The Future Of Advertising … Is Not Advertising

We live in an era that isn’t business as usual anymore. Living in a networked economy with an increasing overlap between consumer and technology is opening up opportunities for businesses and the resulting advertising to evolve. As Mark Earls has said marketing is increasingly moving from a world where you are marketing to people to one where people are marketing to each other on your behalf.

Daniele Fiandaca is one of the foremost trendsetters in the field and is currently running his own consultancy, Digital Fauna (DF came from the initials of his own name). Prior to starting his own consultancy, London-based Daniele Fiandaca was CEO (Europe) of Profero, an independent, privately owned digital marketing agency founded in London in 1998, growing it from a small team to the global business it is now with 300 employees in fifteen cities across the globe and boasting a highly diverse roster of clients, among them AstraZeneca, COI, Guinness, HBOS International, Johnson & Johnson, Lufthansa, and Western Union. Under Daniele’s creative leadership, the agency had won many awards, including a Gold Cannes Cyber Lion for its MINI “White Rabbit” campaign.

He also continues to run Creative Social which he founded, alongside Mark Chalmers, in 2004 and has sat on a number of juries including D&AD, Festival of Media and Revolution. His passions include film, collecting vinyl toys and traveling to exotic places.

Umair Mohsin caught up with him at the PAS Digital and Social Media workshop held at the Sheraton on September 21, 2011 and had an engaging ‘conversation’ about social media, marketing people to people, whether agencies will survive in a new media world and the future of advertising as we don’t know it.

Q. How do you usually define Social Media?

Social media is really a conversation facilitated by lots of technologies. It really is a ‘conversation’.

Q.When we say conversation do we mean between the consumer and the brand?

No! It’s a dialogue between people to people.

Q.So where do the brands come in to this?

It’s a conversation so it’s the same conversation that we might have if we were having dinner or if we were going to someone’s house. When people are having such conversations do they expect a brand to leap in and become part of the conversation? They don’t. So why do the brands feel they can do it online. What they [the brands] need to do is provide social currency to these people to actually fill those conversations. People tend not to want to speak to brands, so the brand itself has to be fundamentally interesting if it wants to become part of people’s conversations. A lot of brands don’t get that.

Q. So why than should brands take a look at social media in the first place?

Word of mouth has always been the most influential marketing media ever. Now however word of mouth now equals world of mouth. Brands can now get into those conversations and actually have people promoting them with one person conversing about it to a hundred people or even a thousand people and that’s extremely powerful.

If brands provide interesting content, interesting offers, interesting conversational pieces, some entertainment than they have more chance of people spreading it without having to spending media dollars. It can be mass reach without the cost. Fundamentally however it means you do have to have a good product as to the same extent it is much easier to get found out. You also have to be interesting.

Q. You use the word interesting a lot. When we say Interesting what do we mean? Is making someone laugh interesting?

Brands need to have social currency to be interesting. If you can make something simpler, faster, more inspiring, more available or effortless than you’ll have currency. For other examples look at the social currency wheel.

Credit: Steve Sponder

http://blog.stevesponder.com/how-valuable-is-your-social-currency

Q. Brands like McDonalds, Starbucks, Pepsi or Coke do not need social media to have social currency because of their existing heritage. Does social work in the same aspect for new companies or brands?

There is a telephone company called GifGaf in UK which is a phone network built using social  media. They ensured that the community engagement happened consistently and sustainably adding value both to the brand and the community. Secondly, this form of media works best when the whole business is geared to not just accepting but embracing the value and the power of its community.

Q. What was the thing that they did different?

They listened. That’s it. You have to understand the fundamentals. People in pubs do not talk about biscuits or bulbs. You have to create something that they might talk about. Wheat Thins is a fantastic example of creating something quite humorous utilizing people’s use of social. Brands have to engage their fans and if they don’t have any than they do have to ask this question of why not and that’s the issue which they have to address first.

It must be mentioned that advertisers focus on numbers when social is not about numbers but about the quality of engagement. If you can have a group of 100 fans you can learn so much including about the products and they can be your biggest evangelists. So it’s not about the numbers. That’s why it’s a CEOs job to ensure that their company embraces social across the  board.

