This blog is in reaction to reading this piece on Dawn regarding Wasim Akram and match fixing allegations. http://www.dawn.com/news/1285348

I am still a fan but a confused one. As a normal being we pick and choose based on our liking and that makes it easier for us to forget and forgive.

Heroes are picked based on their talents, so it doesn't matter what kind of human being they are, for example, Afridi is my hero and on a cricket pitch I forgive him for everything but as a human being i can't stand him, when it comes to Wasim Akram or even Imran Khan i can go on for days praising their talents but as an honest human being I have my doubts about their character.

There is fine thin line between right and wrong and that line further shrinks when its between 'my right' and 'ethically / morally wrong'. Perhaps more and more cricketers are being convinced that its their right to earn more and more by all means simply because its their right.

This goes beyond cricket, every field of work i have encountered, money matters and its not enough no matter how much it is. Recently i have been struggling to cope up with this and spoken to few about it and to my surprise its not just cricket, my field of work or our country, its global and its too late to fix it. We are so corrupt now that the fine line is gone, we simply pick and choose based on our liking of whats wrong and whats not. We have our own interpretation and names for various corrupt activities we are involved in, kickback is commission, bribe is speed money, bookies are our friends, agency/ clients own startups with zero investment and property is the new currency to play with taxes.

Having said that we all like our close friends no matter what they do, so how can we not love our heroes and forget or turn a blind eye towards what they do on the side.

Who to blame?

I am not sure where to start but I just had to write as I hate having a conversation over this with people for various reasons, primarily they all suck and too emotional, which makes them say things that are no less than what any Taliban would say.

For the record I hate extremism and not just religious.

So let me try and find out the culprit while I write, it all might have started way before but I wasn't there so I can't comment on Umer, Ali or Zia. I will take 11th September 2011 as the starting point.

11/11 was one of the most brutal attack on any nation in recent era, many died, who survived might have never recovered(at least emotionally). That one attack created a huge divide Them & US from which the world never recovered. After that attack America had to retaliate any sane nation would do that but they never slept over their approach and here we are now still trying to fix it. We all can blame America for various things but I think we all were part of their strategy being a Pakistani I should only talk about my country. So when the attack happened our human reaction was 'sadness' but a lot of us started coming up with conspiracy theories, this might have been in our defense or simply because we are not humans. Pakistan just could NOT say no to America this is because we could only try and calm them down but anger stops you from thinking straight with logic.

Why America looked at us? We were there when they wanted us before, we were there who could guide them in the right direction, we were there when they were building this 'cult' (i can't call it a religion) and most importantly we were easy to buy. So we happily joined, feeling like the most favored prostitute of a Sheikh. Forgetting that they might use and leave us pregnant.

We knew each and every one from the list of most wanted, we made them and thats the reason we gave them heads up before they were attacked, we had no choice then we have no choice now but to be part of all this. They way we police Indian border we could have done that for Afghan border too but we are too busy/happy on flat surface to think about rough terrain . The amount we spend to scare India could have been used on the Afghan border if we were really serious about stopping anyone.

We thought if we let them in and hide we could bully America, India etc. etc. and we were right we really thought our co-creation were our friends Ha! they were too pissed at us and played on our internal dived of pro and anti west. We always thought we could control them whenever we wanted, journalist were interested in exclusive interviews, army was busy collecting aid, politicians had found ego boosting hang out buddies which they could use in elections and common man was busy with criticizing whatever they felt was not in their favour. Meanwhile our 'friends' were recruiting and they did that very well by using sympathy, we are humans and very emotional ones so of course we all supported 'friends' from mountains to living rooms we all must have cursed the west and sympathized with the beard. It was all going well, everyone was happy, America thought they took their revenge and just wanted to go back home, Army had money to stare at India, journalist were famous and rich, common man was growing beard and getting ready for heaven by quoting everything from Quran without even giving a thought about context. We all were generally happy!

And then our dear friends decided its time for real Jihad, by this time they had regrouped with everyone's help, they had friends everywhere, they were kind of whos who of the world. Journalist were taking them live on air, politicians were giving speeches in their favour to gain vote bank and they had recruits already in every country ready to blow up in the name of something or the other. Thousands of lives of innocent and not so innocent were lost in this new battle, minorities suffered the most, we all kept quite, westerners in this region suffered, we all kept quite, when alledged blasphemers were killed we all kept quite, education and health suffered we all kept quite but when Osama was killed we did not keep quite and when killers came to court we showered them with petals. Our courts are scared to give punishment, our lawyers are scared to fight a case when religion was involved

Issue with PTI Supporters

This post is written by Parisa Siddiqi on her blog and I am copying extract of it without her consent to which i apologize but I just had to share this as PTI supporters made my life miserable with their annoyance. I personally think its Imran's fault for making them believe that they will win outright whereas he knew himself that they will be leading opposition. Also, these people have never voted nor they know rules and regulations around elections and polling stations, if MQM cheated, PTI harassed voters. I repeat the whole PTI clan needs to gain experiences before crying for revolution, at times they make MQM look good.

