By Irfan A. Sheikh
In today’s world of access to information, the notions of brand behavior and brand values tend to change constantly, compelling many to re-think what they represent. It is, in a sense, a time of re-invention, re-imagining, renewal, and re-investing.
Advertising and marketing gurus worldwide believe that we are passing through a ‘Responsibility Revolution, where the future of marketing will be defined by how brands connect in a larger societal context. Today’s consumers, being in the driving seat, will re-evaluate the products and services on the basis of their convictions. Purpose and value will, therefore, figure big in the future marketing strategies.
When it comes to Pakistan, the significance of the word ‘Responsibility’ for brand managers caught up in the current state of affairs (or should I say ‘affairs of the state’) is greater than ever. Struck, perhaps, by the worst disaster ever recorded in the human history, the devastating monsoon floods have plunged Pakistan into a humanitarian crisis of gigantic scale. Hundreds have died, 20 million stand displaced and virtually half of them need urgent humanitarian and medical assistance for mere survival. What is in store is hard to tell! The rain spell may stop, but the spell of suffering will be far from over any time sooner.
The gravity of situation and urgency of action is further compounded by glaring governance gaps and credibility issues which came to the fore as the floods wreaked havoc on various parts of the country.
In these hard times, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is no less than a circumstantial necessity, qualifying convincingly for being at the heart of communications by everyone out there.
Corporate generosity, after all, is not new. Companies have always been seen doing the good work—supporting charities and donating funds and sponsoring noble causes. Only the dynamics may have changed.
To quote Brad Henderson, Director of Corporate Partnerships at Plan International, a leading children’s development organization, “advertisers and their agencies are interested in social projects and social goals more than ever. Now there is a way that a corporation or a brand can work with a not-for-profit group so that both achieve value by doing something in common.”
That is where marketing departments on both sides of the table—the accounts as well as agencies—come into play, having to ensure that the resources succeed in managing a larger social outcome.
According to estimates, of the 100 largest economic entities of the world, 51 are multinationals and 49 governments. In cases where governments have less financial resources and poor governance capacity, multinational corporations are beginning to shoulder social projects. Paying forward, they know, is the best way of being paid back.
Every challenge, we all know, is an opportunity disguised. Same is the case here. For brands that are keen to align themselves with values in a cause-related way, there is much to gain in today’s Pakistan.
The enormity of the scale should make it clear that rebuilding requires a concerted, coordinated and orchestrated response where each and every brand— governments, corporations, individuals—has to join forces. Some have already started the good work. Kudos to them!
Others too should wade through the challenge and seize this opportunity to connect their brands to the mother of all causes. Smart marketers will appreciate the advantages of such ethical undertaking and the benefits it entails.
But in doing so, one needs to bear in mind that the timelines are pretty demanding. It is time to Act and Act Responsible; it is time to Think and Think Fast.
[ENDS]
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Friday, August 20, 2010
A Lifetime, Washed Away
By DANIYAL MUEENUDDIN
A few days ago, I stood atop a 30-foot-high levee in Pakistan’s south Punjab, looking out as the waters from the greatest Indus River flood in memory flowed past, through orchards, swirling around a village on higher ground half a mile out. Twenty miles wide, the flood was almost dreamlike, the speeding water, as it streamed through the upper branches of trees, carrying along bits of brightly colored plastic and clumps of grass.
Many of the displaced people had left the area in the past few days, driving whatever was left of their herds, carrying whatever they were able to rescue. In Pakistan, your primary loyalty is to your biraderi, an untranslatable word, something like clan, but more visceral and entailing greater responsibility and connection. You marry among your biraderi, you must travel and be present when a member of your biraderi is married or buried and, in times of trouble, you stand by your biraderi. In Frost’s words, they are the people who, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
The hundreds of people camped on the levee were those who had no biraderi outside the flooded area, or who couldn’t afford to make the journey to them. Each family had claimed a little spot, made it home, rigged up some sort of shelter like a blanket on a frame of branches. Many had rescued a bag or two of grain, and they sat combing this out in the dirt, trying to dry it. As I walked past, I could smell that much of the grain had spoiled, a bitter loamy odor.