Q. How has business changed because of social media?

Because of WOM phenomenon now products actually have to be good whereas in the past products have been successful without being so. Bad customer service is also a thing of the past, most brands do not get away with that anymore. What we’re also seeing is that people have to be far more open and honest. You have a lot of examples of businesses using social media who tried to hoodwink people and got found out very quickly.  So social media has made the businesses need to be more honest.

Q. Isn’t it too many choices and too many lines of communication? How do you keep up?

If the CEO of ZAPPOS, a multi billion dollar company can spare time for twitter then no business has the right to complain. Like I said it’s the CEO that leads the whole culture. The problem you get in UK and possibly in Pakistan too that it’s the more junior people who recognize the need for social and in all honestly many senior management don’t get it. What you find is that those CEO do get it and actually embrace it will gain a competitive advantage as a result of engagement with its community.

Q. What factors should companies consider when choosing to engage on social media?

The first thing you have to understand is that what are you trying to achieve first. Going on Facebook is not a strategy. You really have to understand what it is you are trying to do. Are you trying to build a community, do you want to use it as a CRM tool, do you want to experiment and see what happens, can you recruit your biggest fans to manage your Facebook group for you… there are different ways you can do stuff. Some of the basics are that do not open a twitter account and follow a 1000 people just to have them follow you back. You have to know what the Twitter account is for. If you’re a telco e.g. and you have customers tweeting their problems to you, you can’t ignore that. You have to have a system which can respond to those tweets straight away. The acceptable time on Twitter is really no more than an hour.

Q. Best tactics, where do I start, how do I find my focus and efforts.

Listen first, be human, and first listen to what people are saying about your brands. Nielsen Buzz metrics is an excellent tool for listening.

Q. How do you pay the agency which does social media?

I don’t think advertisers should be using agencies for handling their social media. It should be in-house. The only people who know their brands are the people who work in them. How can an agency know how to answer on FB or Twitter. Agencies should be in consultancy or giving lots of training. Agency people should sit in the business if they are handling it to understand the business and talk to people around you but it should be internal to the company.

Q. Is there a future of agencies than if brands continue to grow their own communities and market themselves?

(Laughs) The future of agencies is as making brands interesting e.g. WCRS was the agency behind Orange Telecom. They made the mobile operator interesting. Great ideas are great ideas and agencies are good at great ideas. Agencies will be successful if they can provide ideas which people can belong to.

Q. What elements should be addresses in the plan and how would you measure success.

One of the ways is that people are starting to measure the avg. value of a Facebook customer vs. a non FB customer. 40% of people want to join because they want to receive discounts and promotions and then you use the engagement to help them become customers.

 

Beauty In The Lines: Pakistani Calligraphy

It has been compared to a chant, a rhythmic divine beauty, a melody, an aria, a toccata, an edification, an exaltation. As poetry is for the tongue, calligraphy is to the page. The authors of The Splendor of Islamic Calligraphy put it best when they said: “Calligraphy is the plainsong of the divine”.

Calligraphy is the art of the linear graphic, but it is more than that. In Islam, it glorifies the unseen face of Allah (God). Much like icons of other faiths, calligraphic scripts in Muslim cultures represent power. The first revelation of the Quran (Koran), the holy book of Muslims, regards the pen (Qalam) as a tool to acquire knowledge. It is written in the Quran that God has taught humans through the use of the pen.

Such scripts in Arabic are held in high esteem in the Muslim world as the Quran itself has been revealed in Pure Arabic. A part of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages, it is composed of 28 letters (mostly consonants) and is constructed on the interplay of a horizontal base line and the vertical lines of its consonants. It is read from left to right, with the addition of vowels, diacriticals, and loops which are positioned above and below the base line. These lines, angles, planes and formal shapes, though subject to geometric rules, achieve life and movement through volutes, contrasted characters, interlocking and intertwined letters and clear breaks. As the eye shifts from one plane to another, at once a sensation of movement and rhythm is created: the pictorial divide causes the page to move, with unexpected colour combinations and an effect of brilliance.

