistan where most of us didn’t realize Unilever’s ‘gay’ blunder, otherwise he would have been toast. A parody of this TVC, I would love to see. Maybe Azfar and Mani could do something about it.

So now that I’ve bought the brand, what next? Do I become loyal to it? Surprisingly, brand loyalty in most of the cases of FMCG brands depends upon the actual benefits and not the perceived ones. For instance, I was swayed by the branding of Bakeri by LU to have a go at it. However, I didn’t like the taste (which was a bad variant of Sooper) and there was no benefit, real or perceived, communicated by the brand strategy, so I haven’t touched it again.

And therein lies the conundrum of FMCG branding. It is extremely difficult to elicit a brand loyalty that is ever-lasting. Evoking a trial sales or even a repeat purchase is no big deal. Only last night, a friend of mine had the urge to eat ice cream. We went to his ‘Mohalla’ store where he was rummaging through the Wall’s freezer (which by the way carried ‘other’ brands as well) when he saw a ‘Win an ipod’ caption on a Cornetto. Without thinking twice about it, he just bought it and then gleefully opened it in the hope that this would be his lucky night. It wasn’t.

I wonder whether he would have become a Cornetto Evangelist had he won the Ipod.  I also wonder what would be the effect of a deliberate effort by Unilever to influence the results. To be specific, what if Unilever ensured that each and every Mohalla store in each locality of each city carried at least one major prize, and the moment a prize was won, Unilever would create a hoopla in that neighborhood sensationalizing the win and putting the winner’s photo along with the prize in all the stores of that Mohalla. How’s that for a sales promotion? Very expensive indeed, and difficult as well, especially the part where you’ve to ensure that the cold chain carries a major prize to each neighborhood.

Coming back to the brand loyalty, it’s not impossible mind you; you’ve colossal brands like Pepsi and Coke and Pampers and Ariel and Kit Kat and what not to prove that.

Coming back to myself as the consumer, will I get hooked to Clear for Men? Let’s see. The packaging is good enough – it appeals to me. Now only if Unilever had done their home work and not shaped a men’s shampoo bottle like a woman’s silhouette like they’ve done with the female version, it would have been great.  . Unless there’s an authentic research which proves that men like to hold objects shaped like the body of a woman, I would change the shape immediately to more masculine, something like broad on the top and thin on the bottom, a V-shape like the perfect masculine body.

Coming to the text on the front:

Unilever Clear Men

-ActivSport ™ (there’s no explanation anywhere why ActivSport is ‘TM’ed, unless the Unilever want to give the illusion that it’s something sophisticated while in reality it may just be that, a word),

-Refreshing clean feel that lasts long (Not bad)

-with vitaACE active ingredient (A nice symbol with this text to pique the interest of the consumer)

On the Back:

·        Attention: Dandruff-free confidence attracts more women. Be prepared. (This maybe outrageously untrue but coupled with a warning sign it stands apart, and that to me is a brilliant move.)

·        (A pictorial representation of how you get rid of dandruff in four weeks. Again a good move)

·        Raabta – Questions or Comments? Call free 0800-13000 Write P.O Box 15522 Karachi  ( Raabta? It sounds like the hotline for the population control department of the government rather than the hotline of an MNC marketing an upscale branded shampoo. And then who on earth would write to them via the snail mail? And how many would call?  That’s way too 20^th centuryish. A better option would have been to include an email address, a Facebook link, and even a twitter link. )

·        (The rest of the back is covered with explanation about the usual directions, ingredients and the advantage of using Vita-ACE mentioned on the front.)

Then we have the color of the shampoo – a sky-blue. Again good.  The fragrance to me is the forte of the brand. I love the aroma which lingers on for a couple of hours after you’ve washed your hair. I just pray that this scent does not go on to wreak havoc on my hair follicles.

But wait a minute. If the smell is the forte of the brand, what about its supposed-to-be brand essence – anti-dandruff shampoo? If the crux of the brand isn’t its high point, how on earth is the brand going to grow? Yeah, that’s a big problem alright.

But the thing is, what’s wrong for me maybe right for someone else. For how many consumers its right, that’s the million dollar question. For me, the brand promise does not live up to the hype because, to put it simply, it’s not any better an anti-dandruff shampoo than the others in the market. I switched from Selsun Blue, which I had been using for ages, to Clear about a month ago, and so far the results have been nothing to write home about. Maybe it would fare better after I’ve used it for a couple of months, but I’m not sure if I’ll get that far. I may be tempted to use it for that long solely by its great fragrance, or I may not.

At this point in time, my experience tells me that the brand is superior to the actual product it is representing, for I’ve experienced no results better than the other anti-dandruff shampoos. My line of thinking is that it’s just another anti-dandruff shampoo with no real POD (point of differentiation) or USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Maybe I’m wrong. What do you think? Have you’ve had better experience with this brand?

But if I’m right, than that makes the branding all the more successful, having exalted an ordinary product to the brand pinnacle! This is what branding is all about.

One of the things the brand manager of Clear could do is launch a hair clinic where consumers like me who have used the brand but not completely satisfied with it can come and share their experience, and a hair specialist (probably a dermatologist who can vouch for Clear being a ‘technically sound’ shampoo) can answer the queries and offer tips and suggestion to augment the usage of Clear.  Then of course, Unilever can make the whole occasion fantastic by offering goodies like sachets of its own products and some sumptuous refreshments, something which it used to tremendous effect at its Youday series.

Another branding campaign on the heels of this one, but entirely different from it may do the trick. If it does manage to persuade me, it would pay rich dividends to Unilever for I’m a long term user who doesn’t like to switch shampoo brands i.e. I’m a user with a high CLV (Customer Lifetime Value).

And that ought to be the objective of any second brand campaign after the brand launch, to lock in customers with high CLV. Clear has a great chance to make that happen now.

No related posts.