These families’ poverty and loss shone in the little piles of their belongings, the things they had carried with them when the water came: two or three cheap tin plates, a kettle. In one family’s encampment, discordantly, sat a dresser with a mirrored door — how did the man who had brought that through the floodwater think it would be useful?
I found most pitiful a family gathered around a prostrate brown-and-white brindled cow. The father told me that the cow had been lost in the water for four days, and the previous night it had clambered up on another section of the levee, a mile away. The people of this area recognize their cattle as easily as you or I recognize a cousin or neighbor — they sleep with their animals around them at night, and graze them all day; their animals are born and die near them. Someone passing by told the family that their cow had been found, and the father went and got it and led it to their little encampment.
In the early morning the cow had collapsed, and I could see it would soon be dead. Its eyes were beginning to dull, as the owner squatted next to it, sprinkling water into its mouth, as if it were possible to revive it. Its legs were swollen from standing in water, and its chest and torso were covered with deep cuts and scrapes, sheets of raw flesh where branches rushing past must have hit it.
The rest of the family sat nearby on a string bed, resigned, waiting for the end. This was their wealth, but when it died they would tip it into the water and let it float away to the south. Through the past few days they had seen it all, houses collapsed, trees uprooted, grain spoiled, and this was just one more blow.
Driving back to my farm, which has (so far) been spared from the flood, an image of the cow’s ordeal kept coming to me: splashing through the flood for hours and hours, at dusk or in the blank overcast night, with nothing around it but a vast expanse of water stretching away, an image of perfect loneliness. It must have found high ground, waited there as the water rose, then set off again, driven by hunger. In the immensity of the unfolding tragedy, this littler one, this moment of its death, seemed comprehensible to me, significant.
It is difficult to convey the scope of what was lost by those who had labored with ax and shovel to bring this land under cultivation. Fifty years ago, the area was all savanna, waving fields of reeds and elephant grass running for a thousand miles on both sides of the river. As a boy, I hunted there for partridge, walking among a line of beaters, the tall grasses so dense that I was invisible to the next man only 10 feet away. This was wild country.
But in the years since, these people tamed the land, leveling it by hand, expanding their plots acre by acre, until they had conquered it all. Last year, from where I stood on the levee, one would have seen orderly fields proceeding all the way to the river on the horizon. These lands had not been flooded in living memory, and so people built solid houses and granaries, planted trees, raised mosques. This was their life’s work.
Now all that has been swept away. In this area, the best-paying crop by far is sugar cane, which was to be cut in November but now stands submerged, except for the tips of the fronds, dead and rusty gray on the surface. When the water recedes, the people will, if they are lucky enough to have any, sell their cattle and their wives’ ornaments, their dowry gold, to rebuild the watercourses and to level the fields. Some will plant winter wheat, but it will be sown late and will not pay, not enough to cover the costs of reclaiming the land.
Others may plant another crop of cane, which will be sown in February and harvested the following October, 14 months away. Before that, they will have no income whatsoever. The generosity of these people’s relatives, their biraderi, cannot possibly carry them through. They are ruined, and there are millions of them.
This disaster is not like an earthquake or a tsunami. In the 2005 earthquake in northern Pakistan, 80,000 people died more or less at one blow; whereas the immediate death toll from this flood is likely to be in the low thousands. The loss of property, however, is catastrophic. It is as if a neutron bomb exploded overhead, but instead of killing the people and leaving their houses intact, it piled trees upon the houses and swept away the villages and crops and animals, leaving the people alive.
For months and even years, the people of the Indus Valley will not have sufficient income for food or clothing. They will rebuild, if they can afford it, by inches. The corrupt and impoverished Pakistani government cannot possibly make these people’s lives whole again. It’s not hard to imagine the potential for radicalization in a country already rapidly turning to extremist political views, to envision the anarchy that may be unleashed if wealthier nations do not find a way to provide sufficient relief. This is not a problem that will go away, and it is the entire world’s problem. It is said, the most violent revolutions are the revolutions of the stomach.
A few days ago, I stood atop a 30-foot-high levee in Pakistan’s south Punjab, looking out as the waters from the greatest Indus River flood in memory flowed past, through orchards, swirling around a village on higher ground half a mile out. Twenty miles wide, the flood was almost dreamlike, the speeding water, as it streamed through the upper branches of trees, carrying along bits of brightly colored plastic and clumps of grass.
