Modern Day Marketing Communications!

A forum for discussion on the topic of Modern Day Marketing Communication was organized today at Avari Towers. It was put together by a group of SZABIST students to gather relevant data that would facilitate their thesis topic.

The list of people invited to this interactive discussion included, Ali Raza Merchant (Executive Dir. Synergy), Amir Rammal (CEO- Digispace), Adeel Hassan (Manager Planning- Brand Partnership), Rabia Garib (Editor in Chief – CIO Pakistan), Faisal Sheikh (COO, PostAmazers), Badar Khushnood (Country Consultant for Google), Imran Mahmood (CEO-Creative Edge) and Adnan Shaikhani (Head of Bus Partnership – Contact Plus).

The forum was more of a questions & answer session, where the students put forward questions and statements in front of the panel and the panel shared their ideas and views on the topic. Some of the ideas discussed included, the use of digital media in advertising and marketing, the evolution of new media, use of social networking websites in advertising, the affect of new media on traditional media, accuracy of digital media versus traditional media, Crowd sourcing, Viral marketing, and the list goes on.

One such topic discussed was the trend of allocating budget for marketing in different companies, to which Mr. Badar Khushnood replied “ The pie of marketing remains the same, however the company decides to spend a certain amount of money on traditional media (tv, radio, printmedia) and a certain portion of it on the new media (online media, social networking websites)

Speaking on the same subject Mr. Ali Raza said “The reason why most of the companies are not spending that much on digital media(new media) is because the decision makers are reluctant, budget controllers are digital immigrants who weren’t born to these technologies where as the younger population is more technology frenzy as they are digital natives”.

Mr. Faisal Sheikh added to this discussion by saying “Use of digital media to reaching customers is still getting last preference in some companies”.

Below is few minutes of unedited interactive discussion to show you the quality and caliber of the discussions taking place.