The Origin Of Calligraphy

Muslim calligraphers were doing marvels with form and content at roughly the same time as Carolinian manuscript illuminators and T’ang Dynasty ink brush artists were each in their own way evolving a sense of writing style unique to their language. The Western style went its own way by including images of humans and animals (and God depicted as a human), thereby reviving the Greek and Roman sense for imagistic art lost during the days of barbarism.

Muslims avoided such iconography, because Islam forbade the use of human imagery in any form. As a religion based on an invisible God, early Islam had to compete against pre-existing totem-based religions, which encouraged figural representation. These practices (and memories) had to be eradicated. An angular, geometric script, now designated as ‘Kufiq’ (because it was devised in the city of Kufah in what is now Iraq), became the answer. Used originally to transcribe the Quran and accepted by Arabs and non-Arabs as being inspired from ‘divine origin’, it came to be seen as the alternative to sculptural or figurative architectural decoration which had its associations with idolatry. From leading the way to mark a building as distinctly Islamic as well as pay tribute to God, it was also adapted to artistic decoration on textiles, ceramics, coins, utensils, epitaphs, and architectural monuments, all of which spread as the Muslim empire grew.

The calligraphic lines from Muslim reed pens led to a geometric stylization that has been best seen in Arabesque. This is an element of the Islamic art which consists of elaborate application of repeating geometric forms that often echo the forms of plants and animals. To Muslims, these forms – taken together – constitute an infinite pattern that extends beyond the visible material world. They in fact symbolize the infinite and non-central nature of the creation of the one God.

Islamic calligraphy also spread because of another reason: a rounded cursive script, employed by scribes for everyday documents, now designated as ‘Naskhi’, developed by a calligrapher called Ibn Muqla in the 10^th century, and afterwards perfected by numerous calligraphers. Distinguished by its clarity, simplicity, and legibility, it gained favor over Kufiq for copying the Quran, and spread to all regions of the Muslim world later in the century. The ‘Naqshi’ is the proto-style from which came most of the scripts now used by calligraphers: Thuluth, Muhaqqaq, Maghribi, Riqa’i, Rayhani, and Tawqi’, to name a few. To the practiced eye they can be differentiated by how the hooked heads of verticals are made, the form of letter endings, the compactness of the letters, the degree of slant of the letters, the amount of horizontal or vertical elongation, and the degree of rounding of comers.

The Technique of Calligraphy

The proportioning of the characters plays a part in calligraphic designs in the same way as rhythm articulates music. The legibility of a text and the beauty of its line require rules of proportion. The proportions of the characters always remain in constant relationship: they all refer back to the size of the alif, the first letter of the alphabet.

An allegory explains this relationship best. Allah (swt) created the angels according to the name and number of the letters, so that they should glorify him with an infinite recitation of the Quran. Allah said to them: “Praise Me, I am Allah, and there is none other but I.” The first letter to do was alif, whereupon Allah said “You have prostrated yourself to glorify My Majesty. I appoint you to be the first letter of My Name and of the alphabet.” Thus alif is taken as the module of every calligraphic system.

The length of the alif varies according to style, eg in the Thuluth script, the alif is nine dots high with a crochet or hook of three dots at the top – the dot being the universal unit of proportion. This is a square (rhombic) impression formed by pressing the tip of the pen onto the paper. The dimensions of each side of this square dot thus depend on the way in which the pen has been cut, and on the pressure exerted by the fingers. This pressure has to be sufficiently delicate and precise to separate two sides of the nib.

Alif is also used to measure the diameter of an imaginary circle within which all Arabic letters could be written. Thus, three elements become the basis of proportion – the height of the alif, the width of the alif (dot width), and the alif as a diameter of the imaginary circle.

