the pakistani planner

Pakistan needs a different breed of planners than what the world is producing at the moment. All the discussions on planning forums these days is about the cutting edge;  more specifically technology. I agree that technology has a role to play in our lives but somehow we are getting a bit carried away. No longer are our discussions about how people live their lives or about better understanding the underlying human truths. Pakistan still has a long way to go before we can start adopting the technologies that make life better in the west. From water pumps that can be turned on and off through sms to cattle being traded online during Eid-ul-Adha there are far more important planning topics to be discussed than how technology can make the life of a poor farmer living in Chichawatni better. Rather than looking at the outside world for inspiration and forcing it on our society we need an indigenously developed think tank which operates inside-out. Our problems are unique to us and our society unlike any other. I feel that however much the world creeps towards becoming a global village, the niches, the differences would never cease to exist. However much our future converges towards a single race, we can never take away the differences of our past, our unique history which still identifies our DNA, something embedded deep within our soul never to be taken away from us.

As planners, if we look back, we have very little to work with in terms of things that we can call our very own. There is very little research to go around and not enough studies done to understand our consumer, his/her motivations, likes and dislikes. Whatever little that there is available is mostly true for the urban customer reflecting more often than not, the personal experiences of the planner himself. Nevertheless, all is not lost, there are still brands out there who invest in figuring out the changing needs and lifestyles of their customers. From pearl dust mapping out the regional sindhi customer to PTC, nailing the consumer profile for gold flake, it is these people who can bring about a planning revolution in Pakistan. If only, they can be inspired to gather on a single forum and present their customer to the planning community in the most vivid picture possible.

 

The Pakistani Telecom World(Part 1) : Branding Theory Explained

It hasn’t been a long time since I entered the telecom world. 9 months to be exact, which is more like taking your first breadth in this big bad world. But my association with the telecom world isn’t anything new. During my stay at contact plus about 3 years ago I was working behind the scenes on the brand plans for Ufone. Then at RED communications, the pitch to Warid and Afghan wireless gave me an ample insight into the world of telecom branding (or so I thought). But having spent a good part of an year in the industry itself, I have realized that it is not possible to get to grips with how branding actually works in the industry.

Having recently read through the quarterly presentation of the Brand Health Tracking report (and mind you, I’m not giving anything away here, because the whole industry subscribes to the same BHT report and the research is conducted by the same research organization so the insights revealed in the study are not much of a surprise to anyone out there) I have been told that the industry still works on the basis of awareness and consideration. In layman’s terms the emotional angle of the brand accounts for less than 30% of the influence on which the consumer makes his/her purchase decision. No wonder you see the consumer’s world totally flooded with telecom advertising because top of mind is what sells the most. How the advertising builds trust, creates a relationship with the consumer or shows how the brand brings a difference in the consumer’s life, hence, has no place in the discussions of a marketing team.

In most telecom organizations, the direction is set by the product team. In an industry where the product team leads the direction of the brand, can one can see an obvious flaw. No doubt, the industry is moving forward on the basis of technological advancements but in my opinion there is a lot of room for bringing sanity to the product portfolio. A short term dip in sales is most often than not followed up by the introduction of a new package. A certain tactical move by a competitor is followed up again, by the same strategy, maybe a lower priced version of it. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy to keep following what your competitor is doing without giving a great thought to what you can achieve in this world. It seems that even the branding strategy of the leader is made in the quarters of the competitors.

The level of differentiation in the industry is at a bare minimum. One can expect just that from an industry where almost everything is sourced out from vendors. From equipment to software, to applications only the marketing strategies of how to combine these products creatively and communicate them creatively is left at the hands of the marketing team. A case in point is the Blackberry. 4 of the 5 players in the industry provide the blackberry service and if one were to compare the product communications for all four of them, it would be difficult to find many differences. The reason being that RIM which provides the blackberry solution to all these telecom players has a stringent set of guidelines in the way blackberry is portrayed in the advertising. This is an extreme case where a vendor provides the same product to all the players and even dictates its terms in the communications as well, leaving little room for any differentiation that a telecom player would like to create.

Looking at the product innovations in the industry, there is not much to choose from. The first mover never has a long time before others jump on to the bandwagon and remove any hopes that the innovator ever had of creating a differentiated image. SMS bundles are a concept which did not take too long to catch on. Within a period of a few months almost all the players had SMS bundles. And now we are all on our way to seeing the same thing happening for Voice Bundles.