Many of the displaced people had left the area in the past few days, driving whatever was left of their herds, carrying whatever they were able to rescue. In Pakistan, your primary loyalty is to your biraderi, an untranslatable word, something like clan, but more visceral and entailing greater responsibility and connection. You marry among your biraderi, you must travel and be present when a member of your biraderi is married or buried and, in times of trouble, you stand by your biraderi. In Frost’s words, they are the people who, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
The hundreds of people camped on the levee were those who had no biraderi outside the flooded area, or who couldn’t afford to make the journey to them. Each family had claimed a little spot, made it home, rigged up some sort of shelter like a blanket on a frame of branches. Many had rescued a bag or two of grain, and they sat combing this out in the dirt, trying to dry it. As I walked past, I could smell that much of the grain had spoiled, a bitter loamy odor.
These families’ poverty and loss shone in the little piles of their belongings, the things they had carried with them when the water came: two or three cheap tin plates, a kettle. In one family’s encampment, discordantly, sat a dresser with a mirrored door — how did the man who had brought that through the floodwater think it would be useful?
I found most pitiful a family gathered around a prostrate brown-and-white brindled cow. The father told me that the cow had been lost in the water for four days, and the previous night it had clambered up on another section of the levee, a mile away. The people of this area recognize their cattle as easily as you or I recognize a cousin or neighbor — they sleep with their animals around them at night, and graze them all day; their animals are born and die near them. Someone passing by told the family that their cow had been found, and the father went and got it and led it to their little encampment.
In the early morning the cow had collapsed, and I could see it would soon be dead. Its eyes were beginning to dull, as the owner squatted next to it, sprinkling water into its mouth, as if it were possible to revive it. Its legs were swollen from standing in water, and its chest and torso were covered with deep cuts and scrapes, sheets of raw flesh where branches rushing past must have hit it.
The rest of the family sat nearby on a string bed, resigned, waiting for the end. This was their wealth, but when it died they would tip it into the water and let it float away to the south. Through the past few days they had seen it all, houses collapsed, trees uprooted, grain spoiled, and this was just one more blow.
Driving back to my farm, which has (so far) been spared from the flood, an image of the cow’s ordeal kept coming to me: splashing through the flood for hours and hours, at dusk or in the blank overcast night, with nothing around it but a vast expanse of water stretching away, an image of perfect loneliness. It must have found high ground, waited there as the water rose, then set off again, driven by hunger. In the immensity of the unfolding tragedy, this littler one, this moment of its death, seemed comprehensible to me, significant.
It is difficult to convey the scope of what was lost by those who had labored with ax and shovel to bring this land under cultivation. Fifty years ago, the area was all savanna, waving fields of reeds and elephant grass running for a thousand miles on both sides of the river. As a boy, I hunted there for partridge, walking among a line of beaters, the tall grasses so dense that I was invisible to the next man only 10 feet away. This was wild country.
But in the years since, these people tamed the land, leveling it by hand, expanding their plots acre by acre, until they had conquered it all. Last year, from where I stood on the levee, one would have seen orderly fields proceeding all the way to the river on the horizon. These lands had not been flooded in living memory, and so people built solid houses and granaries, planted trees, raised mosques. This was their life’s work.
Now all that has been swept away. In this area, the best-paying crop by far is sugar cane, which was to be cut in November but now stands submerged, except for the tips of the fronds, dead and rusty gray on the surface. When the water recedes, the people will, if they are lucky enough to have any, sell their cattle and their wives’ ornaments, their dowry gold, to rebuild the watercourses and to level the fields. Some will plant winter wheat, but it will be sown late and will not pay, not enough to cover the costs of reclaiming the land.
Others may plant another crop of cane, which will be sown in February and harvested the following October, 14 months away. Before that, they will have no income whatsoever. The generosity of these people’s relatives, their biraderi, cannot possibly carry them through. They are ruined, and there are millions of them.
This disaster is not like an earthquake or a tsunami. In the 2005 earthquake in northern Pakistan, 80,000 people died more or less at one blow; whereas the immediate death toll from this flood is likely to be in the low thousands. The loss of property, however, is catastrophic. It is as if a neutron bomb exploded overhead, but instead of killing the people and leaving their houses intact, it piled trees upon the houses and swept away the villages and crops and animals, leaving the people alive.