Everyone is aware of the electoral problems of NA 250 in Karachi and my polling station at DHA girls college phase 8 had similar problems where polling didn’t start till 12:30 pm. I arrived there with my family at 7:45 am and expected to be done earlier but when there was no news of the ballot boxes till 10 am, we decided to go for breakfast and then come back later.

While we were having breakfast and devising our plan for the day, a family came and sat next to us and their young daughter was proudly sporting an Imran Khan kurta. The girl’s mother who looked like a sensible lady turned to us and asked us whether we had voted yet or not. We told her we were still waiting. Then without a moment of hesitation, she asked us, “Who are you voting for?” Her husband looked embarrassed and in a meek voice pointed to her that she shouldn’t ask that. I guess he understood it was inappropriate. But she ignored him and continued to look at us waiting for an answer clearly not understanding her intrusion. My mother politely said, “That’s a very personal question” and hoped that would be the end of it. Like all “aunties” in our culture she did not have any boundaries either. She continued to insist, “No, but still?” We all looked uncomfortably at each other and again trying to be polite yet give her the hint, my cousin said, “everyone is voting for different people on this table.” We really thought she would shut up now. She still insisted, “No but still… who is the majority voting for?” Understanding that she would not give up without an answer and we would not be able to get back to our breakfast till we answered her, we hesitantly said, “PTI, MQM and Jibran Nasir.” She looked confused. In regards to the last choice she said, “Who’s that?” I said, “An independent candidate.” She was clearly not impressed. She finally gave up and stopped harassing us.

Rest of the post can be read at Parisa's blog here

Election 2013 Grumbling (Unedited - Rough Draft)

Bravo! 60% turnout at this years elections, may the highest turnout ever but a little in depth research by any common man can show that these 60% of voters were not 60% population of this country we might be around 200 million in population no around 85 million were only registered voters, so by that calculation, in terms of population only 26% of the population voted, our next job is to get 149m people to vote but if that happens God bless our nation by the chaos on that day.

Build up to 11th May 2013 

I have never seen such excitement around politics, the office meetings, dinners with family, drinks with friends and even conversations with domestic staff was around elections. I was lucky to have known all sets of people with various political affiliations and it was great to have heated debates on logical and most of the time illogical issues around elections. I till the time I stamped on ballot paper wasn't sure who I am going to vote for as I had left it on two things, 1) Anyone who gives me the most logical answer and a best reason to vote for their party 2) Scrutinize my local representatives. Sadly, there was no logical explanation nor there were much info on most of the representatives. Honestly that left me quite irritated as campaigning by friends and family was getting on my nerves and most of them were supporting PTI with no rationale at all. 

Party analysis before elections

PTI - By far the best campaign to engage people and get them on board, if it wasn't for IKs charm he would not have so much support from people as his manifesto came out just days before election so most were blindly supporting them, in all honestly I can bet more than 90% of his supporters did not read his manifesto  I did and it was quite obvious, to me MQM and PPP have a crafted their manifestos far more beautifully than PTI. Taking nothing away from PTI, they did manage to mobilize a lot of volunteers and banked on a lot of free media. Apart from a request to my activation agency to hire 30 boys and girls on Rs. 1,000/day to promote PTI in defence area. PTI got all the NAYA voters for their NAYA Pakistan. My brothers, mother and most of my family were in for Imran Khan with a single argument lets try him.

Party Internal Target: Leader of opposition and KPK Government.

PPPP- They seemed not interested apart from gaining their usual seats from Sindh, their campaign had two things, what others did and Bhutto legacy, It might and might not have worked as Sindh is their own in any case. I have a strong PPP support in my house as my dad went to school with most of the leadership, coming from Hyderabad I even have family ties with most of the PPP candidates. There were shirts with my family name in interior Sindh supporting Bhutto's party. Having said that my dad not even once asked any family member to vote for them and I have a strong feeling he himself did not vote for them but even if he did I can't blame him as his best friend is in PPP and he used to be PPP student federations President for Hyderabad in 70s. All that mattered was he voted in Karachi and went to Hala to be with his friends.

Party Internal Target: Sindh Government & Southern Punjab

PML-N - If not the best, they had the most effective and ethically correct campaign in which they just showed what they had done for Punjab province. Although they seemed shit scared of PTI, which was obvious as PPP played their cards well and just sat outside the ring to watch the fight in Punjab. A close friend of mine happened to be a die heart supporter of tiger party, usually we never agree but I happened to agree with him on his arguments to some extend. PML-N is a true cornered tiger for him but for me they have done well for Punjab.

Party Internal Target: Win outright, Punjab Government.

ANP - I believed they were formed for a reason and that reason was over, Best explained by their leader Shahi Syed, we will loose as we can't campaign our victory will be if we get out of this alive. I din't see their campaign but through a friend I managed to know about them. This friend of mine is a PPP supporter, from interior Sindh and represents quite a few minorities still living in Pakistan. His argument was simple, I live in Karachi and ANP can only give me security. Which is more than a valid reason for anyone to vote for anyone.