I will talk about creating differentiation in telecom world in a later article but before I end of this article, a friend working at an FMCG in Karachi, after hearing the state of branding in the telecom world, once told me that having worked in the Telecom world for an year, I should forget about ever finding my place back in the FMCG marketing world. And I think I agree with him, I have caught on to too many bad habits and started believing in way too many branding myths only seem to work(or do they?) in the telecom world

Note: This article would be part of a series of articles on brand thinking in the telecom world.

belief led branding

It has been a great three months for me at RED. I have been involved in some of the biggest pitches of my career during these last three months. The reason can clearly be attributed to the fact that agency on record pitches are inherently bigger than activation pitches which are mostly campaign specific. One of the biggest reasons why they have gone so well is because of the kind of confidence that the management has put into me in particular and the strategic planning function in particular.

My confidence got quite a boost when I got the go ahead of hiring two new people into my team. So I’m looking forward to some great things in the very near future. Already, I’m on my way to Kabul to pitch to a huge Afghan brand. If things materialize, this would be a huge win for RED as we would prove out metal for the first time in the international domain. And with the addition of Nestle Pure life in the RED portfolio, things are looking very promising.

Over the past 3 months, the learnings that I have been able to gain from the advertising domain have made an exponential leap on my personal growth and the feel-good factor is almost contagious in the organization.

There could not be a moment better than this, than to talk about a topic I have been wanting to write about quite some time. Backed by 3 pitches which have increased belief in the theory, I believe that it is now, that I can do better justice to the topic at hand.

Believing in something is the greatest endowment that man can have. It has been the single biggest factor in the history of mankind leading to change and bringing stability to life. Backed by belief, man has been able to overcome the greatest of obstacles and do the most extra ordinary of feats. Belief has led to war, harbored love and hatred, manifested peace and made and shattered dynasties.

From a branding point to view, the society has a huge part to play in shaping them and as we evolve, brands have to follow suit. But mega brands, are brands which in-turn shape society in this interconnected world. In a world of global brands, brands have to stand for some core human value than just fulfill the needs of the direct consumer. No longer can they be based on a shallow reason for existence. Only brands which can harness the power of belief would be able to survive in the long run. With religion playing a smaller and smaller part in our lives by the day and losing relevance in all quarters of the society, it would be up to brands to harbor the community effect ad bring mankind on a single platform. Now brands have to show how they create a win-win for the society rather than fulfill a shallow, instantly gratifying need of the consumer. In times of extreme transparency, brands cannot afford to exploit its stakeholders and blindly support their stockholders. The values that the brand stands for need to be meticulously communicated and inculcated into every person in the value chain. The brand needs to walk the talk now more than ever before and incorporate that core human value that it stands for into every action communicated through the brand. The consumers of today are too educated and informed to buy in to the hollow claims made by the brands of yesteryear. Buy-in from every stake holder is important as just about any one from the value chain, from a disgruntled employee to an unhappy supplier can play havoc with the brand imagery by being a spokesperson on the media and give the PR agencies are run for their money.

The best thing about belief led branding and basing your brand on a core human value is that it makes everything very simple. The BP beyond petroleum tagline simply communicates a powerful message across all stakeholders and unites them under one umbrella. From portfolio thinking to internal and external communication to PR, everything falls into place without losing consistency. And if the brand is based on a core human value then it can never lose relevance with the consumer. Those core human values will always remain true, only their manifestations would change with the changing consumer.

Belief led branding is a concept of the future and brands which can begin to invest in the concept from now will certainly make huge in-roads in building a community of very loyal consumers, something which would be difficult to break by brands of the future.

moving on…

On 20^th November 2007, I made my second move towards what I really want to do in life. Generally people don’t get it as easily. Most people end up living their whole lives making compromises, killing their dreams and ignoring the voice within to get something which they don’t really want. They just have to make do because of the circumstances that they find themselves in. I find myself lucky to have spent the right amount of time in the right place and left at exactly the right time. Had I made a hasty decision an year ago, I might have compromised my position in the industry.