Calligraphy In Pakistan

Islam and, through it, calligraphy came to the sub-continent through the conquest of Sindh by Mohammad Bin Qasim in 712 AD, and reached its peak during the reign of the Mughal emperors. The Taj Mahal, an Indian icon built by Mughal king Shah Jehan, is one testament to the beauty of Islamic art. It is adorned with many passages of the Quran that relate to Paradise, thereby making the entire complex a metaphor for the heavens. In the area which now comprises Pakistan, Lahore undoubtedly has held the title of being the center of calligraphy in Pakistan.

According to Mrs Wahida Mansoor, a professor at the Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture, “Relative to western cultures, the east has always been about Naturalism, shunning the synthetic for what is sustainable and in harmony with nature. This art is a testament to that fact. All materials from the reed pen to the dyes used are environment-friendly. There is also an air of divinity in this art, eg with its power to preserve knowledge and extend thought over time and space, ink is compared to the water of life that gives immortality, while human beings are likened to so many pens in Allah’s hand.”

Black has traditionally been the basic ink, however the range of colors used by calligraphers are extremely rich and varied. The colors which include gold, silver, blue, green, orange, violet, yellow, etc, have always been prepared from vegetable and mineral resources. Most inks are based on soot or lamp black mixed with water and gum Arabic. However other ingredients used are tea, haldi, henna, pomegranate, beetroot, and even coffee. The final stage of the preparation involves straining the ink through silk. Also, the ink might be perfumed if desired.

This art is unique in a lot of other manners as well, right down to the margins. According to Mr Rashid Arshed, Head of Fine Arts Department at Indus Valley, “Unlike other arts, the margin is used differently in Calligraphy. It may include alongside the actual text a parallel text; or marginal motifs maybe transplanted into the text; or the reader’s attention maybe diverted by making the margin easy to read and the text very difficult. Or the margin may rob the text of its central position by framing it with script on all sides.”

In Pakistani calligraphy, the names of Allah or Muhammad (PBUH), the Kalima, “La Ilah Ha Illalah, Muhammadar Rasullulah” (I Swear That There Is No God But Allah And Mohammad Is His Messenger), and “Bis Millah Ar-Rahman Ar Raheem” (I Start With The Name Of Allah, The Beneficial & The Merciful) recur like a leitmotif. They are drawn in green, blue, or red ink, or in any other chromatic scale likely to seize the attention, as if the calligrapher is trying to induce a mystical trance. Contrasting touches, the colors of diacritical signs and vowels, words or phrases given special emphasis by the calligrapher, all evoke the divine presence.

Usman Ghouri, an upcoming calligrapher, puts it succinctly: “When I calligraphy, I actually feel closer to Allah.”

The Man Who Would Be Picasso

In Pakistani culture, the ability to write, and to write well in a clear hand, are signs of good breeding and of a well-rounded education; thus, the young nation has produced many outstanding calligraphers including Sadequain. Dubbed the ‘Picasso of Pakistan’, Sadequain’s art was unique in that it showed non-conformity and protest intertwined with a sense of impending martyrdom. The poet-artist was an outsider, a rebel holding onto the values of love and the quest for freedom. He drew inspiration from the poetical and literary tradition of the ghazal (a long poem, usually sung), where the protagonist frequently espouses martyrdom as an inevitable destiny.

Sadequain used the Kufiq script to depict a canvas architecture and Nastaliq to create its pictures. This form of pictorial and architectural writing was of his own invention. The basic characteristic of Sadequain’s calligraphy was the sheer size and scale. The colors he used were bright and in high contrast, as cactus and human figures were both transformed into calligraphy. These images were often abstract but frequently organic – spears, battle standards, the dissected skeletal man, the cacti and alif.

The alif was central to Sadequain’s work. To him it was the sign of the Absolute and the manifestation of the human ego. The heroic man among the vertical tropes of power was best symbolized in one of his paintings by the cactus breaking out of the Earth’s crust to emerge into the light, like a man rising above his circumstances. The principal source of light, energy, and power in Sadequain’s art was the line, the moral and aesthetic agent of his art. The line also divided hell and heaven, a thin line, as Sadequain subscribed to the Sufi vision that each was a state of mind and being.

