Understanding media through the lens of the Moderate Effects Era

It is unarguable that the media plays a vital role in our society; of not only informing people but also of being a watch-dog and keeping certain elements in-line. However, the media today exists on a very broad spectrum and with the rise of fake news and yellow journalism media can used as much as a tool to misguide and mislead people as it can be used as a source of providing information, knowledge and shaping perceptions.

Regarding the theories, it has come to our conclusion as a collective group that they all provide a meaningful point-of-view to interpret media but not all of them look at it accurately.

When talking about McLuhan’s book: Understanding Media and McLuhan’s views about media in general you can’t help but feel they are outdated especially when looking at media with a more modern context. For instance, one of the main themes of the book is that: “media, not the content that they carry, should be the focus of study”. Whereas, in reality media today is very much defined by the content it publishes or airs. The book is also filled with certain contradictory statements. Such as McLuhan saying that media can change and re-shape perceptions while also calling it a light with no substance.

The Agenda setting theory by McCombs and Donald Shaw is actually a more accurate way of looking at media. Because the media does set the public agenda and plays a role in telling people what to think about. And this is something that is visible by the hot-topics and current events that the media focuses on and also the level of focus they give to each respective topic.

The knowledge gap analysis is a much different interpretation of media but one that is unfortunately, very true and very relevant throughout the world, especially in our society. It is a fact of life that the privileged will always be the ones with more knowledge compared to the less privileged. And in a multi-cultural society such as Pakistan where people have such massive difference of opinion in the way people perceive events therefore, there will always be a conflict of views which would in-turn prevent the homogeneity of information. Similarly, the ones with the most power will manipulate the media to appease their self-interests rather than using the media as an instrument for the betterment of society.

Book Review: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

The Reluctant Fundamentalist begins in a café in Lahore. A bearded Pakistani professor is in the company of an American man, he takes a sip of tea and begins to tell the American his life story and how he arrived at this fateful meeting. Flashback to the past and that same man, Changez Khan is hungry and driven young man committed to achieving the American dream in the United States. Fresh out of Princeton he gets a job with a hotshot valuation firm and quickly finds himself climbing the corporate ladder. However, when the tragedy of 9/11 strikes Changez finds himself becoming more defensive about his cultural identity in post 9/11 America.

Very few books have that unique ability to not only compel the reader but also move him and make him truly feel for the characters and the story. Mohsin Hamid’s gripping and mesmerizing ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ is such book and as soon as I started reading it, I found it very difficult to put it down until I had read the very last page. I suppose the greatest thing about this book for me is how it seamlessly blends the somewhat familiar rise and fall story with the 9/11 tragedy and in the process tells both a heartbreaking and utterly riveting story. Mohsin Hamid’s eloquent writing is really what makes this book what it is in my opinion. The story he aims to tell is undeniably ambitious but his grasp on character, story and plot is so tight, his writing, so fluent, that he never lets anything feel meandering or even the slightest bit dull. It truly is executed to perfection.

And another reason why I loved this book was because the story it tells it not only a timely one but also one that many Pakistanis and Muslims, for that matter can relate to. There’s no question that Muslims suffered greatly in the wake of the September 11 events, and The Reluctant Fundamentalist tells that story on a broadened canvas through the eyes of a Muslim man who sees just about everything slipping from his hands. There’s a sense of hope in Mohsin Hamid’s novel, a sense of hope always represented by the protagonist at various points in the story, but there’s also this really tragic undercurrent to the entire thing that makes this book both a heartfelt and profound piece of work. I found The Reluctant Fundamentalist to be a stirring and affecting novel which I would greatly recommend.

Enron's corporate culture is a cautionary tale for today's tech-savvy companies

In the case of Enron, we saw the weakness of human beings. The executives of Enron were very and highly qualified people, but they destroyed the fortune they built in 16 years and also hurt many investors. The fundamental cause of this disaster is that they lack the idea of the business ethic and whenever the executives of Enron encountered ethical dilemmas, they chose the wrong way.
The example of Enron is perhaps one of the best examples of greed and corruption in the corporate world and why having a good moral conscience aswell as a good understanding of business ethics is necessary to succeed if one is to succeed in the business world.

Enron’s corporate culture contributed significantly to the ethical scandal. Enron emphasized a culture of competition and getting financial goals at all costs, even if that meant cutting corners. They created a competitive environment by instituting a rating system which required that 20 percent of all the employees had to be rated as below requirements every year and then were encouraged to leave Enron. Although this rating system was created so employees would be encouraged employees to work harder it ended up in-turn creating a culture of deception.