Strategic planning is something that I had always wanted to do. In my initial years at Contact Plus, I got a taste of brand planning on Ufone which remained the single best period of my stay in the company. A couple of things that worked for me was that I got to work with some amazing people. People who were willing to take you along with them even though you were just a kid and didn’t add value for a long period of time. People who selflessly wanted you to grow and learn something. But at the same time, I think I made their life easier by being the attentive student, hanging on to each word and also having real passion. But I think that passion is within every one of us. Its how someone can be inspired to think in a particular way. And I must say I have been inspired for life now. I know what I want to do with life and where I want to be in the future. Ofcourse, there will be obstacles, and the environment could change everything but somehow I believe that if your vision is set upon a particular facet of core human value, the path to that vision might change but not the vision itself. Human values, beliefs and drivers remain the same wherever we go, whatever we do. These are engrained into the system that the world works on. If these values failed to be relevant, it could endanger the existence of the human race altogether.

Some of my best memories at Contact Plus have been associated with working on projects like Shell: Project Guinness, Ufone: Repositioning Strategy, Telenor: Activation Pitch, Walls: War Games, Cornetto: Canteen Kahani and Engro Foods Agency on Record Pitch.

I have moved to RED Communication Arts, a mid sized ad agency based out of Lahore. I am heading their strategic planning department which is still quite raw. Already I have had to give priority to work than analyze the systems and suggest improvements. The top three goals in my head would always remain business building, brand building and organizational capacity building. I think business building always follows brand building because people always like to buy products or work with brands which radiate a positive aura. Organizational capacity building requires a lot of foresight, imagination and belief in your own skills. In the service industry people are your biggest assets and building capacity helps you stay ahead of the times and at the same time helps you flaunt your people to build the brand.

As of right now cybernet is our biggest account in Karachi and my first pitch was a huge strategy led creative exercise for engro foods. Meanwhile a lot of stuff is in the pipeline and I really need to get going on the organization development plan.

cornetto girl, where are you

The cornetto girl campaign has finally come to an end. Even thoughi feel that its effects would continue to spread it is pretty safe now to bring to light whatever conspired in the campaign.

When we first received the brief for the campaign in October of 2006, we would never have thought that we would end up doing such a wacky and totally out of this world project. But thanks to the total support of the then brand manager (farah anwar) and the beautiful follow through by the now marketing manager (mona hussain) for walls we were able to see it through to completion having made countless learning’s along the way

 

As per the objectives we went about solving two key challenges.

 

• Enhance the connection between teenage infatuation and cornetto
• Break through the clutter without spending a fortune on media

 

The idea was to go ahead with a concept which would create talkability on its own and enhance the media ROI. The concept centered on a pseudo reality mystery based on the life the cornetto consumer.

 

“a guy sees a girl in his college for the first time eating a cornetto and instantly falls in love with her. The girl disappears a couple of days later before the guy has had a chance to make an impression on her. The guy, in desperation goes on to develop a whole ad campaign to track her down, bringing the whole country in on the search…”

 

This concept was then put on relevant media. From a 12 episode drama serial to creating hype on blogs and social networks to virally generated sms’s/emails we virtually exhausted all youth centric media. Even radio was used to insert ideas, theories, hoaxes about story through RJ chit chat. Seeded content generated to destabilize the theories in the drama helped keep the mystery alive through spoof videos.

 

Some of the ideas that never saw the light of day, was a specialized documentary, t-shirts and bumper stickers, sarmad appearing on begum nawazish ali’s show to clear out his position and sarmad’s car seen on the roads of the 3 metros with cool art work to help him find his cornetto girl. We even thought of having a PR leg to the campaign as well with articles in images and the magazine talking about the cornetto girl phenomenon.

 

All in all, this was a huge win for contact plus as we showed that well-established brands can come up with new ideas to reinvigorate their brand presence.

 

Links:

http://canteenkahani.com/

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=faizanl

http://www.dailymotion.com/videos/relevance/search/canteen+kahani/1

winning gold is not everything

Yesterday was a big day in the history of my career. We presented the review of activations with EFL for 2007 and discussed the way forward for 2008. The review was presented to the whole marketing team of EFL with all the brand managers and group brand managers led by the director marketing.

There were no surpsrises in the review but by the end of it Ali Akbar’s review and way forward really brought flavor to the meeting. The first comment he made really took us by surprise. Saying something like ‘contact plus is our best business partner’ infront of a group of BM’s and GBM’s who are the custodians of their respective business partners uplifted our spirits. He then upped the ante by proposing a long term strategic partnership between contact plus and engro foods which would help the whole activation setup to grow as contact plus and engro foods invests heavily in bringing more professioanlism in the industry and also in investing more on key activation mediums ahead of the changing media scenerio of the country.