Sadequain’s calligraphy included decorative designs in the margins and motifs which make the texts encased within the margins more attractive to the eye. The particular strain of motifs deployed by Sadequain were drawn from the Tughra, a form of pictorial writing, which was invented to represent the names of Mumluk and Turkish Sultans in the form of heraldic signatures.

It is a pity that the Western infatuation for Zen minimalism in Japan, the paint-brushy quality of Chinese pen-and-ink work, and the wild colors of India, have veered so many eyes from an art form that combines all three. Which also shows just how ignorant is the belief that Muslim culture is rigid, monolithic, and anachronistic.

The Pen

The standard pen is cut from a dry reed. Its length is approximately 10cm, width 1cm, and the upper edges are rounded. The shaft is curved and blunted at the edge so as not to hurt or rub the fingers. Its lower, functional end requires most care and attention from the calligrapher, who usually cuts it to a tapering shape ending in a point.

The pen is divided into two lips – left and right – by a groove 2 to 4cm in length. This groove’s function is to hold the ink. The calligrapher can vary the width of the line according to the pressure exerted on the left or right lip, or on both at the same time. He could modulate his line simply by the weight with which he presses down on one or other of the two sides.

Each calligrapher cuts his pen in accordance with his own usage and that of his native land, and also in accordance with the kind of text he is transcribing. In this sense, styles of script are definable by the pen and the width of the nib. It is therefore essential for the calligrapher to cut the point with precision and in accordance with the rules of the selected system of script. The evenness and elegance of the script also depends on the way the pen is angled to the surface of the paper, thus the calligrapher uses a number of pens.

The traditional way to hold the pen is with middle finger, forefinger, and thumb well spaced out along the shaft. Only the lightest possible pressure is applied.

 

 

Digital Marketing Workshop At Karachi Mariott Hotel, 17th March 2010

It’s finally here. I’ve decided to take the plunge.

I’m offering a comprehensive one-day workshop on Digital marketing for the people involved in marketing & branding. The workshop, which will feature proven techniques for engaging customers at every step of the purchase funnel will be held on March 17th from 9 AM – 5PM and will be hosted at the Mariott Hotel in Karachi, Pakistan. It’s the perfect solution for ongoing training and continuous professional development requirements for all levels of staff, from trainees to senior execs and heavyweights.

Course description

This workshop will provide a fast track understanding of Pakistan’s digital landscape and the elements involved in developing strategies as well as the high level considerations when implementing digital campaigns.

The workshop will look at trends in Pakistan’s digital landscape, what the impact of these trends are on consumers and their media consumption, industry best practices and standards as well as new and innovative uses of the technology in advertising. The workshop also addresses the issues and challenges facing agencies and marketers in adapting their organization to the new digital landscape.

The discussion group format will enable participants to be exposed to the latest in digital marketing as well share experiences and exploring common areas of concern or confusion in the adoption of digital tools.

Why This Workshop

The ad inventory that has been sold for the last 50 years no longer works and marketers have started to figure that out. With declining returns on traditional media campaigns, marketers are increasingly looking for ways to get more out of their budgets in a media landscape that fragments more every year. Digital offers possibilities to do that.

In this workshop you will learn why:

1. Digital Is Not About ‘The Internet’

2. Digital Marketing Is Not About ‘Online Banners’, ‘SEO’, ‘Social Media’, ‘SMS Marketing,’ and so forth

3. Digital Is About Behaviors, Not Technology

4. Digital Marketing Is About Stories & Values, Not Channels Per Se…

5. Why Every Screen, Interface or Object Is An Opportunity For Dialogue, Interaction, Response & Collaboration.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this course participants will:

• Have a sound understanding of the general principles of digital marketing.
• Be conversant with relevant technologies, devices and opportunities for digital communications campaigns.
• Have increased confidence and inspiration for the development of strategic and creative digital communication campaigns
• Understand how to integrate digital into the overall marketing mix.

The e-brochure is posted below:

For registration please contact Mr. Arsalaan Haleem at arsalaan@corporatetrainings.biz. The course fee is Rs. 8500 ($100) only.