Since employees were nervous about losing their jobs, they only focused on how to make their performances look good. They ignored the ethical standards, and only focused on the achievement of their financial goal. After a few employees began cheating on their works and covering up their errors and mistakes. This caused others to do the same as this was the only way to get ahead. Gradually, no one felt shame about cheating because they had no other choices and all their co-workers surrounding them were cheating.

Additionally, the culture of Enron emphasized too much on the financial goals. The person who can achieve the budget numbers would be the hero of the company. Both executives and most of employees focused on making profits for themselves through making good financial numbers instead of a real increase of the company’s economic value. Enron also was concerned less about the needs, values, desires and also the well-being of the employees. From the ethical aspect, employers should respond to their employees and keep the goal of benefiting them. In such a company, ethical standards were just for show. No one followed them.

Employees in Enron were pressured to work blindly, keep silent, protect their own short-term interests, and try to achieve their goals even if it was an obvious cheat.

Creating own platforms for expressing talents

In this world everyone has a desire of being famous with the mental need of being recognized or positively followed by people. This need is created by our surrounding because we follow people who are being followed. However, people are being followed or like by their characteristics and ability to do something different and specifically amazing. Every person varies from each other but is special and unique in different means of performing different tasks. People possess multiple intelligence, some perform some unique things which no one can and some can do the things which everyone can in a way which makes it looks completely as a new subject. The problem is that the entry in showing talent is easy through multiple ways in social media and different applications such as Tik Tok etc, but excelling is a barrier as entering in to an industry of the interested field is really not possible without not being in a position in the scratch.

This is the popular trend in the society all over the globe that people have started communicating themselves in the digital market through making their own pages/videos, V logs, blogs and though many other ways which is easily expressed with the context of their talent and intelligence. This has enhanced people’s confidence level through creating a meaning of their lives that they are capable to do something out of themselves. People are excelling in entertaining people by delivering their perspectives and being famous. Let’s take an example of many people who such as Danish Ali, Bekar Vines, Junaid Akram etc. These people have positioned themselves in the minds of the people, some have become cult followers of them and believe what they say.

So it is all about passion, faith, belief and motivation in yourself which triggers you in achieving the positions you desire. Working smart is some aspect which should be kept in mind, but success is derived from a specific period of time in which hard efforts is on which you can count on. Start from a small scale following your passion, and from all of a sudden steps would be cemented automatically which will incline your path towards your terminal goals. Don’t forget your dreams, if no one clears a path for you, so you can always create your own way out.

Written by Farasat Khan

The dark-side of digital marketing - Part 6

One of the most shocking revelations that came to light this year was Facebook’s involvement with Cambridge Analytica, a data firm which involved the two companies collaborating together to harvest user data for millions of Facebook users and then use that data to manipulate advertising. Facebook were reportedly paid money by a number of organizations including the campaign to elect Donald Trump as President of the United States and what they would do is that based on the data of a particular they would manipulate advertising on things that a particular user might not necessarily like, with things they would find favorable according to his Facebook profile. 

For example, if a person liked cats but didn’t necessarily like Donald Trump, he would see ads where Trump would be holding a cat and petting it. All this was done to manipulate the perception of a user. And experts say this data-mining had a huge hand in influencing the U.S election in 2016.

David C. Edelman talks about how the very idea of branding is bound to shift in the new age and privacy of users will be violated whether they like it or not and whether they know about it or not. The best way to avoid the dark-side on digital marketing is to be vigilant in regards to what you see and agree to online. Because this was one of the very reasons Facebook’s actions were deemed unethical rather than illegal, because everyone had agreed to it.

These revelations all serve as eye-opening warnings into the level at which the internet has taken control of our lives. While it possesses many virtues particularly when it comes to advancing the field of marketing, it also possesses many dark corners that need to be navigated with utmost caution

Creativity is still important in marketing - Part 5

Some people underestimate the value of creativity these days but the fact of the matter is that creativity is as important as ever. In fact if anything, it has become even more important in the new age of digital marketing because for an ad to truly stand-out in the large crowd that is the world-wide web, there has to be something unique and creative that garbs the customer’s attention. And if you look at companies like; Yelp, JetBlue Airways, MasterCard and Airbnb, all of them have launched and successfully run digital marketing campaigns based on one singular creative idea. Because good marketing is not just about creativity but also about finding a way to channel that creativity into a singular vision and giving it a pin-point sense of focus. JetBlue Airways for example launched a marketing campaign where they promoted the idea of excellent customer service and convenience for customers. 

