–Gurus, novices get together to debate on increasing digitisation, efficiency
LAHORE: Sixth Annual International Digital Conference, DIGIMARK’17, took place at a local hotel here on Thursday, August 17th. Experts, marketing professionals, the web and mobile strategists, and innovators from all over the country participated in the two-day conference.
DIGIMARK aimed to bring together digital gurus, novices and wantrepreneurs to promote a better understanding of, and encourage growth in, the digital industry. The first day of the conference included speeches by several notable names in the digital sector of Pakistan including Jazz CEO Aamir Ibrahim, Latitude (Pvt.) Ltd. CEO Omar Jamil, TCS E-com CEO Salman Hassan, Google Business and Marketing Consultant Raza Matin, Premier Energy Country Head Pakistan Daniyal Siddiqui, and OLX Pakistan Country Manager Bilal Bajwa.
Bajwa said that approximately 30,000 ads are posted on OLX per day with 25 people monitoring them 24×7. He said that there is 80 percent liquidity for the ads on the site. Answering a question from a member of the audiences about fake advertisements such as “rishta (proposals)”, Bajwa said that even Facebook had to deal with drug sales and other illegal practices when it opened its platform for classifieds, labelling it an inevitable challenge.
Salman Hassan spoke about the zero-cost marketing campaigns that were done by TCS and were successful according to their study. “We have certain commandments in our company and one of them is not to spend money like water.” TCS came up with #WhatThePrice Twitter campaign where they offered to reduce the price of a said product by Rs 20 for every retweet. In his presentation, Hassan showed that the price of a PS4 was reduced from Rs 32,000 to Rs 16,000 because of this campaign which also became a source for their marketing without spending on marketing.
The conference was followed by an expo where several brands put up their stalls, including Stylo, Supreme Foam, Beauty Hackers, and myZindagi. TEC (Training, Events, and Consultancy) company was the collaborative partner for the conference. TEC Founder and CEO Zain Majid, while talking to media, said that his goal and sole purpose of organizing DIGIMARK was to provide a platform for the digital marketing fraternity of Pakistan where “they can network with like-minded industry leaders and learn from the actionable insights shared as successful case studies.” TEC co-founder and CP Business and Strategy Iftikhar Hussain said that such gatherings help in promotion and uplift of the digital marketing industry. “It helps SME’s and those who are new in the field to learn from the successful brands that have crossed the phase already, to prevent reinventing of wheel.” Souvenirs were also distributed among the speakers of the conference.