For months and even years, the people of the Indus Valley will not have sufficient income for food or clothing. They will rebuild, if they can afford it, by inches. The corrupt and impoverished Pakistani government cannot possibly make these people’s lives whole again. It’s not hard to imagine the potential for radicalization in a country already rapidly turning to extremist political views, to envision the anarchy that may be unleashed if wealthier nations do not find a way to provide sufficient relief. This is not a problem that will go away, and it is the entire world’s problem. It is said, the most violent revolutions are the revolutions of the stomach.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Poor Marketing blamed for Aid Shortfall
As international aid trickled into Pakistan to help flood victims, Mark Malloch Brown, a former deputy secretary general of the United Nations, criticized the country’s leader for failing to make the scope of the destruction and the urgency of the need clear to international donors.
In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Brown told the BBC, “this is a very confusing crisis” and a visit by President Asif Ali Zardari to Europe – with a stop at his family’s chateau in France – while monsoon rains ravaged large portions of his country, had not been helpful:
The leadership of Pakistan on the civilian side has gotten off to a rather muddled and slow start. It’s very hard for donor governments — let alone donor public opinion — to be entirely convinced at the seriousness of a crisis when the country’s president is filmed at his own private chateau in France or continuing with government visits to the U.K.
Crises, it’s a terrible thing to say but, you know, they require disciplined marketing. There needs to be a clear message that lives are at stake and the whole of the domestic effort of the country is devoted to trying to save those lives.
Mr. Brown also said that Pakistan’s military leaders “were very effective in Kashmir a couple of years ago after the earthquake and again they seem to be sort of pushing the civilian leadership aside and taking control and frankly that’s probably good news.”
Her added that the relief effort was now a competition between “the efficiency of these two rival systems: Islamic relief agencies versus the one institution of the Pakistani state which works, the army.”
In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Brown told the BBC, “this is a very confusing crisis” and a visit by President Asif Ali Zardari to Europe – with a stop at his family’s chateau in France – while monsoon rains ravaged large portions of his country, had not been helpful:
The leadership of Pakistan on the civilian side has gotten off to a rather muddled and slow start. It’s very hard for donor governments — let alone donor public opinion — to be entirely convinced at the seriousness of a crisis when the country’s president is filmed at his own private chateau in France or continuing with government visits to the U.K.
Crises, it’s a terrible thing to say but, you know, they require disciplined marketing. There needs to be a clear message that lives are at stake and the whole of the domestic effort of the country is devoted to trying to save those lives.
Mr. Brown also said that Pakistan’s military leaders “were very effective in Kashmir a couple of years ago after the earthquake and again they seem to be sort of pushing the civilian leadership aside and taking control and frankly that’s probably good news.”
Her added that the relief effort was now a competition between “the efficiency of these two rival systems: Islamic relief agencies versus the one institution of the Pakistani state which works, the army.”
Thursday, August 12, 2010
CSR in Pakistan after Monsoon 2010
By Irfan A. Sheikh
In today’s world of access to information, the notions of brand behavior and brand values tend to change constantly, compelling many to re-think what they represent. It is, in a sense, a time of re-invention, re-imagining, renewal, and re-investing.
‘R’, it appears, is going to be a defining factor. In the current scenario too, same is the case—rescue, relief, rehabilitation, and surely RESPONSIBILITY.
Advertising and marketing gurus worldwide believe that we are passing through a ‘Responsibility Revolution, where the future of marketing will be defined by how brands connect in a larger societal context. Consumers, being in the driving seat now, will re-evaluate the products and services on the basis of their convictions. Purpose and value, therefore will figure big in future marketing strategies.
The significance of the word ‘Responsibility’ for our brand managers in the current state of affairs (or should I say ‘affairs of the state’) is greater than ever. Struck, perhaps, by the worst disaster ever recorded in the human history, the devastating monsoon floods have plunged Pakistan into a humanitarian crisis of gigantic scale. Hundreds have died, 14 million or so have lost homes and virtually half of them need urgent humanitarian and medical assistance for mere survival. What is in store is hard to tell! The rain spell may have stopped, but the spell of suffering is far from being over.