The meeting at one end made my spirits soar very high but at the same time, put question marks in my head. Being the lead strategic planner for EFL even before a single brand was luanched two years ago, and now moving away to Red Communications later this month, i would have to let go of working with a group which has all the potential of the world to become Pakistan’s first corporate brand to enter the gloabal arena. But more about my move in a later blog…

Regionalized Centralization

We are moving towards regionalized centralization in the marketing communications industry. Global brands are centralizing their marketing operations from one head office in the region. Clustering together countries into a region and driving the brand message from there helps to synergize costs and also helps maintain a consistent brand image across a large geographic region.

But often a region is defined by geographical continuity based on supply chain synergies rather than similarities in culture of consumer mindsets. It would be bordering on stupidity to include Saudi Arabia and UAE within the same region and creating the same marketing content for them. Saudi Arab is hard core arab while UAE comprises of more than 70% expatriates and boasts more of a global culture.

Media productions and in some cases media planning is being done through the center only to be executed within the region. MNC’s like Unilever, Cartoon Network and Shell keep tight controls over what image is being projected of their brand. But this takes away one of the mojor roles of a brand manger from their job descriptions. Without having control over the content of the brand message, the responsibility shifts to the region to get it right. The brand manager only becomes the executioner of the ideas, coordinating with agencies on behalf of the head office in the center.

But luckily, brand managers have been able to find a loophole in the scenario. Rather than take face for the rather off-target campaign entrusted upon them from the region, the brand managers at the spokes come up with localized versions of the campaigns in the form of brand activation activities. The future of the personal growth for brand managers would only come if they can convince their bosses in the region to dish out budgets for localized activations. This can only happen when brand managers and activation agencies team up and come up with ideas that can convince the region of results. Only then will brand managers get the high of being real brand custodians. The ownership would only come when there are stakes attached to what a brand manager does.

Measuring Virability

Being in the brand activation industry, we often have to hear skeptical remarks from brand managers about how putting money into brand activation is like shooting in the dark. Our usual response is that it is difficult to put a success criteria on any form of marketing efforts done through any other approach to marketing communications.

Multinational brands use tracking metrics to measure top of mind awareness and other brand health indicators to track how each marketing campaign helps in improving the overall brand. But ofcourse those measures are long term metrics (especially for established brands) and their effects cannot be measured for focused or tactical campaigns. Nevertheless, the CDF analysis used by Pakistan Tobacco Company or ATP used by Unilever and Engro Foods is the only data available to a brand manager to help them make calls.

In terms of viral campaigns, measurement becomes a little easier if the mediums used are trackable (mostly interactive media) but since the concept is so new, there are no benchmarks available to tell us how successful the campaign really was. Focus groups and TOM trackers can help here too but not just in isolation.

Recently working for the biggest ice cream brand in the country, we were faced with a similar question. But rather than give an answer shrouded in obscurity, we suggested a couple of models, which would at least give some meaning to the marketing buck spent on the campaign.

• Content Relevance

o The more relevant the content for your particular target market, the better the response. Forwardability increases if you make the group think that they are part of something big and as a group their chances of standing out in other groups is big.

o Shock value of content. Unless the content is interesting or challenges the way you think, people would never forward it. Your consumers would never want to look like losers in the eyes of their friends by forwarding something lame.

• · Media Relevance

o Is your seeding strategy relevant to the target market

o Media habits: Do consumers subscribe to highly viral media like cell phones, email. For example there is a vast difference between youth media which is more viral than media for middle aged consumers whose viral media habits are centered around group meetings

• · Reliability and Redundancies of Media

o Where is the news posted? Is it coming from a random source or from a trusted friend. Skepticism in consumers is on all time high. They would tune out everything that comes from unknown sources.

o Reliability of news increases with redundancies. If the consumer sees the same news on 5 different channels, the trust level increases each time. It is something that I call media herding. If you cant get BBC to show your story, replicate the story on smaller local channels and soon they would have generated the same amount of trust as the bigger channels.

For each of these measures there needs to be an index with weight assignments and then they need to be benchmarked against the most successful viral campaigns of the category.