For the first time, instead of focusing on just one set of digital tools, this workshop will show the participants how they can engage their customers using the multitude of tools that digital offers at the different stages of the customer’s purchase cycle, whilst at the same time keep tabs on the bottom line.The workshop will also focus on how to integrate the digital experience into traditional marketing campaigns.

Here’s a Peek into what’s going to be presented at the conference:

For comments or questions, do let me know. Looking forward to meeting you there.

 

ITLOW: Ep49 – Tuesday Team On CIO Web Studio

Jehan Ara talks to the Tuesday Team about digital and the upcoming integrated future of technology & marketing.

more about “ITLOW: Ep49 – Tuesday Team On CIO Web…“, posted with vodpod

 

KungFu Panda – Awesome Marketing Lesson

Po: Ooh, so um, I should… stop talking?
Shifu: If you can.

Brand management in the traditional marketing world was a top down, internally focused, political and money based approach. Now, due to the elimination of production & distribution costs, technology is allowing the growth of communities on a massive scale and this increased fragmentation of the consumer is governing that a new order of marketing take shape.

Marketers in Pakistan however are unwilling to risk the plunge of allowing consumers to control their communication messages. Despite the growing frequency of desperation of brands using the traditional approaches, to the extent of even breaking their role as good corporate citizens of the country (as this answer to the recent comment on Engro Pakistan using public property such as ‘Unity Round About” in Quetta ‘ (an act of Forced Marketing) which was posted on Marketing 360′, a Yahoo! group shows:

“…Your ethical concerns are true but in these times firms are desperate in breaking the clutter and will exploit any opportunity they get. Soon you may see walls being painted with advertisements by these big groups. In Karachi I have seen Pepsi painting on walls giving their owners a meager monthly rental…” – Munawar.)

marketers are still trying the push approach towards consumers, insisting on increasing the advertising budgets rather than innovating in new approaches. The way to increase Brand Scores on ‘Attribute A’ is still more ‘Share of Voice’.

Yet increasingly the consumer in Pakistan is becoming ‘Consistently Connected’ (35 Million + Mobile Users and 21 Million Internet Users (Source: International Social Media Research Wave 3)) and the increasingly fragmentation of the consumer due to the 83+ channels and 12+ radio stations has resulted in the fact that the one message fit all is going to die soon, if it’s not already dead.

Marketers take a note out of the Kungfu Panda Movie by Dream Works released in 2008. Oogway’s lesson to Shifu is very applicable to the marketing world of now.

Shifu & Oogway

Oogway: My friend, the panda will never fulfill his destiny, nor you yours until you let go of the illusion of control.
Shifu: Illusion?
Oogway: Yes.
[points at peach tree]
Oogway: Look at this tree, Shifu: I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time.
Shifu: But there are things we *can* control: I can control when the fruit will fall, I can control where to plant the seed: that is no illusion, Master!
Oogway: Ah, yes. But no matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Shifu: But a peach cannot defeat Tai Lung!
Oogway: Maybe it can, if you are willing to guide, to nurture it, to believe in it.
Shifu: But how? How? I need your help, master.
Oogway: No, you just need to believe. Promise me, Shifu, promise me you will believe.

Yes! objectives vary, but increasingly the way to reach the Pakistani consumers (esp. for brand building) now is through non-traditional media. A combination of Activations & Digital can  [perhaps] be more expensive, but does offer real & measured results. Why should advertising money be wasted on e.g. a moneyed individual being communicated to about a third-tier product when other more focused alternatives are available. Alternatively, Facebook Pakistan has 500,000+ of the most moneyed class of the country, shouldn’t the local marketers try to connect to them about what they want and value especially since this class doesn’t indulge as much in traditional media as the other classes of this country.

This is increasingly becoming the new marketing reality and the way forward to leverage and tap into the zeitgeist will be to create communities around your brands. One way could be to appeal to the passionistas, the people who score high on NPS (Net Promoter Scores).

This is not a new philosophy. Just a less understood one. Seth Godin In His Book ‘Tribe Management’ has been emphasizing on the same philosophy for years now:

It starts with permission, the understanding that the real asset most organizations can build isn’t an amorphous brand but is in fact the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them.

