Marketing for a Better Tomorrow

Once again, I’m not a social media marketing expert and I don't pretend to be one. My social media marketing knowledge is limited to the things I learn everyday by observation. Many of you have already gone through my previous blog namely, ‘Marketing in a Digital Space’. Those who didn’t get the chance to go through; don’t sweat. You may read it from the link below: http://meet-ehtesham.blogspot.com/2017/04/interviewer-to-candidate-do-you-have.html That article was about the principles of promotion when you are in digital space. It mostly tells you about “going digital and acting normal”. At the final paragraph, I mentioned that we should put more and more WOW elements in social media to be successful. There were other points as well. But this is the toughest and most important of all. Very recently I have conducted an experiment. Let me give you the background first. I have almost 700+ friends and 1K+ followers on my Facebook. My posts are usually pretty boring ...

That day, I was going through an article which says that 38% of US adults use ad-blockers in their mobile phones and 0.35% average display ad click-through rate. Furthermore, Havas Media Group UK has already frozen spending on Google and YouTube. Another research shows that general visitors of different webpages (in desktop version) cannot recall any brand/communication/contents that are placed in the right side of the website. Can you imagine this? So, what are the ways to overcome this? Many advertisers these days are coming up with some phenomenon infotainments, infographics, interactive contents, etc. through different media channels (both conventional and social media) to keep their customers engaged. But how successful they are? I don’t consider myself as a creative person. Moreover, the marketing knowledge I have is the very basic. So, pardon me if I sound loud to you. In case of developing a creative/ad, I personally follow a simple theory. Trust me, it helps a lot. T...

The new Age of the Customer is upon marketers. Graphic credit: Forrester Research   Forrester Research is calling the end of advertising as we know it, signaling the inevitable departure of interruption-based messages that drive hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue for publishers, ad platforms and vendors. Driven largely by technology trends, antsy advertisers and weary consumers, advertising’s metamorphosis will lead to the rise of chatbots, voice agents and intelligent personal assistants that grow smarter with each consumer interaction. “The era of the end of interruptions is dawning,” said James L. McQuivey, vice president and principal analyst at Cambridge, MA-based Forrester. “Every time advertising is growing and useful is because it’s a part of a conversation with the customers. It transcends the interruption-based model and becomes part of a conversation. “We’re moving to a world where very few things you’re doing are interruptible,” he said....

On a typical summer day in Hong Kong, the weather is hot and humid with lots of sunshine. I take the subway to a business meeting and when I come out of the station, a sudden and heavy rainfall has replaced the sunshine. It will take a few minutes’ walk to get to the meeting place and I am dressed in my best business suit. I don’t want to get wet but the meeting starts in five minutes. I am in a panic. A street hawker saves me. He is selling umbrellas just outside the subway station. The umbrellas are in an untidy pile on top of some cardboard boxes. The colors and varieties are limited, but the prices are reasonable. I don’t stop to think. I pick one with a conservative look in navy, and I pay. The whole transaction is completed within a minute. It turns out that the umbrella was even more durable that others I bought at stores. I used it for several years before it wore out. Whenever I pass by that station, I try to locate the umbrella hawker so I can buy a new one, but I h...