Party Internal Target: Few seats in Karachi, Selected seats in KPK.

MQM -  Robin hood of Karachi, their campaign was around Altaf Hussain as expected but targeted common man with a glimpses of hope through Mustafa Kamal's footage, they also managed to mobilize their workers in getting the voters prepared for a war against the PTI burgers, a simple idea annoy and irritate them and they will go home. I personally don't like them but I always say, either keep them happy or eliminate them by force, there is nothing in between for this party. If it was in my hand I will keep them happy, whenever we have kept them happy, they have worked for Karachi and crime rate goes down. All they want is their territory, give it to them, they will be the best party for Karachi as their network is far more superior than any other party or agency in Karachi. Politics is not about winning, its about your strategic moves to utilize everyone's strengths for the betterment of nation. A colleague of mine is a supporter, ex worker who lost friends and family back in 90s but I have seen his blind support with few very valid reasons to support MQM, just by having heated discussions with them I have come to realize you can't talk him out of his rationals to support Mahjir Movement but you can plant a logic in him without force.

Party Personal Target: Karachi and Hyderabad 

Elections Day

What a day, I had never seen average, above average and below average so excited to vote, credit must go to Imran Khan but nothing to take away from this nation who probably were more excited to vote as they had never seen a smooth transition of democracy and thats why I say give democracy time and everyone will learn, overnight revolutions will only bite you in your ass, read about Egypt and how Muslim brotherhood came to power, it takes years to successfully bring a revolution.

As my luck goes my constituency was NA 250 one of the most tricky place for MQM and PTI, the clash of burgers and desi's, the rich and poor, ok this is what i had been hearing. I along with my family and a Pakistani flag on my chest got to my polling station all I could do for next 30 mins was check out hotties because polling had not started and people were fighting over PTI caps, at the point i remembered what my father had told me a night earlier, MQM will delay the polling so we the privileged ones get frustrated and go home. No one went home and for that I had to stand 10 hours in a queue which was competing with snails and i tell you snails were much faster. 

Generally it was a great day I did not see anyone loose patience and after a long time it was a proud moment to be among Pakistani's, PTI supporters were in high spirit and let me be honest they made those 10 hours worth standing for, I made quite a few friends who happened to be PTI supporters, we might connect later once the election fever dies out. friends from other constituency visited with cigarette, water and chips, ice cream and water was in unlimited stock. Felt like a grand picnic on Lane 14th.

Three instants that needs to be mentioned here;

• Rehman Malik visit
• No matter what he might have done in past the way PTI supporters welcomed him was disgraceful, specially when MQM leaders were sitting all day and no one had balls to say anything to them. From no on Rehman Malik will be known as Balls of Steel by me.
• Senior Citizen jumping queue
• An old man asked me if he could stand in front of me, I simply told him to ask behind me as there were other senior citizens behind me, to which others refused and a certain citizen shouted and made a scene cursing him disgracefully  he had to negotiate his place with another young gentleman some 6 spaces behind me and right when I got my hand inked there came an ID card with a shout from behind 'saathi' the same senior citizen who shouted earlier got vocal to which the polling officer showed him eyes in a plea to shut up to which the shouting uncle was like "oh! VIP" and said not a single word after that.
• Picnic Litter
• The whole 14th lane was there for Naya Pakistan, yet street was over flowing with bottles and all that we ate and drank that day.

At my polling station it was clear that PTI was winning NA 250 as it was claimed by few people that there were no less than 100,000 people at this polling station that day to which the presiding officer interupted and said "Sir it can't be more than 15 to 20 thousand people as this polling station only has 28,000 people registered and all of them will never show up to which another guy said "Bullshit! there are atleast 50,000 people outside" to which everyone agreed. This brings me to the most important reality check for all the first time voters, lets just say if that day MQM would have won NA 250 the 15 thousand present at my polling station would have straight up rejected the result as they were convinced PTI had clean bowled not realizing they were standing in PTI stronghold and forgetting that MQM holds far more stronghold, its not a crime to support MQM, thats the beauty of your vote that everyone gets to vote for what they believe is right. Casting your vote is essential not casting your vote for PTI, and this understanding will only come with experience, so we need days like this every 5 years.

Post Election 

After 10 hours I walked back home as I was too tired to wait for my brother to pick me up, One of my brother was already ready to go for his shoot, the other one got free 3 hours later as he got to know his polling station was different after waiting in the queue with us all day, mum got home early thanks to her senior citizen queue and dad was already in Hala with his childhood friends.

A day well spent, Almost. I got ready and started hoping at various election open houses (another new for me) again living in PTI stronghold meant I was with my PTI friends everywhere but finally I ended up with very few close friends to celebrate PML-N victory with the lone supporter I have in my friends circle.