They put this very idea into practice by answering all of their customers’ queries on Twitter whether they are related to booking of flights or just simple queries regarding seats. This allowed them to have a significant social-media presence and appeal particularly to the minds of the adolescents who are always looking for the easiest and simplest solutions. This also saves passengers the hassles of going to the website to solve their problems. Airbnb on the other hand used digital-marketing to rebrand their image from what is essentially a crowd-sourced hotel service to an application that allows people to see the world in a manner that is also economical on their wallet. The article Contextual Marketing by D. Kenny, J.F Marshall examines how these companies have all stood out by giving context to their uniqueness and creativity.

Creativity is often defined as divergent thinking and to be a successful marketer your mind has to be going and developing in different directions to truly make an impact. It is hardly important whether you’re advertising on billboards or smartphones when it comes to creativity. Marketing guru David C. Edelman consistently talks about the importance of creativity in his article and how he feels it is a force that will continue to influence marketing for generations to come.

Emergence of E-commerce industry and online services - Part 4

Perhaps, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the digital revolution has been the E-commerce industry. Though companies like Amazon and eBay both launched in the mid-90s it took years for them to become the E-commerce giants they are today because for one thing, that many people simply didn’t have access to the internet back then. However, in recent years, companies like Amazon, AliBaba, eBay aswell as Daraz and OLX in Pakistan have relied heavily on digital marketing. In many ways, digital marketing and E-commerce are two things that go hand in hand and realizing the importance that digital marketing carries can be seen as one of the primary reasons why all these companies are so successful today.

According to the article Consumer Perceptions Regarding E-Commerce Related Risks by Katherine Smith, the influence of e-commerce will only grow in the coming years and its influence on both the market and the mind of the consumer will greatly be felt.

Similarly, the idea of online services and applications has also benefitted and greatly been influenced by digital marketing. Services like Careem, Uber, Airbnb, GoLootlo! and PayTm have similarly relied heavily on digital marketing to promote their idea and services. And one added benefit they get through digital marketing is that they can simply add a download button under an advertisement and if the user is seeing that ad on his smartphone he can instantly download the application.

The effectiveness of digital marketing - Part 3

I’ve already reviewed the potential that digital marketing possesses according to author David C. Edelman, but what about the results? After all that is what people like to talk about when we get down to it all. One of the most positive aspects of digital marketing is that it has leveled the playing field meaning small-businesses have as much of an opportunity of competing with big-businesses if they have a marketing strategy that is good enough. Since both are already reaching a large audience, quality of marketing has become more important than ever. In Pakistan for example, small fast-food restaurants like; Jessie’s in Islamabad, Outpost BYOB in Lahore and Burger INC. in Karachi have found ways to compete with large fast-food chains like McDonald’s and KFC simply because they have fully utilized digital marketing and by creating enough of a buzz on social-media as well as posting pictures of the burgers on their menus and upcoming discounts, they have all managed to establish a loyal and constantly growing customer base.

Another aspect that can cause both great benefit and great harm to a company is that of customer reviews. To put it simply, if your product is good enough you can benefit from people responding positively to it by posting reviews and giving positive comments on social media. However, if your product lacks in quality these same people can completely sink your product by their negativity which has the potential to spread like wild-fire, especially on social media. And the same thing applies to marketing campaigns, if a company bases a campaign on something offensive people of social-media have the potential to completely destroy that company’s credibility and reputation just by posting a few negative comments.

Furthermore, analytics have emerged as one of the most concrete indicators of success and failure in modern-times as they give marketers exacts facts and figures of the number of people who are reading or viewing a particular ad. The article Why Thinking About Digital Analytics All Wrong highlights the effect Google Analytics in particular have had as well as the steps they have taken by streamlining and adding more and more dimensions to Analytics that allows a marketer to know all the necessary facts regarding a particular ad from how long he viewed a particular ad to how quickly he closed a particular ad.

The shift from traditional to digital marketing - Part 2

It's imminently clear that digital marketing is replacing traditional marketing as the numero uno method of marketing. But how?

