DELL in LUMS

DELL Pakistan held an event at LUMS last Friday, all thanks goes to Tariq bhai whose wall post was the source of information about the event and I decided to be there as it was my day-off. When I reached the NIB hall Ayesha Alam was wrapping up her session I could only catch her advice to turn of google geo-location but this advice was not for me being a boy.
This event added a lot of things into my information e.g. Core I was launched in March and it is said to be the world's smallest chip. Nubla Iftikhar, Marketing Manager of DELL Pakistan was surprised to know that no one in the hall had seen the advertisement of worlds smallest chip. Mr. Google (that's what Miss Nubla said) Bader Khushnood was also there and he described his views on DELL Pakistan campaign and also gave some tips for the online marketing campaigns.
Bader bhai said; DELL do not have a website in Pakistan there for the fan page on Facebook was a great idea to stay in touch with current and potential customers, -- well I think by launching a fan page DELL actually made the users fan of DELL if we take this factor this way, but there is no doubt DELL Pakistan's campaign is the most talk about marketing campaign of last year, as Bader Bhai said the whole activity was online and they never used, any offline source. “When ever you are going for a campaign engagement is the key word” , said Bader Bhai.
Mr. Imran, Punjab Lead INTEL was also there to elaborate the presence of the INTEL inside the DELL. His presentation was short and simple but the whole process of making the presentation possible took sometime.
Miss. Nubla gave some idea about the product so that the contestants can gather some idea about the thing for which they were about to give a marketing plan. I think, I forgot to mention that the main attraction of the event was the competition of marketing plan for DELL. I was not part of competition as I was not having any one to team with, and I think I could not listen to the ideas of others as I did in this way if I was in competition. let me put what Nubla said about DELL's products; DELL is offering three products:

1. DELL Mini, it is based on Atom Pro and have less price then other DELL laptops.
2. DELL Inspiron, and it is available with Core i3,� Core i5, or Core i7 it is affordable when it comes to price.
3. DELL Studio, it is having Core i5 or Core i7 and it is slightly expensive (not slightly in real sense)

In the competition there were so many interesting ideas and some of them were really amazing and I am sorry but I have to say (without taking any name) one or two ideas made me sleepy as I found them really boring. A Group came up with idea of SMS campaign and Youtube Videos, and other come up with the idea of MMS along with PWP and GWP promotions, another group come up with a brilliant Idea of DELL City the idea was to have a game, in which player will build cities and get higher ranks and at every rank he will get some gift.
A group said that as April is a Cancer awareness month as well as the hiking month in northern areas so we can interlink both the things with DELL, where as another group said that promotion should be done through real people rather then fan pages and groups. Some of the ideas or the presentations were funny, as a group kept on saying Twister while they were supposed to say Twitter, and a group said that why don't DELL have Sania Mirza as Brand ambassador.
There was one thing common in most of the ideas and that was the Gaming factor, many groups were stressing on the point of having a game for DELL, some asked to develop a new one and some other said to integrate with any existing game. To me this gaming factor is a result of air wave spread by FarmVille which caused a unique kind of flu that almost everyone is sneezing in this way.
Rabia Gharib, The Editor in Chief of CIO Pakistan was the moderator, of the event and she kept cracking some jokes and asking questions during the presentations but one thing she said is stuck in that part of my brain where I keep advises of the people. She said, “Marketing is very high priced just start don't ask for time.” And it was the reply to a group which was asking if they have some more time to carry on their presentation.
Well a group called E-Scavengersrs were declared the winners and this was the group which gave the idea of MMS along with PWP + GWP Promotion, they got 3 things starting with the letter L, they got three 17 inches LCD Monitors from DELL. Well I am really thank full to the member of same group who was wearing IBM shirt for confirming the spellings of their group name.