The healthy debates continued but later on the news of rigging along with proofs started pouring in and one party stood out and it was none other than MQM. I did a bit of research to find out what might have happened in Karachi if it was an ideal situation, overall country turn over was 60%. In Karachi it was averaged 48%. People were surprised at MQM bagging 100,000 votes in Karachi need to understand that their strong hold constituencies are heavily populated and their registered voters are higher than ours and to facilitate that they have larger number of polling stations. 

If PTI was expecting to win from Azizabad its their delusional goals not anyone else fault and if MQM had not rigged they might have won too, a peaceful solution was offered by one crazy MQM leader that 4 constituencies in dispute should have re-elections but PTI wanted and still wants re-election in whole of Karachi and may be in Lahore too. I have few questions to them, seriously? you really think you can win all seats in Karachi? try visiting MQM areas and see their blind support, and there is nothing wrong if people support them, it is their right to freely support whoever they want to support, PTI might have got 2 or maximum 3 seats in fair election but in re-election they wont be able to get more than 2, so why make all this noise and disturb the city. It was right to stand against wrong but as a politician one must find a way other than complete elimination and if you negotiate you will have a better chance to eliminate opponents in a longer run. Now lets take Punjab and specially Lahore, why do you think you had better support than PML-N? what do you have? Imran Khan and his honesty, which is not yet proven. What PML-N hold is a trust of local Punjabi who has seen him perform for them, who have a lot in their hand to show, yes they might not be like Imran Khan but they have facts to show you and it is our duty to respect their mandate. Rigging is an issue and needs to be solved and in a longer run I see this happening with advancement of technology.

Democracy needs time so does democratic leaders, Imran Khan will be the perfect opposition for PML-N and now he has a demo land to prove his claims and above all learn politics, get to know his leaders, opposition leaders and most importantly state secrets which I am assuming can not be shared with any politician unless he is in Parliament. I personally think, Imran might not be able to deliver what he had claimed in his build up but it is important for Pakistan that he delivers even half of it and most importantly learn and gain experience to get rid of big horses from Punjab and Sindh. 

PTI Internal Target: Leader of opposition (almost achieved) and KPK Government.(achieved)

PPPP Internal Target: Sindh Government (achieved) & Southern Punjab (not achieved)

PML-N Internal Target: Win outright, Punjab Government.(achieved and 2 more provinces might be bonus)

ANP Internal Target: Few seats in Karachi (Not achieved), Selected seats in KPK.(Not achieved)

MQM Personal Target: Karachi and Hyderabad (Achieved losing credibility)

Revolution does not come overnight, it takes time and effort. we have seen 5 years of democracy for the first time, give it time, we might remain in dark ages for another 5 years but a leader is gaining experience and look beyond this government we actually might have a true leader who will be ready to lead us. If we give captaincy to someone who is not ready he surely will end up fucking our team, we can afford that but we can't afford that for a nation, specially when this young talent can be groomed and bring us back to our lost glory. Pakistan Zindabad!

Note: Our major concern should be Baluchistan Government as there is no clear lead over there

‘Chinese Whisper’ - News in Pakistan

All these years I only read The Sun till page 3 but couple of years back a friend asked me to read their sports section for latest football rumors and since then I have been hooked to that newspaper purely for football gossip. At times I feel that I know when Posh is pregnant before even Bekham knows about it but all these are rumors, speculations and gossip with zero factual evidence and readers are well aware of that. In broadcast media it is a known fact that Fox/Sky are the gossip queens and yet I prefer BBC over them as if I want authentic news, news that needs to be backed by facts, I don’t want to hear rumors of rape, gossip on child slavery and speculations on current affairs, for all of that I have my Sun.

So what makes something 'gossip' as opposed to 'news'? The difference is subjective - News tends to be:

• of a higher "quality"
• of more relevant
• factual - not speculation/hearsay

As these attributes are debatable what can be consider news vs what can be considered gossip can vary depending on the person asked. 

In recent days I have been irritated by senseless debates on this same topic and the worst part is that we are not discussing  and footballers life or politicians affair, we are casually debating that was that girl raped or was she not? Not many are even willing to find factual evidence before they start spreading this ‘news’ my facebook feed is filled with asking women to avoid going out, stop driving and take extra precautions(go out with your man), seriously? For rumor sake, I think this is some ‘maulvi’ trying to bring Saudi law on women to Pakistan. I am not saying that that alleged girl is lying but before spreading the rumors it is our responsibility to find facts rather than use this as a panic button in our pseudo-intellectual debates.

In Pakistan, news is published based on entertainment value. Many people get their news from the internet, even blogs. People are more interested in confirming their own ideas than knowing the truth. I have been brought up in a way that I still manage to read a newspaper and there are very few newspapers left in Pakistan which actually are not gossip magazines. Whenever these remaining newspapers make a mistake in their facts I have always seen them apologizing and admitting their mistake publically and trust me over the years I might have come across only a bunch of factual mistakes in these publications.