It adds to that the fact that what people really want is the ability to connect to each other, not to companies. So the permission is used to build a tribe, to build people who want to hear from the company because it helps them connect, it helps them find each other, it gives them a story to tell and something to talk about.

But this is not the only lesson to be learnt. Don’t forget the most basic lesson of them all:

Po: [breathing heavily] I know you’re trying to be all mystical and Kung Fu-ey, but could you tell me where we’re going?

Kungfu Panda

Remember, one often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.

Go On! Prepare For Marketing Awesomeness!

 

A Glimpse Into The Future

– Microsoft Labs Vision 2019

This is a beautiful glimpse into the future and what it will mean to be productive, to share & connect, to express yourself. This is a future where technology is a natural part of your ‘being’.

However, personally I think that this is a glimpse of what technology will be to the rich world mostly the west or perhaps the top 1 billion or so people at the time. What about the other 7 billion or so people (projected 2019 figs) who will still live under the shackles of poverty & still lack access to even the basic facilities. Unless Microsoft decides to give those devices away for free, I don’t see those people having the monetary strength to buy it. Technology like this requires basic literacy which the developing world is lacking in. Can this be the future we envision for the majority of our world or it is more likely that technology then also will serve only the rich and the connected (pun intended).

Beautiful futures like these also require asking big questions about sustainability. The big global problems remain – deforestation, coal plant emissions and natural gas emissions from power plants, and emissions of hot water into lakes and rivers, that affect the balance of ecosystems, and tailings and ash ponds from coal plants and industrial waste and other non-sustainable items that we read about everyday.

Unless there are constraints there will be nothing of value. When technology creates those constraints and develops sustainability, that is when the future will play itself out and I think it’s going to be a very different future that will result.

 

Why Did We Call Our Company Tuesday?

Tuesday
Originally uploaded by mikey6p

Do you believe that ‘Things Happening For A Reason’, a universal power, a sense that life creates its own purpose.

Tuesday itself was fate’s sleigh of hand. The six of us – Salman Abedin, Irfan Kheiri, Zaka, Zafar, Ahmed & myself were all people who had been evangelizing digital on their own in one form of another. I through my articles in Aurora, Pakistan’s leading advertising & marketing magazine, speaker sessions and setting up my interactive division with my previous company ‘Media Idee’, Zaka through his blogs, Ahmed did his final thesis at Indus Valley School of Arts in ‘User Interface Design’ and so forth.

However it was Tuesday which brought us together. Salman used to have meetings with Irfan about setting up his own digital firm on the Tuesday of every week. As luck would have it, we all ended up recommending each other to these meetings and thus was formed the core team which met once a week on these Tuesdays to develop the way forward.What a team it was – MBAs, Technologists, Creatives, Strategists & geeks, all one one platform.

It was in remembrance of these meetings, the amount of creativity & ideas that were generated and the bonding that developed between the core members, that the company was called Tuesday. A fitting tribute to the day that brought us together.

It was Tuesday, 03rd March, 2009 (another sleigh of fate here: 03x03x09), that the company was incorporated. Incidentally our first pitch was on a Tuesday and the first contract we signed with our client was also a Tuesday.

Do you believe in Fate?

 

Hello World!

Originally uploaded by Tuesday Digital

Just in case you’re wondering, the S.I.N. here stands for Simulated Interactive Narratives.

Tuesday was started because we understood the fact that the containers that have held back digital marketing are finally breaking or dying. Content is now free to go wherever it wants, whether its on Traditional Television, Direct to customer through activations or to Mobile Screens.

More than ever before, it is now content that will drive brands forward and no content is stronger than your brand’s narrative. It is even moreso if it reaches your customer directly. This narrative can take the form of an online experience, a game, a mobile app, an interactive digital signage, an alternate reality game, traditional media (gasp!) or all these simultaneously.

That is our vision, to bring back perhaps the oldest form of communication known to man and use it to drive the brands of tomorrow via a media agnostic approach.

That’s our SIN. That’s our story.