The gravity of situation is further compounded by glaring governance gaps evidenced as the flood wreaked havoc on various parts of the country.
In these hard times, Corporate Social Responsibility is no less than a circumstantial necessity, qualifying convincingly for being at the heart of communications by everyone out there.
Every challenge, after all, affords an opportunity and for the brands that are keen to align themselves with values, there is much to gain. Let the top decision-makers of big corporations and entrepreneurs, and their brand managers capitalize on this challenge!
As the crisis unfolds, Ramazan also sets in. The onset of holy month coincides with a holier cause beckoning. Let’s see how they respond? Will they still blitz the media with messages about so-called ‘discounts’, ‘offers’, ‘packages’ and ‘rewards’ (for it is Ramzan after all) or will there be a ‘self-realization’ to change the course? Will anyone bring forth an award-winning solution? Will there be a well thought-out ‘digital’ response? Will someone seize upon this opportunity to connect the brands to the societal context? Only time will tell? And time certainly will!
But time is of essence as well. We can’t leave 14 million people out there ‘waiting’ for our response. It’s time to act and act responsible. It’s time to think and think fast.
Some have already started the good work. But this time around, the scale of the challenge requires this message to go beyond corporate sector? Let everyone, everywhere come forward. Everyone’s a brand; everyone should try!
How about states and governments? How about institutions? How about schools and colleges? How about sportspersons and celebrities; singers and actors; parents and children; you and I?
In today’s world of access to information, the notions of brand behavior and brand values tend to change constantly, compelling many to re-think what they represent. It is, in a sense, a time of re-invention, re-imagining, renewal, and re-investing.
‘R’, it appears, is going to be a defining factor. In the current scenario too, same is the case—rescue, relief, rehabilitation, and surely RESPONSIBILITY.
Advertising and marketing gurus worldwide believe that we are passing through a ‘Responsibility Revolution, where the future of marketing will be defined by how brands connect in a larger societal context. Consumers, being in the driving seat now, will re-evaluate the products and services on the basis of their convictions. Purpose and value, therefore will figure big in future marketing strategies.
The significance of the word ‘Responsibility’ for our brand managers in the current state of affairs (or should I say ‘affairs of the state’) is greater than ever. Struck, perhaps, by the worst disaster ever recorded in the human history, the devastating monsoon floods have plunged Pakistan into a humanitarian crisis of gigantic scale. Hundreds have died, 14 million or so have lost homes and virtually half of them need urgent humanitarian and medical assistance for mere survival. What is in store is hard to tell! The rain spell may have stopped, but the spell of suffering is far from being over.
The gravity of situation is further compounded by glaring governance gaps evidenced as the flood wreaked havoc on various parts of the country.
In these hard times, Corporate Social Responsibility is no less than a circumstantial necessity, qualifying convincingly for being at the heart of communications by everyone out there.
Every challenge, after all, affords an opportunity and for the brands that are keen to align themselves with values, there is much to gain. Let the top decision-makers of big corporations and entrepreneurs, and their brand managers capitalize on this challenge!
As the crisis unfolds, Ramazan also sets in. The onset of holy month coincides with a holier cause beckoning. Let’s see how they respond? Will they still blitz the media with messages about so-called ‘discounts’, ‘offers’, ‘packages’ and ‘rewards’ (for it is Ramzan after all) or will there be a ‘self-realization’ to change the course? Will anyone bring forth an award-winning solution? Will there be a well thought-out ‘digital’ response? Will someone seize upon this opportunity to connect the brands to the societal context? Only time will tell? And time certainly will!
But time is of essence as well. We can’t leave 14 million people out there ‘waiting’ for our response. It’s time to act and act responsible. It’s time to think and think fast.
Some have already started the good work. But this time around, the scale of the challenge requires this message to go beyond corporate sector? Let everyone, everywhere come forward. Everyone’s a brand; everyone should try!
How about states and governments? How about institutions? How about schools and colleges? How about sportspersons and celebrities; singers and actors; parents and children; you and I?
Monday, August 2, 2010
Fighting Creative Block? You Are Not Alone!
"Creative block does not just afflict composers. Writers, painters, poets all frequently have prolonged periods when they are unable to produce good work. And innovative scientists may experience drought as well." Here's the whole story: BBC News - How great artists have fought creative block
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