Our broadcast media is completely different story, PTV to some extend holds integrity but remember its state owned channel. Having worked with one of the biggest broadcast network in Pakistan I have learned the trades of entertainment industry which includes our very serious news. At times breaking News in Pakistani can be equivalent to Roznama Jawani publications.

Even though I am very closely associated to local media, I have managed programming for a News channel and still working in ad industry, I have stopped watching local TV channels, news is no more than a joke to me and entertainment is no more than brainwash for their viewers but surprisingly at times I feel like less informed when I chat with people around me as they all are heavily engulfed in local news, I didn’t knew who Sharmila Farooqi was getting married to, what was that Prado rape story, not even a single version of kidnapping scene at Dolmen Mall but I did knew Ms Farooqi was getting married, there was some rumor regarding Prado and there was shooting at Dolmen Mall, this all came from my heavily trusted print sources with no gossip in them as they could not establish facts. Whereas people around me had more than enough knowledge to start discussing and spreading the rumor and making me look like a I don’t know the real story, in other words start creating panic. Source? Internet and Word of mouth

News in Pakistan is based on the game ‘Chinese Whisper’ I prefer to break the chain till I get some facts.

Aitebar by Pop Maulvi

We all grew up following Vital Signs and idolizing Junaid Jamshaid and the voice of this great man, even when he went solo. Most of his songs were about love for women but the song that made this man was about his love for the country.

I have known this great man since my days at ARY and trust me when I met him and shared an interesting evening with him I knew that he is fucked up in his head and will go on to make a lot of people fool in the name of religion. Since then every time my mother would show her desire to invite him for a religious talk at our home I would veto criticizing him, to which my mother would get angry with me but thankfully she always listened to me.

Today, I heard something by this great man about the ladies who idolized him at his pop and religious concerts, who made him what he is today and trust me it was disturbing even for someone like me who is not as close to religion as my mother would like me to be, who does not believe in equality and might be considered anti-feminist (I have my reason) and who is still not comfortable sitting on a passenger seat with a lady driver. In case you guys think this is JJs first fucked up show, you might want to Google his interesting bashing of a poor white lady at a religious concert somewhere in North America.

I do not know about most of you but to me being religious does not mean you lose love for women, to me a women needs to be empowered, that does not mean equality but she must be given independence and respect. Letting your women drive, go out and do whatever she wants is the only form of sanity one expects in a civilized world. Let’s just switch the scenario and imagine yourself being held inside your home and escorted everywhere by your wife, sister or mother. Will it not be suffocating for you?

What this great man has done today is something what I feel will hurt a lot women, there will be always be one side who would blindly agree with him and might put up ridiculous bans on their women, then there will few people who will be hurt in a positive way by his senseless comments, these are those people who might have followed him in his Gillette era and continued to do so when he stopped shaving, these people will finally realize that this great man is not so great anymore and he puts a bad name to a religion, motherland and most importantly sisters, mothers and wives.

I just hope there are far greater numbers of people who are hurt positively.

What we need now is Hil Hill Pakistan!

Digital Uprising

Beyond Revolutionary Banners

No we are not going to talk about Imran Khan, for that you have to read your digital news feed. Although, if we were to take Imran as a brand and just like any brand team revisit campaign KPIs, he is not doing bad in terms of ‘likes’, and his TOM is increasing day by day, but does it help achieve the overall business objectives for the brand?

I have been planning to bring digital revolution to Pakistan, where campaigns will focus on smartphones, GPS will be key element in most of them, youtube videos will go viral, twitter will start countless conversations, facebook will make them look great on every ones profile, and Google+… well still not sure about that one, but you get my idea of a perfect digital campaign. And then my perfect digital world came to a halt when a friend shared some heart breaking stats, more than half of our telecom population are not able to send SMS, more than 150million are not yet online and his brand spends approximately Rs.7 Million/month on web banners.

Naturally I was interested in that 7 million now, so I gave it a thought and turned those stats upside down, we have a phone in at least 60 million pockets, 20 million plus are online and facebook is the ever increasing social platform of opinion leaders. Apparently it wasn’t just me who discovered that fact, as I never got those 7m. But the good thing was every brand started spending pennies on facebook, sadly they looked at it as a banner rather than a conversational tool.

Once I pitched RFID led activation linked directly to potential consumers’ personal facebook profile but the brand team leader killed the idea of offline experience shared online by asking a simple question “How many likes will I get on this page? Coke Studio has an X number” upsetting I know. 

We have certainly evolved now. My brief was to be a critic and I thought I will have a lot of campaigns to criticize and to my surprise brands are testing new things, a lot of viral content is being generated, some brands are having serious conversations on twitter and multiple facebook pages are popping up as I write, but sadly marketers have been aimlessly chasing fans, no clear objectives are set for digital and apart from the word digital, there is no integration in overall marketing mix. No matter what anyone says, but as a planner I do believe that brand building is the most essential part and digital can help brands on that side.

