"Telenor" Won the Buzziest Brand of the Year Award
The Buzz Power Conference & Award Show was held on 25th October 2008 at Avari Towers, Karachi. The Conference was part of the Buzziest Brand of the Year Poll, in which Revelation invited advertising, marketing and media professionals to vote for their favorite brands. The poll aimed to identify those brands that are hot and have the greatest ‘buzz’ – that is, those brands, which are so exciting that they generate consumer word of mouth.

The Buzzuest Brand of the Year Poll was conducted online as well as offline through a very exciting campaign developed by Pirana Advertising.

Approximately 11,000 professionals of advertising, media and marketing industry were invited through digital mailers and direct mails. An interactive website was created and professionals from advertising, marketing and media were invited to vote for the top brands that they think created the maximum buzz in the last one year. An independent jury, which consisted of marketing and advertising gurus, was handpicked to pick the top buzziest brands of Pakistan.

The fraternity as well as the Jury was given an equal weight age in determining the winners. The response rate was above 15%. In numbers we received some 1683 responses, which was beyond our expectations.

The Poll was to be followed by Buzz Power Conference, which was the first conference ever in Pakistan to discuss how marketers can consciously try to get consumers to talk about their brands. And create excitement - or ‘buzz’ - around it. Buzz Power looked at how a wide array of communication tools has been used by marketers to create happy buzz for their brand. With thought provoking speeches, and fascinating case studies of different exiting brands, the aim of Buzz Power was to help the marketer analyze their strategies.

Prominent speakers present at the occasion were by Azeem-ul-haq, Director Marketing, Telenor Pakistan Ltd., Raihan Merchant, CEO, Pakmediacom (Pvt.) Limited, Mahmood Nanji, COO, Media One, by Haseeb Ihtisham, Marketing Manager, Nokia Pakistan & Afghanistan, Fasi Zaka, Head of Ideas & Strategy Adcom (Pvt.) Ltd. Aly Mustansir, EVP & Head of Brand Management, HBL. Taher A Khan, Chairman, Interflow Group was the keynote speaker as well as the Chief Guest for the event.

Mahmood Nanji of Media One spoke about the Blue Ocean strategy, which focuses on strong product differentiation that will inevitably create buzz if promoted well. Haseeb Ihtisham of Nokia candidly talked about the Nokia Music campaign, which eventually proved to be a success after initial hiccups, positioning Nokia as a strong player in the music category. Raihan Merchant shared his views on the creation and management of word of mouth campaign and how a marketer can use Internet and mobile communication as a successful tool for buzz creation. Aly Mustansir discussed classic International case studies of buzz marketing and also shared the successful HBL story. Fasi Zaka of Adcom shared the initial mistakes Telenor made during the launch year and then how, working on their strengths and making a few strategy changes, it succeeded to become one of the biggest telecom service provider in the country. Later Azeem-ul-haq of Telenor Pakistan also talked about the changing dynamics of the telecom industry and how Telenor is striving to give the best services to the consumer. Lastly, Taher A Khan shared his ideas on the new emerging international marketing model, which is focusing more on unconventional interactive medias to create buzz and word of mouth. He emphasized that in these difficult times the marketers have to work on inspirational ideas to specially perk up the youth of Pakistan.

The conference was followed by “The Buzziest Brand of the Year Award Show, where Taher A Khan, Chairman, Interflow Group was the Chief Guest. Telenor clinch the award for the Buzziest Brand of the year, followed by Mobilink, HBL, Olpers and Coca Cola. Telenor TalkShawk also won awards for the Longest Buzz as well as the Most Positive Buzz where as Ufone Prepay (Public Demand) created the most negative buzz according to the poll. Tarang got an award for the Greatest Launch Buzz. HBL, Telenor, CocoCola, Dalda, PEL, Sooper, Surf Excel, Lux, Olpers and GEO won awards in their respective categories.

Taher A Khan lauded the efforts of the organizers and stresses the importance of organizing such events for the benefit of the industry. At the end awards were presented to winners of the top 5 buzziest brand of the year. Overall the event was extremely well attended and appreciated by people from the industry. Revelation Inc., promises to organize the Buzziest Brand of the Year next year as well.