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Aurora Magazine •

Making the Shift to Iconic Branding

This is the boardroom of a local consumer goods company. The company’s marketing and creative agency teams are sitting around the table. A debate is going on. “We need to position our brand around an emotional benefit,” a voice emphatically says.

“Because consumers don’t buy a function, they buy an emotion,” comes the reply.

It is a scene that people in the corporate world are too familiar with. Our marketing communications are quite mature; yet, we are pondering over a dead issue. An issue wh
Pakistan Advertisers Society •

Business Model Innovation, the Secret Success Formula

The most successful businesses often are not the outcome of brilliant strategy, contrary to what people normally believe, but rather the result of impressive business model innovations.

A business model, as the name says, is an overall picture of how an entity conducts its business operations, while creating value and making money. A typical business model has four dimensions: value proposition, key processes, key resources and the profit formula i.e. how it makes money

Business model innovati
Aurora Magazine •

Finding Pakistan’s Competitive Advantage

Devaluing the rupee every four to five years is not the right approach to solve Pakistan’s current account deficit problem. The most recent example was last year when the rupee was devalued against the dollar by about 32%. This was deemed necessary by our economic managers as a measure to address the whopping trade deficit of $15.86 billion in July-April 2018 (Pakistan Economic Survey 2019). So far, the devaluation has had no impact on the growth of exports in dollars. Instead of devaluation, Pa
Aurora Magazine •

Why agencies are failing to adopt real change

Everyone knows Bill Gates to be one of the world’s richest men, yet, few know how he changed the course of the IT industry. Gates envisioned a world in which there would be a computer on every desk, at a time when PCs did not exist. He understood that the way to capitalise on the future was by controlling software. Therefore, he focused his energies not on making products but on building software-based platforms and ecosystems. Once you have control over the platform, you control the entire ecos
Aurora Magazine •

Fashion and the digital immersion

Brand attitude is defined as a consistent evaluation of a brand by its consumers. This involves making consumers want to know more about the brand, visit their stores and try it out. The aim of a brand’s marketing communication is to create favourable attitudes because these attitudes will ultimately translate into behaviour.

The FCB Grid (Foote, Cone and Belding Model) is designed to help us understand where a product stands in the mind of a consumer, by estimating whether or not purchase requ
Aurora Magazine •

The power of being single-minded

The definition of an idea is ‘connecting the unconnected’ in a way that yields ‘something of value’. In advertising, this is called a ‘creative idea’ that communicates a brand's proposition in a way that ‘sticks’ with the consumer. The works of Stephen King (the pioneer of modern day strategic planning and J. Walter Thompson’s first ever planning director) were compiled and edited after his death by Judie Lannon and Merry Baskin in their book, A Master Class in Brand Planning: The Timeless Works
Aurora Magazine •

Is your agency stuck in the mushy middle?

The crux of a company’s business strategy is to find, own and continuously refine their competitive advantage over others operating within the same category. For continued success, this advantage has to be real and sustainable over long periods of time. Michael Porter, a Harvard professor and renowned strategy guru, identifies three broad categories of competitive advantage a company can select from; he calls them ‘generic strategies’ because they can be applied to products or services across al
Aurora Magazine •

The importance of being cool

Pakistan is one of the world’s few countries with an overwhelmingly young population. The 2017 Census has estimated the population to be around 207 million, of which nearly 42% (87 million) fall in between the ages of 13 and 35. These are the people who have a kind of magnetic attraction towards brands that are ‘cool’. However, given that cool is a quality that defines people and not brands, brands can only be said to be cool in as much as cool people use them.

Cool is what makes or breaks bran
Aurora Magazine •

Feel it, don’t think it

Building brands is part art and part science and there is no one-size-fits-all formula in any category. Every category is unique in terms of its relationship with its customers and the meaning brands evoke within them. Think of a girl who is about to get engaged and has lots of uncertainties about the ensuing relationship. In such a scenario, the reassurance of a lasting relationship, such as De Beers’ Diamonds Are Forever, has a specific meaning for her. Contrast this with a housewife strugglin
Aurora Magazine •

Agency makeover

This is a distinct period in human history when change is so rampant and happening at the speed of light. What we knew yesterday and were familiar and comfortable with suddenly appears very different, affecting businesses and careers. These changes are also affecting advertising; not only is the profession undergoing a rapid transformation, the lives of all associated with it – their dreams, aspirations and expectations – are radically modifying.

Look at what is happening at P&G. One of the wor