As I went through my news and twitter feed, skittles(fruit-flavored sweets) came to my mind, in fact ill pop open a packet right now, but I am talking about their extremely interesting website which was simply consumer-generated. All they did was place a widget on their site linking Flickr for photos, youtube for videos, twitter for conversations and facebook for fan pages, a simple execution to use existing  platforms to your advantage and here on my feed most of the brand were focusing purely on facebook with standard invite & win, play & win, like & win etc. Some actually had nice addictive games but for that I have an iPhone now.

Around cricket world cup I came across Coca Cola’s Junooni campaign, where they tried to own the word Junooni by hiring quite a few university students and paid them hefty amount for their facebook profile, they also ran an online video competition where winners were joined by ‘cha cha cricket’ at the stadium in Sri Lanka, I don’t know how it did for the brand but the word Junooni is still associated with the Rock Band. Qubee and Telenor have taken a ‘caring’ route their digital campaign right now revolves around social cause but in my opinion PTI is doing it a little better than these, now for the most bizarre viral content, “A public service message by kuch khas” Lolz!, In my opinion… spot on, we all said wtf! (Well that’s fantastic) and would probably like to have a coffee at ‘kuch khass’ next time we are in Islamabad. And my most liked campaigns are always going to be these small business who build their fans purely by WOM, one that I liked the most is HD Junkie, they have managed to achieve  something rather interesting, an online DVD store with free home delivery of HD content, a niche clientele but a reliable one. They have also managed to divert traffic to their own amazon lookalike website for orders purely using an existing platform where they have a pre-sale conversation with clients on their own facebook profile.

But I am supposed to criticize the current campaigns and to me these are the few that stand out, I possibly cannot help myself and be nice to all of these as the digital agencies managed to sell it to their clients and I am still trying to sell mine.

Brand: Karachi Snob

Platform: Website

Effectiveness: With these guys I am impressed they don’t focus much on existing platforms, except for maybe a group page on facebook but that’s it. Here is an information portal that focuses on what’s happening in the metros of Pakistan, with comprehensive city listings and other guides. Not a unique idea but a desi version of timeout guide.

Such listings are generally for tourist to explore the city with ease but we the ‘yo’ crowd live in city bubbles and possibly qualify to be tourist as well and snob sites are the best way to explore and discover ‘happenings’.

This site is so effective now that a café or any small business that pops up in the city must have themselves registered with one of the snob sites. A membership card is being pushed by the site which will keep the audience hooked.

The only thing I found missing was a dialogue, almost all the reviews were by business owners and none by actual audience.

Verdict: A brilliant replica but lacks mobility may be a mobile app or a simple SMS address delivery will give them extensive database.

Brand: Pepsi Pakistan

Platform: Youtube & facebook

Effectiveness: Remember Afridi celebrating his birthday, Shoaib and Razzaq playing cricket at some airport and the biggest of them all “Kis nay kaha tha pepsi per 5 ruppay kaam karo?” All of these were big hits on social media and went viral beyond brand team’s imagination. Although I still think “kis nay kaha tha 5 rupay kaam karo” was not intentional, it just happened and created enough user-generated content to encourage brand & agency to take ownership and may be make a case study out of it(I would have done the same thing).

But did anyone of you saw batting and bowling tricks, which were made to look like raw footage by street cricketers? I do, only because my brother was in it. It just did not click, who is to be blamed? Of course the agency.

More attention-grabbing work is being carried out on Pepsi Pakistan facebook page, a simple “Captions Competition” on preset player avatar (I have to admit we crack great jokes on cricket and politics). All you need to do to win is get 20 people to like your caption, instantly shared.

Verdict: We can sit and say it’s too early or start experimenting. There is nothing better than free media.

Cool Batting Trick: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KedFZ5S1zA0

Cool Bowling Trick: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnNeMWbog3c

Brand: Nescafe Pakistan

Platform: Facebook

Effectiveness: Nescafe Hum Hain Jawaan is not just a fan page looking for fans but it is a perfect example of how to engage audience using their own content. This fan page actually comes with a nice user-friendly app, which encourages youth to share their stories using video or a rich full of emotions and props comic strip toolkit.

The greatness of “Hum Hain Jawaan” campaign is that it keeps the big idea intact across all the mediums and a well thought digital execution gives them more than expected engagement numbers.

I wonder if this app is backed by some ground activation or secret seeding on college forums but they have generated a pretty decent traffic.

Verdict: Probably the only campaign in Pakistan dependent on a digital execution, such campaigns will indeed set a benchmark for other brands to follow on social media.

Brand: Zong

Platform: Facebook/ Twitter

Effectiveness: They have a lot going on, let’s start with the special Manchester United SIM offer, although no one knows what they are up to after watching their teaser for over a month between every over bowled. There is nothing fancy about their page that will attract traffic but they have kept a simple rule, get the audience in a conversation and there is nothing better than for brand to start chatting up with their audience.

