Thursday, February 11, 2010

21st Century Marketing, An Evening with Carlos Cashman


After getting job, which I was looking for ever since I passed out the college, and to my luck I got the job in this past January right after my graduation ceremony. Getting a job was great as somehow I was not all about sitting at home reading magazines, watching TV, and using Internet and living life without any discipline, life is changed ever since I joined my current job there is some discipline in my life as well. There are few draw backs too, I am not complaining but its fact nothing is perfect and human never get satisfied, and that is the fact that now I was bound to give more than 8 hours of a day to my company and it was not allowing me to attend the events, and I started to think that I will become same as I was before October 2009, for those who don't know me much or met me after that let me disclose a fact about me that I was a big anti social person before that a simply home to college and college to home guy.

This past Monday, I was having a day off and on my facebook I could see some invitations to attend some events and 21st century marketing; and evening with Carlos Cahsman, was one of them. Till Sunday my official status about this event was, may be attending due to job and flu was a reason for it, but as I got to know I am having a day off on this Monday I decided to be there, though my mother tried to stop me due to some rain, but I think in all those years she is bearing me she has come to know that how much I love to be in the rain, specially when there is raining after so long.

So cutting the story short and let me reach the venue, the event was held by TIE Lahore and the venue was Royal Palm golf and country club, the first problem, I faced after reaching the venue was to put my rain coat somewhere, and at that time I saw Farhan Bhai, who was there like an angel for me and he allowed me to put it in his car and I am really thankful for it Farhan Bhai.
After the registration process I entered the hall and met Marryam Chaudhri, she was also member of FLU club than I hope she is doing fine now, after bloggers meet up at PC Lahore it was second time I met her I wanted to talk about her radio shows which missed to listen to but the flu has really made me a dumb and I forgot to talk anything about it.

Adnan Bhai and Badar Khushnood were there too and many more people I met but I know these two better, Syed Hassan Tallal was there as well and it was good to see another member of flu club there.

The event was about to start at 5 PM but I think it started at about half past 5, Umer Saeed Khan started the show by describing the road map. The President of TIE Lahore, Monis Rehman gave the Opening Remarks, and, than the man of the evening Mr. Carlos Cashman was on the stage to make a keynote speech, as Badar bhai said it was a great speech and it was interesting to listen it some good information that I got too and Carlos also cracked some jokes too. He said that the thing which defines marketing is ROI (return on investment), he also described that how search engine marketing works, and he quoted some interesting and informative examples like Secret London, the dollars generated by selling virtual goods and many more. Another interesting fact that he told was the Marketers in his company are people from Computer Sciences.

After that there was a panel discussion which was moderated by Adnan Bhai (Assistant Professor UMT), which was followed by Question and Answer session. What I think about this part of event is that it was wrapped up early as the time was running out. Oh I forgot to mention the people who were in the panel: Carlos Cashman (CEO, Constellation Inc.), Badar Khushnood (Country Consultant, Google Pakistan), Amer Sarfraz (Head of Media & Strategy, Bramerz), Zafar Khan (CEO, Sofizar).
During the discussion some interesting statements got my attention like:
We are moving to mobile commerce rather than conventional E-Commerce. (Baddar Khushnood)

If you run an ad campaign there must be a goal at the end of it: (Zafar Khan)

Try to do some experiment to gain some credibility

After the discussion was over it was time for Hi-Tea and networking session, again this time during the networking session met some great people Mr. Adeel Anwar is one of them and I am glad that he still remember me, and Fahad Iqbal is another great guy I met, I was impressed by his keenness towards the campaign he is running but the kind of response he got is bit disappointing to me but I want to say that if you are reading this I am with you man as I believe that you are correct in your way. I also got chance to talk to Mr. Carlos Cashman, and the myth of movie 21 was one of the question I wanted to ask him but Fahad asked it before I could do so. Mr. Zafar Khan also joined us and me and Fahad talked about the job opportunities in there company. Well when Carlos came to know that I am a blogger he told me to write about them that their company needs some good programmers, so if any programmer reading this there is a chance :P.
The best part of the event was after the event when Farhan bhai, I and KamalaSubhani (ACCA Student) had a detailed discussion on what whole speech and discussion was about, some of the mysteries were resolved by Farhan bhai and I am working on them now, and the tips of Farhan bhai were easy to understand and practice as they were given by a Pakistani to a Pakistan, the practice and tips given by Carlos was more of a US based thing, well I think I have written enough and I should wrap this up now, oh I forgot to mention I am invited to visit office of Farhan bhai, and I am eager to visit it and see his new product.

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