Also a large part of a viral campaign is beyond any form of calculation but can still give a huge tilt to measuring whether the campaign was successful. These can be attributed to behavioral changes in the society brought about by the campaign (for example the tilt toward more clubbing because of the Axe effect campaigns). The manifestations of these changes in society are almost always first observed in the press. If your campaigns, versions of it or the concept of your campaign start getting free PR mileage then I feel that you have hit the bulls eye with your viral campaign. The press is the most potent barometer to judge the success of a viral campaign. The Just in Time mechanism of the press to dynamically capture a trend in the market will always tell you whether your campaign has moved the consumers.

I think that if you wan to judge the priorities of a nation you should observe the press of that nation and it will tell you instantly what is playing on the minds of the people. Always ready to pounce on the news that would stir the public, the press plays on the basic instincts of a nation’s psyche. So if you have made it to the news, it should give you a clear signal about the strength of your campaign.

Another model to judge the monetary returns to your campaign is benchmark against media which already has some form of measurability built into them. Tradional media is measured in terms of Cost per Contact (CPC) which in turn in measured through a model of GRP’s. In order to work this model out you need to figure out how much would it cost you to get the kind of response that you get from virals if you actually activated through traditional mediums. For example, how much money would you have to spend to get a consumer to buy into the idea of a video and generate enough likeability that he/she actually decides to talk and share it with her/his friends. Traditional mediums have a much harder job to get consumers to act since their nature is so passive. So watching an ad once, will not get them that bang, plus they will have to go through multiple channels to make the consumers realize the importance of the message. Adding up all those efforts of traditional mediums would tell you how much buzz value in terms of rupees you got from a single viral. So for example the amount you would have to pay a Dawn reporter to get the story of Olwell into the press would tell you the opportunity cost of doing a viral that gets free publicity in Dawn.

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Fall of Traditional Media

“don’t count the ones you reach, reach the ones who count” 

Soemthing that has come as an insight over the past one week working on the cornetto viral plan is how screwed up our media landscape really is. The way things work here and the structure of media is so ad hoc, it pisses me off no end. I plan to meet up with a media plannner from either mindshare or media comm next week to understand how they really go about things

So what i have realized is that the media landscape has changed over the past few years but our media agencies have not really geared up for the change.

• Dwindling attention spans of the consumer
• Cosumers in control (DVR, Online Media)
  • There is lots more choice
• The battle is no more for reach but for impact and relevance
  • It doesnt matter whether your particular consumer is watching, it is more about what they are watching

A couple of recent articles on the millward brown blog really told me a lot of viral marketing and why it works compared to the traditional aproach of media planning. Now, when the media is the message, viral marketing uses media relevacne to drive home the message. This paper on the millward brown blog talks about the research done on neuroscience to discover how we react and structure information and how, when and what impact ads have on our lives based on their timing and media used.

 Only today, someone in the marketing 360 group pointed out that they saw a telenor ad on cartoon network. now that is down right stupid even if you discount the fact that telenor has blind money to throw around on the media. and there were yet others right there in the stooopid hall of fame who tried justifying the idea by saying that telenor wants to target its consumers early on.

Researching viral marketing i came across this brilliant resource that should be bookmarked by all aspiring planners out there. http://www.imediaconnection.com/

 Tagged below is the initial buildup of the cornetto viral plan. Ofcourse i have not been able to disclose the idea but the buildup does take you through the world of viral marketing. It also shows how strongly we have to end up sell viral marketing ideas to this part of the world. I’m glad the cornetto brand team has had the gutts to go forward with this campaign.

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Global Agencies in the Third World

Recently a question posted on an advertising forum on orkut made me realize quite a lot about the global advertising scene and how Pakistan fits into the whole picture. The recent introduction of O&M into the advertising scene has been quite an eye opener at least for me. Just rummaging through the list of the largest agencies in the world I was quite shocked to see that there is little or no presence of some of the largest agencies in the world in Pakistan. Arguably the largest agency in the country is ranked below 10 in the world. JWT, Mindshare and O&M are three largest WPP companies and the parent companies have huge stakes in these in Pakistan. The rest of the agencies are just affiliates with little or no systems adherence and trainings to their parent companies. The only benefit is the automatic acquisition of globally aligned business. Now that O&M has made the move and WPP has become so much stronger in Pakistan, I’m beginning to think, what the Omnicom group is doing sitting on its ass. Apart from BBDO (or is it TBWA) there is no real strength of the Omnicom group in Pakistan.

Check out the global revenue + family trees of the top agencies of the world at AdAge here. http://adage.com/images/random/familytree06.pdf