They don’t have a dedicated ManU/Zong page so cricket by default is part of their updates, what they did with cricket is being applied on football now, predict score, discuss games and win exciting prizes.

During their last M9 launch they did something simple and exciting, every hour a re-charge code was being posted and first one to redeem obviously gets to keep the balance. Now even M9 page is catering to Manchester United but more to my surprise they post exactly the same stuff on this page with a delay of 1 second.

Another interesting contest that I spotted was Twitter Contest which actually encourages you to join twitter just to retweet ‘Zongers’ and win weekly. I am sure the number of followers and the conversations are not what Zong aimed at. I think they need a twitter popularity contest like Ashton Kutcher and CNN to get to at least 2,000 followers.

Verdict: Confused. A lot of conversation going waste due to lack of simple digital strategy.

Brand: Head & Shoulders

Platform: Facebook

Effectiveness: Branded Afridi fan page.

No one really needs to do anything if you can afford the only super star of 180 million people, just upload some videos, pictures and start a conversation related to that super star.

But what I noticed or at least felt that this page is not just there to worship Afridi, they are actually using it to gather insight with random one click polls related to product/category and they are getting more and more clicks on these polls, which wasn’t the case before they signed Afridi fan club.

Digital team needs to keep the page enjoyable, conversation relevant and data useful, whereas the client actually needs to use this data to justify their investment.

Verdict: Say Something… Afridi makes these research polls fun but is that what this page is all about?

Brand: Wateen

Platform: Facebook

Effectiveness: An interesting app offering a trip to infinity & beyond, all you need to do is capture (image or video) emotion of your choice and upload.

What I like about this app is its simplicity, Wateen is not trying to sell you your dream destination but makes you discover Pakistan, all they want you to do is express yourself and if the brand can get that out from their followers “Jo Chaho” is spot on.

Verdict: Keep it simple and catchy!

Revised version published in Aurora Magazine in Januat 2012  

http://auroramag.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/beyond-banners/

Angry Birds

It all started when newspapers introduced engaging games which challenged our intelligence, they meant no harm(sort of) and after centuries came digital gaming era, to me they all had one thing incommon, engage the audience and create a new breed of anti-social species.

World of gaming completely changed with the advent of smartphones phones, but this left the gamers divided in two, complex gamers with a gaming IQ of 1000 (not to insult gamers this number may be adjusted according to your kills in modern warfare 3) and simple gamers who were there just to kill time (I do not suggest their IQ to be any lower, just so you know).

Amidst of all the play boxes and stations, one needs to stay mobile, sneaky audience, seems to shut down their consoles to live a life, we need mobility. The 80’s geeks are probably laughing so hard right about now, remember when you used to pick on them for being glued to their Atari, playing ping pong or galaxy…yeah its payback time.

In between all these conflicts a new war was declared between birds and pigs, to be fair the pigs started it, all they wanted was some fried eggs for breakfast, which naturally angered birds and now they are out to take revenge on the green pigs who stole the their eggs.

It’s a battle which requires you to catapult the titular angry birds at a series of structures built by some devious pigs. Oh boy and this battle picked up big time and took angry birds on top of the charts on iTunes in 2010.

“Let me tell ya, these ain’t no ordinary finches we are talking about. These here are the Angry Birds, the ones that’s going to kick you in the ‘nads  and they’re the ones on your side. They must be from Galapadapados, or sumptin’.” – Col. Angus.

As this tweet by world famous bird expert suggests no one supported pigs but they are still holding fort and laugh at your every miss. 

Key to the addictiveness of this game is its simplicity (again not suggesting at all that it is aimed at the dim witted) just drag your finger over the catapult to aim your bird, then let go and watch it fly across the screen to the target. However, the tricky part is twofold: first, working out which bits of the pigs’ fortress you should target and second, getting your shots to land in the right places by using unique destructive powers of angry birds.

Each of 120 levels takes less than a minute to play so this makes each second wasted count. It gets too frustrating when one stray block falls in the wrong place and wrecks our otherwise perfectly executed plan. Angry Birds features hours of gameplay, challenging physics-based castle demolition, which requires simple logic to crush evil green pigs.

What boggles the mind is the amount of media the game has been able to muster up, fans all over the world have posted tons of videos for the love of Angry Birds, also to keep its big wheel going the game releases season specials such as Christmas and Halloween. Rovio a Finnish computer game developer have us cornered, our black magic phone pulls us towards it during a highly superficial brand plans or concepts are being presented or even in between red and green lights on road...ARRGH!!!! (Must shoot pigs….)

A random guy on a bus once declared “Protect global warming or play Angry Birds!”

Next up we have an alligator in a tub, fruit massacre and terrorists paradise, flight control.

Revised version published in Aurora Magazine Dawn Group (Annual issue 2011)

A penguin from Madagascar

I am a strategic planner. I said that proudly the day I was made one in 2005. Although I wasn’t sure what it actually meant, it sounded cool. It still does. I still show off my designation, but now the only people I manage to impress are students, bankers and maybe my family. However, for people who know what being a planner means, this is no less than being one of the penguins of Madagascar – they are the most unreliable creatures, they live in their own world and most of their plans fail. But then, at the end they are the ones who save the day – almost.