For one thing, digital marketing costs less and is now even considered to be more efficient because its audience can be anyone and everyone, domestic and international. Due to simply the vastness of the world-wide web an ad has the potential to reach both a person scrolling down an article in the United States as well as a person casually checking his Facebook news feed in Pakistan. The possibilities are endless. Another new dimension that digital marketing has brought to the table is that it can target a number of demographics simultaneously. With just a little variation and good analytics, marketers can target children, adults and adolescents with the same ad. And while companies like Facebook have used this dimension negatively in the recent past – which I will elaborate later on – this element has immense potential if used correctly and ethically. Finally -- and this is perhaps the most important factor – digital marketing has the element of quickness. And can reach a large audience in a very small time-frame. The potential of an ad going viral is an even more exciting possibility of marketers because if an ad does go viral it happens quickly and has the possibility of capturing attention all over the internet.

And this change in trend in marketing isn’t something that happened overnight. It is actually something that has been years in the making. According to author David C. Edelman, A study from 2009 that aimed to investigate marketing budgets, particularly, the increase and decrease in specific areas of marketing showed that 60% of marketers had made up their minds about increasing their budgets for digital marketing by taking money away from the budget for traditional marketing. The same study showed that marketers believed that traditional marketing which includes; newspapers, billboards, magazines, TV, radio etc. would either experience a decrease in effectiveness in the upcoming three years, or the effectiveness would stay the same. Whereas, over 70% of the same marketers were of the view that the effectiveness of social media, mobile, and online video would continue to grow. Nine years on, and the changes are quite clearly visible.

Where is marketing going in the 21st century? - Part 1

The idea of advertising has always irked and interested people in equal amounts. Some people consider it to be a clever way of swindling people whereas other people look to it as an avenue of that demands creativity to be wholly successful and in that case, it is not swindling but rather an intelligent way of selling something. In actuality the answer lies somewhere in between. Yes, people in marketing and advertising have been known to use unethical ways of selling their products but in many and most cases it has been the creativity that really stood out as the element influencing success. In the 1960’s and 1970’s in particular, advertising experienced a golden-era in the United States which stemmed from Madison Avenue, New York City and included many advertising firms in the area competing and coming up with increasingly bold and creative advertising campaigns that have since been known to change the advertising industry forever.

However, the situation of the marketplace has changed drastically in the 21^st century. Gone are the days of advertising on billboards and newspapers. The days where creativity was often the only defining factor needed to get the consumer’s attention. These days, people have limited attention spans due to their over-reliance on technology which makes getting their attention an even tougher task. Studies have shown that most people just change the channel during commercial breaks whereas; no studies are needed to prove the fact that the majority of adolescents don’t even read newspapers anymore. All this makes advertising and marketing all the more difficult which is why digital has emerged as an avenue where marketers have looked to gain the attention of the consumer.

I think it’s wrong to say print media, billboards and television ads have lost their influence completely. That is simply untrue. However, their influence has decreased significantly in modern times especially compared to digital marketing which is on the rise. Why is this though? Besides the obvious reason that consumers should be targeted on the platform they spend most of their free-time on.

Revival of Pakistani Cinema

When we think about the Pakistani cinema today the first thing which comes to our mind that “Is the revival of Pakistani cinema sustainable? “

Our national film makers have altered the face of Pakistani cinema after 2012 but more steps are needed to build up and sustain the credibility of Pakistani cinema and to make the revival sustainable. Pakistan has created more than 20 top rated movies on record since 2015 with three animated movies in the list. Gone are the days where Pakistani movies depicted the low quality and old fashioned stories and scripts. The modern technology in Pakistan promises the full time fascinating and entertaining experience by the replacement of old fashioned cinemas, Theaters with multipurpose Cineplex’s in the major cities of Pakistan. Up till now Cinepax is the largest screen provider in Pakistan with more than 22 screens. The Cinepax situated in Rawalpindi first created the sense of the revival of Pakistani cinema by showing Indian movies at a premium level of experience. There first screening included “Khuda k Liye” which forced the producers of Pakistan to make such films. Moreover they also showed telefilms in their cinemas to grabs more audience attraction.

Till now ARY films are the biggest giants in the production unit of Pakistani cinema which is giving the audience back to back hit movies.

Despite the fact that brands like ARY Films, Geo Films Etc. are probably going to remain a noteworthy piece of the help structure for Pakistani movies (and the accomplishment from this will energize greater interest in film), expanding the quantity of cineplexes and screens is the main feasible approach to guarantee the security of the as of late kicked off neighborhood film industry. This is where the government of Pakistan should be promoting this and should play a positive role.

- Asad Munir