The most difficult part in a planner’s life is to explain what he does. I am still trying to figure out what I do (but then so is everyone else in the industry) because to be honest all I do is think about either non-work related stuff or my next travel destination. But the beauty of this job is the more you think and look, the more productive you become. The idea is to consume whatever you come across and magically your planning is done; all you need to do is keep it relevant. Yes, we consume everything, especially time.

To make matters more interesting, I work in activation, which most of you still refer to as BTL and a few of my clients even call us vendors. A planner’s job in activation is no different from that of a planner in a different advertising discipline; we even have to develop campaigns based on ‘imaginative’ insights backed by researched ‘assumptions’.

My day usually starts early at 11:00 a.m. (when I am not off on my quarterly vacation). The first person I meet and greet is the most important person in the office. He knows everyone, knows all our company secrets and he is the only one who personally meets all my clients and serves them tea. He is my office boy. Office boys are integral to agencies. He is the one we all use as a perfect example when we talk about the ‘masses’. If we need to do a brand analysis we ask him to run down and buy it and he keeps the smooth flow of chai going even if we are working past midnight. Next, I meet my laptop, the second most important part of my life after my phone. I check Facebook, Twitter and all the other ‘creative’ platforms. We planners are curious by nature so we need a couple of hours to ourselves to read random stuff, which can vary from The Sun to Harvard handouts. Being an activation planner gives us the added responsibility of keeping an eye on activation campaigns and not just TVCs on YouTube. As a result we need to read more as there is not much on YouTube apart from flashmobs.

Although most people would still say I am young, especially given my dress sense and the way I look, I do have people younger than me on my team who, by now, are usually ready with a brief. This is the time when I switch off the technology. This is the most fun time for any planner. We play with the briefs – criticise objectives, laugh at the target group description, completely ignore budgets and think wild. There would be no fun or even great work if we stopped challenging briefs. Some might say we challenge just out of fun, but in reality most of the time activation teams are a bit more experienced about on-ground events than the assistant brand managers, if not the brand managers. Once my team has got the direction, we involve the operations team and we conduct our pre-production meeting where all our wild and over ambitious ideas are killed in the name of reality check. Eventually, we simply say:“You are the experts. How can we do it?” and surprisingly the ideas killed earlier now have multiple solutions.

The meeting is adjourned and we start work on PowerPoint when suddenly… wait! A client wants to meet ‘now’ about the activation proposal we put together within 24 hours and emailed to them urgently two weeks ago and within 15 minutes we are in the client’s boardroom. The meeting begins after half an hour drinking coffee and chit chatting randomly about the competitor’s useless campaign. Finally the assistant brand manager walks in. He has one year’s extensive experience in brand management. He usually starts with a brief overview and apologises for the brand manager not being available because of another important meetings. The plan is presented, everyone loves it. The brand team will review it, have it approved and get back to us before the weekend.

Or (alternative scenario) Wait! A client wants to meet ‘now’! Within 15 minutes everyone is in the boardroom (including the brand manager). We hear the marketing director will be joining us. Everyone is tense. He walks in after a couple of slides are presented, greets everyone saying he has 10 minutes, and please continue. Half way through the presentation he asks about the strategy behind the campaign. I reply with my usual passion that it is ‘to create a brand world through which we can build a loyal consumer base.’ He turns to his brand team and asks. Sales? He turns to me and says they will discuss this internally and get back to us before the weekend.

Or (further alternative scenario). Everything goes as planned and the client even trusts us. In which case, back at the office my boss wants to meet and hear about the meeting. We discuss the outcome of the meeting. He calls in his GM. Three Marlboro Lights are lit, three bun kebabs are ordered as we are on a diet (not me) and our beloved office boy brings in three cups of tea. We discuss the possibility of launching new activation platforms or even expanding the agency outside Pakistan. The meeting is then interrupted by the finance manager, who wants to talk about the cash flow situation. At this point the idea of expansion is put on hold and we start talking about getting more clients. A few calls are made and few blind dates with possible clients are set. Everyone is happy and positive for a day.

It is 6:00 p.m. and depending on my workload, this is usually the end or the start of my day.

I enjoy working at night or at least I say that to justify my laziness and tendency to leave things to the last minute. Like this piece. I was told to write it over a month ago, but here I am up past midnight doing it, like any other proposal.

It sure is the end of the day for my team as they don’t enjoy late sittings or working through the night, whereas I am more productive then. And with my headphones on, no one dares to come near me as they know I am working in my silo. Yes, you heard that right but then again I have spent all day with non-silo workers and I now need my own space.

Note: This timeline fluctuates daily and at times hourly depending on the mood of clients, teams and wives (not sure about the last one, readers are requested to verify).

This kid was the most interesting character admiring Gaudi's master piece "Park Guell"